LESSONS LEARNED

So, to sum it up, what have I learned since I began my career in the early 1970’s?

• The importance of creating a team atmosphere cannot be overstated.
• All partners and managers need to be pulling in the same direction.
• That direction needs to be clearly communicated to the staff.
• The staff needs to feel that the firm is concerned about their well-being and professional growth. They need the opportunity to learn all aspects of a firm, no matter what their specific assignments are. As a member of the staff passes a portion of the architectural exam or achieves a significant skill, it should be celebrated within the firm. We provide gift certificates for such events, which are presented in an all-staff meeting. It shows that the firm cares about professional growth, and encourages others to keep growing.
• Staff needs to be guided in a direction where they can feel that their work is important, but under a nurturing, watchful eye.
• Not every project or responsibility may be exciting, but it is important is that the staff recognize that their efforts are contributing to the overall success of a project. This effort needs to be publically celebrated within the firm.
• All managers need to keep their egos in check. I strongly believe that it is more effective to work shoulder-to-shoulder with, and not pontificate to, your staff. As managers, we should have attained enough self-confidence over the years, and have progressed enough in our profession, that we don’t need to make others feel less important by building ourselves up at their expense. You can be self-effacing, making yourself a part of the team, while still retaining control and respect.
• As firm leaders, continue to extend your boundaries in terms of education and future trends. An example might be the development of a Green and Sustainable policy. We formed the DLA Green Team, comprised of members of the staff that had achieved LEED AP (Accredited Professional) credentials. Partners or managers not LEED AP are not a part of the Team. To reward those who made the effort to become LEED AP, each was presented with a DLA Green Team shirt. The most important part of the education process is to have all staff, managers, and partners report on their experience and what was learned. This provides public speaking opportunities, educates the staff on what was learned, provides peer acceptance for a job well done, and encourages people to pursue additional learning.
• In a firm where each manager is responsible for a particular aspect of the firm, all should have general knowledge, and be able to back each other up. All members of the firm, managers and staff alike, must continually put forth their best effort. Each partner or manager should know they can depend upon the others and encourage staff commitment.
• Partners and managers must continually reassess how their efforts fit into our firm’s branding, mission and personality.
• Planning is critical. It is important to understand what our goals are, how we are going to achieve them and how we will manage the process.
• Always think about how the final resolution to a problem or issue will be interpreted by those who will be affected. You may find that changes to your decisions are necessary to accomplish goals. Concede the battle if you can win the war!

SUMMARY

Through a career of great and not-so-great experiences, the following summarizes my philosophy and commitment as an architect/project manager/leader:

• Know when to let go.
• Be grateful for the efforts of others.
• Attack each project with a passion. Enthusiasm is contagious.
• A successful leader possesses skills including: focus, passion, drive, honesty, respect, collaboration, trust and integrity. These are the formation of a solid foundation.
• Don’t think too highly of yourself. Think highly of your team. When all is said and done, you should be proud of your team’s commitment (led by you).
• The most inspiring and relevant description of commitment I have ever heard was from Mia Hamm, the former U.S. Women’s Soccer Team star. She said,

You always want to end on a high note, but I want to end knowing that I gave everything I had, and hopefully that the game was better because I was a part of it.”

AMEN to that!

Photo credits:

• Reflecting on Casa Batlló by Börkur Sigurbjörnsson

Students were asked to discuss their experience and interaction with the architecture that surrounded them at their school. Judging will surely be difficult as there are some wonderful and creative entries. In fact, views and “likes” will be one of the factors that the judges look at, so be sure to give your thumbs up to your favorite(s)!

Further reading at:

• www.DLAscholarship.com
• Top Ten Reasons to THINK [about architecture]

 
The firm has matured and evolved, being recognized in Building Design + Construction magazine as one of the Giants 300 K-12 School Design Firms; one of the nation’s Green Building Leaders; and as one of the overall Giants 300 Architectural Firms. We now have a CEO and a President, and each of the other 6 partners having distinct and definable roles in the operation of the firm.

