Are you an architect if you don’t draw? Is a design manager still an architect?

Posted on October 24, 2013 by ceilidhhiggins

Are you an architect? Do you draw? In the sense I’m referring to that question today, it is usually meant to include modelling as well, and usually means more than just mark up or do a quick napkin sketch. Are you still an architect if your day job doesn’t involve drawing? What does an architect actually do day to day if they don’t draw? Today, the tasks that an architect do can be so broad, that many architects don’t even seem to understand what other architects they work with actually do. If we don’t understand what our colleagues are actually doing, then is it any surprise that many of our clients don’t really understand (or value) all the tasks that go into creating a building project.

I’ll start by saying, technically, I’m not an architect (although I do still draw depending on workload and projects). The reason I’m not an architect is very much a technicality, and whilst its not about drawing, I think it is relevant to the way in which the profession seems confused about itself and what architects actually do. I studied architecture for 6 years, have worked in the industry for 15 and I have even sat for and passed the Board of Architecture exams. However, I don’t pay the annual registration fee to the board, so that means I’m not an architect. (That’s my choice though, as I work as an interior designer – the relationship between designers and architects being a story for perhaps another post sometime). In Australia, anyone who not passed the exam and registered is not supposed to call themselves an architect, but a graduate of architecture, even if they have been practicing for 30 years. It’s not this kind of semantics or industry protection that I’m really wanting to talk about today (though personally I don’t think architects really benefit from the protection if the term), it’s the tasks we actually do to deliver our projects. And can often apply just as much to other building design disciplines such as interior design and engineering too.

For any architect (or graduate of architecture) or interior designer that works in an office of more than a few people, you won’t do everything yourself. Some people will undertake business development and bring in the work, some will have face to face client roles, some will draw, some will use BIM, some will know all the graphic software, some will write specifications, some will be good at the overarching idea, some will be focussing on construction and technical detailing, and someone needs to ensure that the subconsultants are briefed, the team is delivering on time and the team size and mix is the right one. Most of us do a mix of these things, very few of us are good at all of them. The whole point of working in a team (to me anyway) is to benefit from these different mixes of skills.

Given that delivering a building project is therefore very much a team sport of many different positions, it therefore surprises me then when I hear comments like “as architects is job is mostly drawing” or “what are you actually doing on the project – you are not drawing or writing the spec?” That fact that the later was made by an architect who was managing more than 20 architects (and happened to be involved with the board or architects), is to me, quite disturbing. Do architects really not understand and value what their team mates are up to on the job, thinking that only certain parts of the project are actually important to the architecture?

I guess that partially it is related to the increasing complexity of large construction projects. When I first graduated a bit over 10 years ago, we didn’t have sustainability consultants, access consultants or BIM managers – every project our consultant teams seem to grow ever larger. (Recently I saw a consultant team list which included a wind consultant – a new one to me). Managing all of these people, briefing them and coordinating their work is a big job on its own. You can then add the work often involved in meeting client stakeholder management and reporting processes, quality assurance processes and code compliance checking (which whilst we have consultants is still so much the responsibility of the designer be they architect, interior designer or engineer). Between all these tasks n a larger project you easily have a full time role, commonly referred to as design manager.

It is really important that this is understood as a different role to the project manager – whilst one person may do both, just because there is a project manager doesn’t mean you don’t need someone undertaking the tasks of design manger. In fact, sometimes it can become even more critical to ensure that these tasks are actually undertaken and don’t fall through the cracks when the independent project manager consultant is the lead consultant. They won’t generally do your co-ordination checks for you. Whilst a project manager ifs often at arms length from the actual design and documentation, and may have very different qualifications and skills to the architect – to me, the true design manager needs to understand what is being designed – they need to be an architect (or a designer or engineer depending on the project/design team being managed). However, there seem to be a lot of architects and designers who don’t understand that this role is very much a valuable and necessary one (whatever it is called), and, if the project team is structured well, not just another layer of management.

If I told an architect who sat at the computer all day writing specifications that they weren’t an architect because they couldn’t manage a 20 person team to deliver a multi million dollar project they would scoff at me. Same thing if I told the autoCAD technical detailer she wasn’t an architect because she didn’t use BIM (and had no interest in learning or even understanding why you would use it). But many these kinds of team members seem to think its ok to put down the work of those managing the projects (or even those brining in the work) as not being real architects because they don’t draw.

One of the funny things to me in all of this, is that in Australia, the registration exams actually focus on these management and practice management tasks – not on design, drawing, technical detailing or specifications. This knowledge is taken as assumed (through your studies and your log book of experience) – neither the written exam or the interview deal with these topics. So maybe it’s the opposite – real architects don’t draw? (But of course in my world they are all expected to use BIM!)

Image Credits: Mennonite Church USA Archives via Flickr

Are you sitting in a half empty office? What would you do with all that vacant space?

Posted on October 9, 2013 by ceilidhhiggins

Two weeks ago I attended the Retrofit and Refurb conference in Sydney at Australian Technology Park. This is the first time I’ve attended this conference, and it’s a very diverse conference in terms of both the speakers and the attendees. The speakers were a mix of architects, engineers, sustainability consultants and suppliers, with the topics as diverse as the speakers and including energy upgrades, environmental upgrade agreements, GreenStar, workplace design issues, hotel refits and project case studies. I would say the target audience was building owners, however there really was something for anyone involved in refurbishing existing buildings – maybe not 2 full days though. The other feature of the conference program was that the sessions were not grouped in any logical fashion but different topics were spread across the two full days. So, for example you couldn’t choose to attend just a half day session to hear the topics about workplace design and GreenStar interiors. I assume this was deliberate in order to encourage attendees to spend the full two days at conference mingling and networking and visiting the supplier expo booths. For me it did mean a couple of sessions on my iPad catching up on emails and replying to comments on my blog – I’m not quite so interested in the detailed operations of air conditioning system upgrades! However, I certainly did find many of the presentations interesting though and have gathered new ideas for this blog as well as meeting some new people and catching up with others.

It was the first presentation of the conference which has inspired me this week. Simon Wild from Cundall’s presentation on multisite integration was one of the most interesting presentations of the conference covering a very diverse range of issues around building refurbishments and sustainability, with a focus on how integrating systems across multiple sites can offer environmental benefits (he has a great blog too). The case study presented was the Sydney Central Westfield, where by combining services systems across retail and office towers greater efficiency was achieved due to different functional uses and different peak loadings. Simon then spoke about how his could be taken further if larger numbers of buildings could share services, which is now becoming possible even remotely for electricity, due to remote transmission infrastucture where electricity is shared over data networks rather than physical transmission (I have heard a bit about this lately…but don’t ask me to explain any more than this about how it works!).

This discussion about multiple uses better utilising services got me thinking during the presentation about utilisation of office space – and how underutilized it is especially at night and on weekends…And then later in the presentation, Simon raised this very issue.

First some facts from Simon’s presentation:
A 1000 person activity based working (ABW) fitout with only 800 desks is equivalent to 15 years of the office operating carbon neutral.
Approx 50% of space in the CBD is vacant at any one time (and I think this is during work hours!)
City wide ABW in Sydney would save as much energy as making all the buildings in Sydney 6 star Nabers rated.

This week, this vacancy rate certainly made sense in my office, with a large number of staff away due partially to the exodus that seems to occur in most offices every school holidays or the week of long weekends. ABW starts to reduce this underutilized space belonging to a single organisation, but creates more empty space as organisations downsize their tenancies. We therefore have 2 kinds of space to consider – the space left vacant by tenants downsizing their tenancies and the temporarily vacant space by people in not being in the workplace.

So, how do we manage all this vacant space, what do we do with it? One suggestion at the conference was to convert commercial buildings into residential. But I’d like to contemplate how this could impact upon the way a traditional office or commercial building is designed and programmed, and how perhaps it could accommodate tenants working in an ABW a model, but other tenants as well, because ABW won’t be the answer for every workplace. Also how could such a building could accommodate other aspects of the changing workplace, such as the ageing population, more flexible working arrangements, options for working parents, and a closer integration of work and life. The commercial office tower as we know it really dates from the early to mid 20th century when western life was base around a separation of work and life with male workers with a stay at home mum and a couple of kids out in suburbia. The fact that these buildings stand at 50% empty consuming resources isn’t so surprising given how different our lives are today.

Mixed use commercial buildings are pretty common these days – the building that doesn’t have a coffee shop in the lobby is a rarity (certainly in Australia anyway), and it’s becoming quite common to have a couple of levels of retail and a food court beneath an office tower too. This is all great, but what else could we insert into our office buildings? In particular are there functions which would operate after hours or support the lifestyle choices of workers? Maybe all these extra functions shouldn’t all be at the bottom of the tower either? In Japan it’s not uncommon for common for restaurants and bars to be located within office tower buildings. Personally, I’m a big fan of a bar in the lobby – so much easier to convince your colleagues they do have time for a drink when they don’t have to go anywhere and maybe you will be able to pull in few more as they pass by.

At the other end of the healthy lifestyle scale, perhaps our office buildings can support some healthy choices too – some buildings already have commercial gyms, how about yoga, massage or acupuncture as well? Some of these kinds of spaces could even become flexible use spaces – meeting rooms during the day and yoga studio after work.

Currently, these kinds of facilities are either provided commercially or by single tenants for the use of their own staff, within their tenancies. Is there the opportunity for these spaces to be provided in a different model – either by the landlord, or perhaps by one large tenant but benefitting all tenants? This could enable better use if space throughout a building and enable landlords to fill up otherwise vacant space and entice new tenants. Maybe a landlord could provide a series of well being rooms suitable for massage, physio, doctors or acupuncture. Individual practitioners could rent the rooms perhaps on differing short or longer term arrangements. Maybe some operate commercially selling their services to individuals but maybe others are paid for by the corporate tenants as a benefit for their staff.

Landlord provided spaces and services, or commercial tenancies are quite straightforward in terms of who pays, the security of the space and shared access. Management of the spaces becomes the issue, with a landlord having more diverse functions and infrastructure to manage and operate. But how about tenants sharing out their tenancy space? What are the issues? And could the landlords actually help with this too?

Whilst the landlord could manage a major meeting and training facility for the use of all tenants, maybe this is better off managed by one of the tenant organizations. Perhaps they have a very high level of in-house meeting needs, specific expectations of service, or they are a training provider. Firstly, if this is to be a shared service, then the costs of the space and servicing it have to be considered – in my view it’s the landlord who is best placed to manage this, through rent discounts for tenants providing services such as this, and maybe a higher rent to other tenants. I’m not convinced these models should be a direct user pays system based on booking, but maybe that could work too – Although I think as soon as something like this becomes user pays, corporates just start to build their own.

The meeting facility is usually a discrete space though – what about letting people in to use all those vacant desks, informal breakout areas or casual meeting places? Or perhaps even breaking down the idea of one organisation, one tenancy? Traditionally the tenancy is required as a secure container for stuff (refer to my blog post on Natalie Slessor’s talk on the future workplace for more on this). More recently, this stuff was also electronic – data servers and computers. We had to protect our equipment, our papers, our computers and our data from being accessed by outsiders. What we could never really separate from outsiders was our people – today, it’s our people that are the most valuable asset. These days although we still want to protect our data, we don’t keep it on servers in our offices (creating yet more vacant space), we keep it on the cloud or in data centers. So why do we need that company network anymore? What if IT was provided by he landlord, as a utility, like electricity? Then there is no technical reason why I can’t come and work in your office for the day if it suits us both (oh, I didn’t mention, we have gotten rid of all those fixed computers and phones we need to keep secure too). The only reason left is confidentiality, which I think is mostly only a concern held by those who are up to something dodgy in the first place – or if it is a genuine issue – needs genuinely confidential space, not open plan offices anyway.