Within our management model we encourage visioning. We ask everyone to look ahead and share upcoming trends or industry changes with their collegues. This meant we were well versed in the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act (AHERA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) when they were passed by Congress. Our designs immediately reflected the implications of these laws because we reacted quickly. Since the 1980’s we have been committed to Green and Sustainable Design. This being the case, we immediately became involved with the United States Green Building Council and LEED when it came on line.

DLA CEO Dwain Lutzow leads a Staff Strategy Meeting

Something I’ve learned over the years is that within a company there needs to be a champion with a vision toward the future, who has the support of the firm’s leadership for implementation of new policies and procedures. Management (in our case, the partners) must believe in the importance of that vision and support it. The role of the champion is to educate the members of the firm, so that all are working together. It’s also important that any new initiatives align with the firm’s vision, mission statement, and brand. The firm organization and personality needs to reflect these building blocks.

Additionally, we have continually strived to refine our project management model. We’ve always been very client-focused, but our goal is always to improve. While our firm remains successful, and has remained so through the recent dip in the economy, we are still evolving.

As I’ve mentioned, we recently made the decision to consolidate our operations into a unified corporate office. Being supporters of LEED/Green and Sustainable Design concepts, we chose to use this opportunity to make a design statement by having our new office LEED certified. This effort was shared with our staff as the project proceeded, educating them in the LEED process. The move helped by centralizing management, improving quality control and maintaining the “family feeling” of the office.

DLA Leadership hosts periodic staff meetings to involve staff in developing strategic improvements.

The move was generally well received by our staff, although travel distance and travel time has been a concern. We made sure that we shared our rationale with the staff to let them know, well in advance, that their needs were a part of our decision. The new office location was selected because it is mid-way between the two former offices and at the intersection of two major expressways. In an effort to build esprit de corps, we are consciously mixing the staff from each office together on new projects.

This has been a period of adjustment, which is currently being resolved. Each office had its own personality, with its own way of doing things. Each approach to projects has worked well over the years, but was slightly different, reflecting the personality of the partners and the staff in each office. The ultimate management style will be a blending of both offices. The lesson learned has been that each partner needs to have a clearly definable role, consistent with their interest and ability. This gets tricky, since we were all trained as architects, but not in the important aspects of managing an architectural firm.

Photo credits:

• Clear Vision by C.P.Storm

Continued from Project Management Case History – A Career Reflection (Part 1)

After experiencing life in some very different firms, I made the major life decision to try it on my own.

I began as a sole proprietor, working out of my basement. I had work, but I was doing everything myself, simultaneously, on all projects. I could see that to be successful, the firm needed to expand.

I took on a partner, Dwain Lutzow, whom I had known since we played on the same Little League baseball team. While we both managed projects, we split up the management/office responsibilities – he handled the money side, and I focused on the design/project side.

This worked well – and only because we trusted each other, were both skilled architects, were willing to work hard and learn, and had a similar vision for the firm’s future. That was 29 years ago, and we are still partners. We outgrew the basement and designed two office buildings which at one time housed our offices.

Despite the ups and downs of the economy, over the years the firm has grown to 8 partners and a staff of 34. Along the way, we opened a second office which we staffed until this past year, when we consolidated into a large centralized corporate office.

Photo credits:

• Between 200 Rungs, Either Way by Mike Beauregard

Learning Environments for Tomorrow (LEFT) Design team 2012 (image courtesy Esther Carvalho)

The workshop Learning Environments for Tomorrow (LEFT) was a great immersion into the minds of educational professionals and designers all across the world. Together, educators and designers collaborated, debated and even delved into the design of future learning environments. Given what we know about the future with regards to technology, digital textbooks, virtual classrooms, new learning styles like project based learning projects, wikis and so on, the question on everyones’ mind was… How does the architecture accommodate or even inspire the pedagogical styles of the future?