Does this help fill up the vacant space though? If I have just moved from my office to yours because you have better coffee and a bar and a massage room, we still might have some vacant space? Though it really does encourage choice, and highlight which offices are popular and place of choice to work then doesn’t it?

Maybe we can fill up some space with some more diverse functions, that encourage other things and parts of our lives too. Just a few more random thoughts – a commercial kitchen could be used by office caterers during the day and charities at night (I know there is one in Sydney OzHarvest that cooks for homeless), a model making workshop for the architectural practices could also replace our individual home garages and workshops, childcare shortages are a big issue in Australia and it would certainly help more women return to work if more centers are provided within workplaces…I’m sure you can think of more ideas? With the growth of the sharing economy and of co-working perhaps we will start to see a whole range of different ideas.

Is your workplace half empty right now? How would you share your office space? What kinds of facilities and services would you like to see in your workplace? Who would pay? Who should operate them?

Image credits
by devlon duthie

Why is delivering on time so hard? Is it that architecture, engineering and time management don’t mix?

Posted on September 11, 2013 by ceilidhhiggins

This week I’m struggling to find the motivation to write – not because I don’t have anything to say, or even that I don’t have time – but because my brain is currently in a state of post tender lethargy. I’m sure you are all familiar with it – the stress and extra hours leading up to issuing architecture, interior design or engineering documentation for tender seems to be a routine part of working on the consulting side of construction. Design programs seem to get ever shorter, staff numbers always reducing and the complexity of projects increasing, it is a scenario that just seems to get worse and worse. Personally, for me, I find it’s not actually the hours that get to me – even if I don’t work really long hours in the lead up to a tender – it’s more the stress of will be on time? Will all the team deliver on time? Does being late impact the end date for the project? How annoyed will the client be if we are late? Will we be able to issue an addendum? It’s worrying about these things that gets to me. I care about being on time – whether that’s arriving for a meeting or delivering something on the date I’ve promised – and for me when this becomes impossible or outside my own direct control this is the biggest cause of stress. And I don’t think this is just me, I know a lot of colleagues agree (and many former colleagues who went over to the client side to avoid it!)

Why does it seem to be impossible? Is this deadline driven stress something we just have to accept as being part of our industry? I’d like to think not. But I’m not sure how we change this. One loyal reader (Thanks Jase – he also asked me to make this post controversial) suggested that its a lack of planning and felt that no post on the last minute nature of delivery in architecture and engineering could be complete without the 5 Ps – “Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance”. I agree there is a lot of poor planning goes on by all parties involved in construction – and it all begins with the client and the fee proposal.

At proposal stage (where ironically we usually have to be on time or we are disqualified), the client typically sets out some sort of milestones that they have in mind for their project. Sometime these are ‘real’ and fixed milestones such as a lease end, a university teaching holiday period or a certain date on which staff are returning from off site locations. At other times the milestones are not so much functional fixed requirements and may be based on internal performance measures or arbitrary dates (or just plain silly things like government money that somehow evaporates come end of financial year).

Often the dates set at this stage are crazy – the client has left it too late (due to poor planning or process at their end, or even simply not understanding the time these things take) and suddenly they need a new office for 200 staff in less than 6 months (I mean seriously – you did have a 10 year lease…). But of course we architects and interior designers can sort this out – we will do anything to win your project. And the bigger the project is the sillier we are likely to become.

So we have agreed to your program – actually at that point it shouldn’t be too bad should it? We will have planned for this right? Allocated extra resources, thought through the minimum time frames things will take, the interactions that need to take place with the engineers, when and who would be doing design reviews, what software and technology could help us and we would maximize our efficiencies at every step of the way. Maybe we have…and maybe we haven’t.

But to compound the situation we then allowed you the client just 1 or 2 days to review and make decisions. And you forgot to tell us that there is a certain person who must be consulted, a board meeting the design must be presented to, or someone in IT who needs 2 weeks to provide feedback. But of course that’s only a small area of the building isn’t it? That need not delay the whole program right? Wrong. All of a sudden we have lost some of our efficiency in how we work and the order in which decisions are made and parts if the project documented.

Its even worse the project goes on hold and staff are reallocated to other projects – it can be difficult to get them back when suddenly the client says (without warning of course), here is that feedback and signoff – so when can the tender documents be ready – next week as planned? No, we can’t usually do 4 weeks if work in 1. I’m sure all my readers know, it gets to the point where throwing more people at the project just isn’t enough. Things still have to be done in a certain order, particularly if the client would actually like the engineering to consider the architecture and vice versa. (and it would be a strange project if this wasn’t a client requirement, much easier though!). It would also be nice for us to have time so that the documentation can be checked, and cross checked properly, so we can minimise errors which inevitably result in extra costs (and potentially time) on site.

Of course this isn’t every project and clients aren’t the only people to blame. Jason’s comment on proper planning is a big issue. We need to better plan reviews – doing them at the right time by the right people. We need to better understand what is a review and what is a design change. We need to respect the work of other members of the team, be they architects, engineers or interior designers. We need to incorporate buildabilty, engineering and cost earlier in the process of design to help reduce last minute changes (and clients need to understand some of these things too). We need to spend enough time and resources at the briefing and concept stages to better think through the design solutions at the point when we do have the time and we are not making quick decisions without thinking through the implications. We need to better understand and leverage off the technology and the process of automation. We need to embrace BIM for the productivity gains it brings, so our reviews can focus on construction and coordination instead of detail reference checking. Autodesk needs to make Revit less buggy and prone to doing strange things on the day tender docs are due (much as I love Revit – somehow it knows and conspires against you).