This question has been at the forefront of our minds here at DLA and one of the debates our design group got into at our stay in Cambridge, was, in the future, will there still be schools? If not, why are we designing new ones today? Should we be creating buildings that will last 50 – 100 years from now? Will there be a need for a “classroom”? As you can imagine, this was an interesting debate and one that a school architect might be concerned with. The discussions with educators, administrators, psychologists, project managers and designers revealed that school buildings are currently and will be of vital importance in the future.

While the buildings might change to reflect different pedagogies and social needs, these buildings will still remain a community hub, perhaps more tomorrow than even today. Schools will provide the foundation for children to interact, solve problems together and work with a knowledge facilitator (or teacher as us older folks might say). But at this “school building” students no longer go to classrooms, they work in learning environments that are edgeless. Learning continues way beyond the walls of the school building through mentoring programs, group research and global cultural interaction. Teachers no longer lecture; they coach. Students no longer learn in a vacuum; they solve the problems of the world as a group – and it is a far better process that prepares children to be lifelong learners and active citizens in a global economy.

Thanks to wonderful people facilitating, participating and challenging us all in the LEFT immersion. I know we all walked away with a lot to think about and to implement.

To build or renovate a school in the 21st century is no easy feat. When you consider that many schools were built 40-plus years ago, educators and architects are often challenged with how to design spaces where learning is flexible and meets the needs of today’s and tomorrow’s digital children.

The 84 educators and architects who turned out for last week’s Programs in Professional Education institute, Learning Environments for Tomorrow: Next Practices for Educators and Architects (LEFT), are a testament to the challenges faced by those reenvisioning and rebuilding our schools.

via Learning Environments for Tomorrow | Harvard Graduate School of Education.

For more details take a look at their site:

DCEO offers a retro-commissioning (RCx) program for public sector buildings as another means towards reducing energy usage in buildings. SEDAC supports DCEO in management of the program and providing the RCx services.

This program offers retro-commissioning guidance by identifying measures to improve the control, scheduling, and operation of energy consuming systems to match the current functional requirements of the building. The end result: significant energy and demand savings, and in many cases, improved occupant comfort and productivity.

RCx analysis by SEDAC is fully funded by Illinois Department of Commerce & Economic Opportunity (DCEO). Each participant must only cover costs associated with implementing the measures recommended by the RCx analysis, attend meetings, as well as assist RCx service providers in acquiring facility information.

 

via SEDAC – Retro-Commissioning Program.

As a successful architectural firm, we are always looking forward. Long range planning is critical to our firm; it’s a service we provide our clients. Forecasting and economic trends play a significant role in that planning.

To that end, I attended an Economic Outlook Breakfast this morning at the Elgin Community College University Business Center. The speaker was Mr. John DeDoncker, President and Chief Executive Officer of THE National Bank. His presentation was very detailed, with a myriad of studies to back up his findings. In summary, his positive predictions for 2012 were:

1. The economy will continue its slow recovery.
2. Housing will continue to improve slowly.
3. Short term rates will continue to stay low.
4. Since this is an election year, he anticipates no major legislative initiatives.

As the year moves forward, let’s hope for all of our sakes that the economy continues in a growth mode. This is beneficial to all of us.

If you’d like to research further, some of the sources included:

• Dr. Ed Seifried proprietary index the Seifried & Brew Total Risk Index (“S&B Risk Index”) (http://www.seifriedbrew.com/totalriskindex.html)
• Consumer Confidence Data by the Conference Board (http://www.conference-board.org/data/consumerdata.cfm)
• Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers to gauge how consumers feel the economic environment will change (http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/financial/financial_products/a-z/umichigan_surveys_of_consumers/#tab3)
• The NFIB Research Foundation, which has collected Small Business Economic Trends data with quarterly surveys since 1974, for thier Small Business Optimism Index (http://www.nfib.com/research-foundation/surveys/small-business-economic-trends) and Jobs Data (http://www.nfib.com/research-foundation/surveys/jobs-report)

Since 1997, the purpose of the scholarship has been to promote an understanding of the built environment and how people interact with it, especially schools. We truly hope to foster a genuine interest in the societal value of architecture as an art form and an enhancement to the general quality of life.

Over the years we’ve awarded the scholarship to over 200 students, and have even hired some of them after they finished school. One thing that never fails to surprise us, though, is the fact that the scholarship at many of the schools goes unawarded!?! That means that not a single qualified student submitted an entry – WOW, what a shame!

So, with this in mind, I’ve come up with a list of why high school students should THINK [about architecture]:

Number 10 –

You know your school

The only thing you need to turn in for the scholarship is a discussion about your school building. It’s that simple, you don’t need to have any kind of special background in architecture or drafting, and you don’t need to turn in any kind of drawings. All you need to do is think about how your school building has affected your time as a student and how you learned and then share your observations.

Number 9 –

You don’t need to have a high GPA

If you’re going on to college, you’re qualified. The Think [about architecture] Scholarship is about you and your ability to share your observations.

Number 8 –

A little effort can pay off

If it takes you 10 hours to record your video, edit it and upload the form, and you receive the $250 scholarship, you’ve just made $25 per hour. If you go on to be selected for the top prize of $1,000. Add them up and that’s $1,250… or $125 per hour. How many hours would you have to work at your summer job to come up with that kind of cash?!?

Number 7 –

You don’t need any fancy equipment or software

All you need is some way of recording audio and video. You might use your phone or you might check out an actual video recorder from your local public library.

Once you upload your footage to YouTube, you’ll be able to use the tools there to edit your footage as you see fit. It takes some effort, but it’s certainly doable.

Number 6 –

Invest the time in YOU

You have a great story to tell about how your educational environment affected your learning. You’ve made it; you’re just about through your Senior Year and you’re ready for college. You deserve to be rewarded for your hard work. If you take the time to share the story of that hard work, you just might reap the rewards.

Number 5 –

Scholarships look GREAT on your resume

Whether you’re applying for a full-time summer job or an internship, having a scholarship (or a few) on your resume can make you stand out from the crowd. Employers know that it takes time and effort just to apply for scholarships and that’s typically the kind of initiative they like to see. It’s one of the things that we look for on resumes here at DLA.

Number 4 –

You don’t know if you’ll have much competition

The requirements for the scholarship are fairly minimal, but based on experience in past years, only a handful of students will apply. If you put in the effort, there’s a chance that you’ll have pretty good odds of being selected. The competition might be fierce… or you might be the one to beat. If you don’t try, you won’t know.

Number 3 –

You don’t have to pay back a scholarship

One thing is certain, scholarships are not loans – they don’t need to be paid back. Borrow less and try your hand at a scholarship, you just might be selected.

Number 2 –

There is no essay requirement

New for this year, the DLA Architects scholarship doesn’t require an essay. Let’s face it; nobody likes to write an essay. It’s hard to find a voice and it’s always a challenge to figure out how long it should be to get your point across. Since this year, it’s a short video; hopefully it should be easier to come up with a submission.

And, drum roll please…

Number 1 –

You just might win

The DLA Architects Think [about architecture] Scholarship is being offered at only 22 schools. If you’re a student at one of these schools, you have a good shot at being selected for the $250 School Level Scholarship. Recipients at this stage will be eligible for the $500 or the $1,000 awards. The thing is, if you don’t apply, you won’t have a shot. Take the plunge and work on a submission… it just might be you in the top spot!

If you think you’ve got what it takes, make sure you go to www.dlascholarship.com and check out the requirements (every school has different parameters). You can upload your video and ask your friends to vote for it. Good luck!

Graphic Design icon Steven Heller interviews Pamela Pease, creator of  Design Dossier: Architecture for Kids. The new book sounds fantastic. An excerpt from the interview:

What can children truly derive from the material you are giving them. What is their take-away? That their ideas matter. That they can impact the world they live in by observing, thinking, and doing.

 

via Architecture for Ages 10 and Older — Imprint-The Online Community for Graphic Designers.