Revit (or other BIM software) changes this design and checking process in other ways too. For those that don’t understand the process of modeling, early drawings can seem rubbish and not worth checking. For those of us who use scheduling, the temptation is there to think the schedule is just being generated as things are modeled, without any checking. The process of checking changes and the worst thing is to throw too many people on the job in the last week. Final checking should move forward and all sorts of coordination, clash detection and checking should be ongoing throughout the process. It’s not really any different to what should have happened using CAD, it’s just that BIM highlights process deficiencies.

Maybe some days we just need to admit we can’t do it. That this tender won’t be on time. But not the day after it was due. Nothing annoys me more than when team members haven’t delivered on time and I am calling the next day to ask what is going on. Then I have to start building contingencies into their delivery dates, further reducing the time they have – and I know that the project managers and clients are often doing this to me too. But because we are all late way to often, I can understand why they do. Maybe if we could reliably deliver fully coordinated documents on the planned day the builders could afford have a few days less tendering or on site building, giving us a few more days working?

Whilst for many of us its true that deadlines can motivate and drive us, we function better when we are not stressed and tired. No matter how much we love our jobs most of us have lives outside of work – partners, kids, hobbies, the need for sleep and exercise. Maybe if we all accepted this of each other then our documents would actually be more accurate…and maybe we’d all have the time and inclination to do other things – blog more! Or teach and mentor more, or contribute to our industry more – and maybe this would help improve the quality of what we do, how we are treated by our clients and the inefficiency of the construction industry generally. Now that is revolutionary – could we improve our productivity by taking more time off? (Controversial enough?)

I certainly noticed when I was not working and was pretty relaxed, when I sat down to do anything ‘work’ (like write a blog post or prepare Revit models for conference papers) that I did it a lot more efficiently than I’d expected, and with less mistakes. I’ve always noticed this on a smaller scale in relation to my stress levels/working hours in the office too.

What do you think? Can we make on time stress free quality delivery a reality for architecture, interior design and engineering? What do you think we need to do to achieve it? How can our industry change? And does time off make you more productive?

Image credits: “Timejumper”

by h.koppdelaney

What could a workplace and a Chanel handbag have in common?

Posted on August 13, 2013 by ceilidhhiggins

Recently I attended a de.frost* event, the topic was The Future of Workspaces, featuring Natalie Slessor, Head of Workplace at Lend Lease. Firstly let me say I think the concept Frost* have putting on these events is great. I guess you would describe Frost* as a graphic design agency (but they seem to be much more than this could mean) and once a month they organise an event in their office with a speaker, put on some drinks and nibbles (all pretty low key) and invite a bunch of people that they work with ( clients, architects, designers, project managers, builders). This was the first of their events I’d been to (although it is up to number 15 apparently) and I thought it was a great event. I had the chance to catch up with quite a number of people, meet a few new ones and hear a great speaker, I thought it was a really good mix – and that they got a good balance of time between the formal part of the evening and the informal mixing and networking – which often seems to be something that event organisers find a difficult balance.

So onto the speaker, Natalie Slessor. I’ve seen her speak before (at GBCA’s Workplaces of the Future Summit, see my previous blog entry) and she is a great presenter with a very interesting point of view on the workplace. Natalie is an environmental psychologist at Lend Lease – not a consultant that is common on our workplace project teams in Australia (or I think even in psychology here – I know quite a few psychologists and I’ve never met another environmental psych working in Australia. Maybe we don’t train them? Natalie is from the UK and the only other ones I’ve met or heard of are from the UK too…)

As I mentioned, Natalie is also a great presenter, and I’m starting to see that she likes to use different presentation structures as a storytelling technique. The presentation this evening was structured around a single slide with a grid of images with each row and column connecting ideas. It was a very effective technique,and I’m sure whilst it looked simple it must have taken a lot of work to simplify such complex ideas down to a 2 way grid of 24 squares! You can view the slide below.

The key question of Natalie’s talk was “What is the Workplace for”. Now I didn’t take any notes at the talk and I’m going to try and retell the story based on the images alone. So any misinterpretations are entirely my own,and I’m sure I will have missed some great points but perhaps some of my readers will have something to add (I know a few of you were there!). Following Natalie’s presentation there was plenty of time for discussion and questions, some of which I’ve woven into the story – there was of course plenty more form many viewpoints and those of you that we’re there can add your own stories of the night to the comments. (Or even if you weren’t – now you can be part of the discussion). I’ll also state here that the references to the Chanel handbag are my own…but you will see the link.

First like Natalie did I’m going to explain what each row of the grid represents. The first row is the history reasons why the workplace exists. The second to fourth rows are about where we have been, where we are now and the direction we are moving towards. The fifth row is about psychology and the final row is what Natalie believes we should be aiming for in a workplace.

Now the first image is easy to remember – the workplace was created as a container. A container for the tools and machines to do the work, that were too expensive, too large (or too dirty?) for us to have in our homes. Gathering all these tools and people together created efficiency (this is what the cogs represent). Until recently, work meant physical things – whether it was a product or a piece of paper – so by co-locating eve white collar workers, efficiencies were gained – I can hand you that paper rather than mail it. So the office was also for gathering people together, as shown in the third image. The final image represents the workplace as being inspirational. Creating a place, creates part of the company identity, and historically inspiring loyalty was also part of the workplace equation. This row of images was why the workplace was created, and to some extent the second row, where have we been, covers a lot of the same ground. The workplace was a manual process (film), where ever more process efficiencies were to be gained (a portrait of Taylor – well known for applying production process thinking to workspace design known as Taylorism or scientific management). Buildings were designed as statements about the companies they housed with branding part of the building design. The Money Box building in Sydney was home to the Commonwealth Bank and I’m sure you recognize the Chrysler Building, one of the most branded buildings I’ve ever come across (I recollect there are parts inspired by hubcaps as well as other car parts and the Chrysler logo, I think also it was one of the first buildings to use metallic materials that were more akin to cars at the time). Part of this design ethos was also giving employees something to aspire to – I will climb my way up to the top floor or the corner office.

Not much of this seems quite so relevant today does it? Buildings are anonymous and owned by investors not branded for occupants, and who as a Gen X or younger would ever picture (or likely even aspire to) a corner office with an ensuite? Moving onto the next row of images we are living in a digital world and over the last few years have moved towards more and more mobile technology – Samsung “life companion” pictured. (From this point in the presentation Natalie was moving down the columns not across the row). The future workplace no longer needs to be a container for the tools, however the tools are just as important as they ever were for getting the job done. One of the things that can lead to the most stress is not having the right tools (eg slow or unreliable Internet connections).

With more mobile technology and as what we do for work has changed into knowledge work, the ideas of efficiency are no longer what they once were. Work is not necessarily the place where we get our best work done or have our best ideas. Whilst many offices are laid out like a place to house computers and well suited to a life of email, they are not well suited to either focused work or face to face communicative work. Natalie sees activity based working as a possible solution. Giving people a choice of an environment appropriate to the task should allow people to get more work done, and therefore reduce stress levels. Whilst there is a big focus on collaborative work and spaces in many ABW fitouts, its just as important that ABW design solutions don’t forget spaces for concentration and focused work either (and places for email too I guess).

As the workplace has become more varied, so too have the places that we work. Work has spilled out of the offices and into coffee shops and public spaces (MLC center pictured). The choice of where the workplace is and what facilities the surrounding area offers is becoming more important. No longer do most people want a workplace that is surrounded only by other workplaces. They want access to cafes, shops, entertainment, parks, childcare – places to go during breaks or after work, access to services. New precincts such as Barrangaro (Natalie’s admitted this as her one little plug for Lend Lease), a whole new piece of the city, need to be designed to consider people’s fulfillment and wellbeing, not just as workplaces.

Balance is what many people are seeking, rather than climbing the ladder. Social responsibility is also going to become a moe important driver for future generations (for me this slide/statement didn’t quite seem to fit into the flow of the narrative). There was some discussion also of the authenticity of the workplace design, and the importance of the workplace design being meaningful to what the company actually does and represents.

What will inspire us in the workplace of the future? Can we create more buildings and workplaces that in themselves inspire us by their design? Design that helps us to get work done, to focus or collaborate, to promote wellbeing and reduce stress. And it’s of all design that inspires. And this is where the link to Chanel comes into the story. The last slide is an image of a temporary building designed by Zaha Hadid as a Chanel exhibition. It was demountable and traveled around the world. Whilst obviously not very sustainable, Natalie found the building and the project inspirational. This is where my link to the Chanel handbag comes in, I also see a connection here with the first row, the container and the aspiration to the corner office – maybe now we don’t need a workplace container, or to aspire to space, we aspire to the handbag which also happens to be a container for the technology? (For women anyway) or we aspire to some other symbol that travels with us (Shoes? Laptops? Clothing? Maybe not such good containers?). So perhaps the office doesn’t need to provide these anymore. I know I’d certainly rather see inspiration and wellbeing than corner offices in my workplace anyway.

What would you like to see in your workplace if the future? Do you think we can design to reduce stress and increase wellbeing? What would this look like to you? We know we can design buildings to inspire – what are the hurdles which prevent all buildings and workplaces from being inspiring? Or do you still want the corner office with ensuite plus parking? Would this motivate you to work harder?

Image Credits:

by rosebennet

Spaced Out and 5 other mega trends in the property sector

Posted on July 30, 2013 by ceilidhhiggins

Morocco and Spain (NASA, International S by NASA

Last week I attended the Green Building Council of Australia’s Green Building Day in Sydney. One of the notable changes in the professional development events held by the GBCA over the last year has been the broad range of topics impacting upon the design, construction and property industries which are being discussed at these kinds of events – I think this is really great to see as in my view there is a shortage of good professional development and training events available for architects and designers. (Green Building Day is also great for scoring your GreenStar accredited professional CPD points – you can get a whole years worth in just one day.) This year the keynote speaker was Bruce Precious from The GPT Group, speaking on Global Mega Trends and the Property Sector. I’d seen Bruce speak before on the GPT offices at MLC (and blogged about it here) . As I’d enjoyed his previous presentation and I was in need of a few more CPD points I signed up for the morning session. As I got so much just out of Bruce’s presentation and the panel talk following it, I’m going to focus on just that part of the morning. If you missed the day and were hoping for a full wrap, sorry but you will have to hunt elsewhere in the hope someone else has blogged about the rest! (Trust me I’ve picked the best bit for you)

Bruce’s presentation was covering research that The GPT Group undertook in conjunction with CSIRO looking into mega trends affecting property industry. The aim of The GPT Group in looking into these mega trends is to be able to convert threats into opportunities. Bruce noted that if there is evidence of a trend it has already happened, it is historic and doesn’t guarantee the future. I’d also note that if the research has gone this far and now being pushed out to the public its probably not the cutting edge trends of the minute – but then thats part of the point isn’t it, a mega trend is one that tends to last as while as well as have a large impact.

As so often is frequently commented upon in social and technology circles, Bruce commented on the fact that the world is accelerating, the pace of change is ever increasing. Does this mean we can still identify long term trends? This one is my question – but I think when we get to what are the 6 mega trends you will probably agree yes we can.

As well as long term trends there are shocks and tipping points, man made and natural. Whilst these can have just as much impact as the longer term mega trends, they are not something we can predict or our businesses can plan for. Although sometimes these shocks or tipping points could perhaps have been predicted? My question – Global Financial Crisis – shock or trend? But lets not go there – lets go now to what are the six mega trends which The GPT Group identified as having the most impact on their business, the property sector in Australia. Now see if you can guess what they actually mean…I love the names, great idea whoever came up with these catchy sayings.

1. Spaced out
2. More from less
3. The orient express
4. Behind the scenes
5. Tangible intangibles
6. Forever young

Spaced Out
No it’s not about the fact we have less office space per person than ever. It’s about tech savvy people, being constantly connected, the change in how we communicate and what information we have available to us due to the massive changes in technology over recent years. It includes big data, but as Bruce pointed out we have to get from big data to big information, perhaps he thought we can then get to big knowledge but will big wisdom ever exist?

In practical terms, GPT are developing apps based around the concept of the shopping centre as the community hub. The apps not only display info about the centre but link social networks. In future,sensors will personalize this experience even further.

In the workplace, technology allows flexibility and movement – the freerange workplace. The empty desk could be used by anyone, not just someone from our own organisation. GPT has invested in Liquid Space – a start up company base on a concept similar to Airbnb and are now trialing spaces in Sydney and Melbourne.

More from less
This one has the most obvious title – using less – less water, less energy, less materials. Bruce took it in an interesting direction beginning with a discussion of the growing intellectual potential of the world is due to world growth, growing affluence, and participation of women. (I thought it was a great rant by the way!)

GPT are looking at cutting use of natural resources – reducing water, waste, energy etc. Bruce discussed recycling and the possibilities of improving recycling – upcycling rather than downcylcing. Eg rather than grind glass up into road base, can it be used as something higher? Aparently there is a company upcycling dirt from street sweepings which contains a high amount of precious metals, as apparently do old mobile phones! These are generating new possibilities for mining resources.

For GPT and the property industry in Australia energy savings have been a key change in recent years. GPT is part of the The Better Building Partnership which consists of many leading property companies in Sydney. Romilly Madew, the CEO of the GBCA is quoted on their website as saying “Partnership is the new leadership”, Bruce questions could mankind’s new force be cooperation? We now have a database of water, waste and energy covering a large chunk of the local Sydney commercial building market. This is a great resource for the Sydney property market and others moving forward.

The orient express
The growth of China and other eastern population centers – a scale of populations that is unimaginable as an Australian. A company sales conference of 3000 people came to Sydney, this was just their top people! They booked the bridge climb for days solid! Can we even visualise this scale? Bruce recommended Gapminder.org as a way to visually see the changes and development of the world across many measures of large population centers. (There is a great gapminder TED talk too).

Behind the scenes
Supply chains and logistics are changing – both due to the internet and globalisation. I think there might be a lot more interesting stories behind this one.

Tangible intangibles
We are moving beyond consumerism as product consumption and into experience consumption – for example travel. Shopping centres for example are now experiential as well as for the function of shopping. Community spaces, outdoor spaces, gathering spaces.

Forever young
The impact of ageing and disability on design. The space requirements for motorized scooters and wheelchairs.

I thought the last 3 trends could have been discussed further, all of them will impact on design and could be quite interesting. I can see why the trend More with Less was a focus at a sustainability event, but it did seem that maybe Bruce was running out of time at the end – I would have been quite happy to listen to more. Bruce’s presentation was followed by a panel discussion moderated by Romilly Madew with Bruce, Siobhan Toohill (Westpac) and Richard Palmer (WSP) who brought some interesting perspectives as well as answering audience questions on the topic of mega trends and the property industry.

What stories would you add to these last 3 trends? What do you think are the mega trends affecting the property industry? CSIRO apparently came up with eight of which GPT chose to focus on six. Do you think the trends elsewhere are the same as in Australia? Some of the other interesting trends raised in the panel discussion following were the social and sharing economy and the rise of the city.

Image Credits:

by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center

It is mandatory that external walls are waterproof: What do client design guidelines, specifications and requests for tender have in common?

Posted on July 16, 2013 by ceilidhhiggins

Seriously I am not joking – this sentence came out of a client design guideline document. I am a little worried about the standard of their existing building given that they feel the need to write this out for their future architects to read. Surely for any building waterproof external walls is a pretty basic design expectation? The client shouldn’t have to ask for it. If the walls aren’t waterproof I’d say its a pretty big mistake, I’m pretty sure it’s negligent either on the part of the architect or the builder – so why write it down? It’s also pretty unlikely that it was deliberately designed that way, so putting it into a design guideline isn’t going to fix it. All it does is create work for someone to write it (the client organisation probably paid an architect to write this down) and more work for their next architect to read it. And whilst we all want more work,I think as architects and designers we would rather our clients were paying for something of value – for example our design skills – than this kind of bureaucratic process that wastes everyones time and in the end achieves nothing.

Originally when I started thinking about this post I was only thinking about client design guidelines, but then I realised that a similar problem exists with the specifications we write for builders, the briefs we or our clients write and request for tender or proposal documents written by our clients. We all spend a lot of time writing down things that are obvious, standard practice or a stautory requirement. How often have you read any one of the above documents that says the building has to comply with the BCA (Building Cde of Australia)? Doh – of course it does (assuming its in Australia!). What is much more important or relevant is specific details of how this building needs to comply – such as the levels of fire rating required. But that’s not defined. It’s left up to the project team to resolve – no problem, but they would have done that anyway without being told the building had to comply with the BCA.

All of these documents are often necessary and valuable documents for communication between parties in a construction project – but frequently seem to provide no value – just waste everybodies time.

In looking at client design guidelines what I like to see is actual requirements and details. For me, dealing mostly with interior design guidelines, I find that usually finishes, furniture and signage requirements are reasonably well defined, not surprising, as this is the look and feel as well as interchangeability of components – one of the main reasons for a large client organisation to have design guidelines in the first place. However, even with these items, often you start to get into the finer detail and things like materials or construction are not so well defined – is that Parchment white laminate table on 25 or 33mm thick board. And the thing is, if a client has gone to the trouble of having a design guideline more than likely they care about this level of detail, so then I have to ask what seems like a million questions.

It tends to get even more poorly defined when it comes to construction of fitout – partitions, doors, door hardware. Again, it seems misty definitions are typical. If you have a standard expectation for how partitions are constructed to achieve a certain level for acoustics – how about instead of referencing the Australian standard you just give me the details? That way you will save yourself getting a different acoustic engineer to give you advice on the same partition construction over and over again.

For some reason building services often seem to be a little better defined, but maybe this is because I’m not getting into the detail of it, and its a similar situation to the furniture. Perhaps some of my readers out there want to comment on this?

The problem seems to be that clients want to have design guidelines but they don’t want to take on any of the risk or liability for the design. They want to tell the consultant architect or designer what to do, but not to tell them too exactly, because then it somehow seems like the architect or designer has some kind of choice or responsibility. This is a ridiculous situation, wasting everyone’s time and money (and one I wonder which would stand up in court if tested anyway). If you as client have certain requirements or ways of doing things that have worked in the past – just tell your architects or designers – and if you do it the same way all the time, have someone write it down.

Moving to the other side though, we architects can be just as bad when it comes to specifications. I usually use Natspec (an Australian standard specification package) to put together my specifications. I want to point out that none of my comments are specific against Natspec but apply to the industry and the way we have come to write specifications generally. To me, specifications basically come into 4 parts – schedules/items of stuff that go into the building, installation methods, standards and submission requirements. So – the stuff that makes up the building, that’s pretty critical, if we don’t specify that we will have a problem. Now how to install it – is that our job or the builders job? And what’s the point of writing ‘install to manufacturers specifications’, that’s pretty obvious? Or even more stupidly why copy out the manufacturers specifications and standard details? As for standards – why do we need to reference them? Shouldn’t it be expected that glazing will comply with AS1288 as that’s the standard that is applicable? As for witness points and submissions, we frequently request loads of items that no one might ever look at. That is, until something goes wrong. And that is the point of most of the specification, it seems to be there for when something goes wrong and isn’t done properly – on many jobs I bet its not ever even read by anyone on the contractor team. It’s a shame we put so much time into something that’s almost just in case.

So what can we do to change all of this? Part of the problem is that our industry, so frequently all of the parties are separated by contracts which seem to actually prevent people from working together to sort things out and do things better, and everyone is trying to pass risk onwards down the chain. Outside of individual projects, when do clients, architects, engineers and contractors actually talk to each other about how to improve the way we work and construction industry productivity? Not so much in terms of making money – but in terms of all of us working smarter. Not very often.

One of the few times I see consultants, clients and contractors together is in the BIM space – although there is still not enough participation across all levels and sectors of the industry – and the lack of collaboration across the industry is has been one of the hinderances to BIM uptake to date. By coincidence, at the same time as I was thinking and writing on this topic, I received an invitation to be part of one of the Collaborate ANZ working groups on Level of Detail – now while Level of Detail might be a BIM issue (read a good explanation at Practical BIM) – in the end, it comes down to the same things I’ve been talking about in this post – making sure that the right information is shared across the industry and across projects with the people who need it at the time they need it. Whilst Collaborate ANZ is BIM focussed, most of the people involved are passionate about improving collaboration and communication across the industry as a whole. If we can get people talking about collaboration on BIM, and if BIM becomes a standard tool across the industry and starts to cover things like client guidelines and specifications – hopefully this will start to solve some of the problems across the industry. If my client could give me a full BIM package – template and families – maybe I wouldn’t have to read through all the irrelevant wordy guidelines and maybe my BIM model could go to the contractor with all the information they needed, but nothing extraneous included – and that could be our documentation. No specifications, no design guidelines. (It still doesn’t solve the problem of requests for tender though does it?)

However maybe I am being too optimistic here? What do you think – how can we streamline the way we work and reduce unnecessary documentation? What are the strangest design guidelines or specification requirements you have seen? Or should things stay as they are – are these kinds of documents generating work for architects and designers?

Image Credits:

by MorBCN

There is no I in workplace – the role of the individual in workplace design consultation

Posted on July 2, 2013 by ceilidhhiggins

A few months ago I read an article by Gary Miciunas, “The design of work and the work of design” in Work+Place. Miciusnas focuses on the collaboration between the Director of Work, Director of Work-Place and the workplace designer – bringing together facilities management, human resources, information technology and business services to deliver new service oriented work place models. The collaboration of these teams would be a significant improvement over current typical model of workplace design where it can be a challenge to get all of these people to even sit down together in one meeting (I’ve talked a little about this before – What makes a great workplace design client). However this approach got me thinking about the question of where and how the individual knowledge worker fit into this collaboration? Given the flexibility to choose a place of work – work from home, work from a cafe or work in the office – may mean that workers vote with their feet. What impact does this have on the design of the workplace? What if we design a workplace and no one shows up?

As the choice of place to work becomes a choice of consumption, does the individual workplace user need to become more involved in the workplace design process? Or can the role of the ‘user group consultation’ possibly be reduced as variety or a menu of workplaces are built into the design? The challenge of involving all individuals in workplace design is already a problematic issue. Workers frequently have very fixed ideas of the settings they need to do their work. Sometimes this is based upon existing layouts or settings, at other times those seen elsewhere or an idealised setting. Whilst the worker knows their work best – are they equipped to imagine other possibilities? Do they understand how their work fits in with other work within the organisation?

The idea of ‘the design of work’ perhaps provides a good starting comparison point to the ‘work of design’ of the work place. As anyone who has ever worked within a large organisation knows many individuals design their own processes, systems and software optimising these to suit their own individual needs to best get their job done. However if there is too much individualisation and not enough organisational standardisation, this comes at a huge cost. Each individual worker has spent significant time to customise their work process and it differs from the work process of the other 50 people doing the same job. This is not efficient for an organisation. However too much standardisation and the individual knowledge worker is likely to get frustrated – because whilst there might be 50 others doing the same role, the way they do their job and apply their knowledge is not, and does not need to be identical. Could some of the same thinking apply to the workplace? How can we give people the individuality and flexibility to optimise their work place without losing the benefit of standardisation?

To me, the idea of Activity Based Working can be seen as a potential solution. A variety of different workspaces and settings are offered within the work place ranging from different size and shape workstations, differing levels of privacy and enclosure and different styles of furnishings. The worker has the choice of where to sit each day or each hour depending on the task at hand. The worker may also have the choice not to be in the workplace at all but working elsewhere. By offering a variety of workplaces, can the worker gain sufficient control to improve productivity by enabling choice of environment?

What happens if the workers do indeed vote with their feet, and large parts of the workplace remain unoccupied? This is surely not the aim of a workplace, and would appear to suggest that the design has failed. How do we as designers determine what types of environments to offer? Is it through user consultation, co-desgin (an even more intensive user involvement) or can we start to combine these activities with a more objective evidence based approach?

Currently workplace design (especially in Australia) tends to be based upon the experience of individual designers or companies, with very little high level research applied across multiple sites or projects (what research there is tends to be focussed on green building measures or space utilisation and is not necessarily comparable across studies). Through more research that captures what workers do across similar task types or industries and what design elements provide improvements to productivity, job satisfaction or collaboration – best practice can be defined. This kind of research could give a design team the confidence to know what kinds of spaces to design, based upon defined activities.

Research on the design of the workplace needs to be both qualitative and quantitative – this is where it has the advantage over traditional user group consultation which tends to be qualitative. Quantitative research needs to include testing of actual workplaces. The idea of beta testing our workplaces is already is use on larger projects. Frequently organisations with many thousands of square metres of office space will install prototype work areas for testing during the design process – from the scale of 1 or 2 workstations for workers to drop by to look at, up to the scale of whole floors where staff are working and formal research is being undertaken of how the space works. This is not always practical for smaller projects and if the knowledge of larger projects was made available to smaller projects could give more small to medium size organisations the encouragement and hard reasons to move towards different workplace models. Perhaps through benchmarking and physical testing, in the future simulated computer testing based on previous project data could also become a reality.

Whilst benchmarking and best practice need to be considered, each workplace still needs to be designed for individual organisations and teams. Ideally each individual work space should be be evaluated and tested to ensure it is providing value to the organisation. This can’t occur as part of the way the design process is currently structured, where the design is completed before the work begins. Perhaps the design process needs to be enlarged, to encompass ongoing evaluation and if necessary redesign with testing of workplace continuing beyond day 1 occupation. Therefore the space that remains unoccupied is not seen as a failure of design but as simply as an area which needs more development. Perhaps it also needs to be considered that it is not design that is the issue, but that the workers need to learn how to use this new kind of space. This then has impacts upon how we procure work place fitout. Can furniture and fitout companies offer components that are offered on rotation for changing needs over time, with leasing instead of outright purchase? Or designs with common component parts that can be reconfigured from a workstation setting to a meeting setting?

Are clients prepared to invest in these kinds of workplaces and the research required to achieve best practice? In Australia, in particular, research into workplace design and productivity has always been very limited and as in many other places has suffered further as a result of cost cutting in tough financial times. However does the changing nature of work and the workplace mean that the creation of great work places is no longer a choice but a necessity in order to attract and maintain the best workers, and get the most out of them?

Are today’s interior designers equipped to manage this process? Do they want to be? Unfortunately there are still too many clients who view interior design in a similar category to interior decoration. A strategic collaboration between interior design, research and the new Director of Work could see this change – or will this see interior design marginalized by a new genre of workplace productivity and strategy experts? What do you think as a designer or as someone who works in an office? Do you think workplace consultation is necessary? Would you like to be able to chose between a variety of work environments each day?

Image Credits:

by Max Sparber

What’s in a Room: Room Data Sheets and the briefing process

Posted on June 18, 2013 by ceilidhhiggins

A room can be considered the container for interior design. The elements of an interior – walls, flooring, joinery, furniture, services, lighting, graphics and signage all belong to a room or a space. In the briefing process, room data sheets are the container for information about the room or space. Particularly for more complex architectural and interior design projects, room data sheets have long been a key part of the briefing process. I am a firm believer in a rigorous briefing process, and have long used room data sheets as a part of this process for all but the most simple of projects. Lately I’ve been thinking about how this process can be improved – both from an efficiency and automation point of view through the use of BIM tools, but also if room data sheets are in fact the best tool for capturing and communicating this information.

Within an architectural or interiors office you can frequently find a whole array of room data sheets depending on project types and client requirements. They may be in Word or Excel, or even occasionally Access. For larger projects there are a range of softwares such as Codebook, dRofus, Building One and the like dedicated to this space planning and briefing process. The dedicated software systems have extensive integration with BIM software such as Revit and ArchiCAD, but tend to be expensive and complex requiring dedicated staff and training. For this reason they are infrequently used for anything but the largest projects. However, for any size of project there would be obvious benefits in having some level of link between the room data sheets and the BIM model. Currently much information is entered (at least twice) – once into the room data sheet and then again into the model. As a simple example, room names and room numbers. If this kind of information could be linked, immediately time is being saved and the potential for errors is being reduced. An ideal use for BIM.

One on the interesting things I found when I first started to discuss the concept of room data sheets with BIM managers was that (depending on their background) many saw a room data sheet as being a document which listed everything in the model. However this isn’t the purpose of the room data sheet. The room data sheet is a briefing tool. The room data sheet is the document which records what has been agreed with the client. It is a work in progress throughout the early design phases, but at some point, the room data sheet is signed off by the client and frozen and becomes the final brief for all interior disciplines. The aim is that at 100% documentation completion the model contents will match the room data sheet contents. One of the biggest potential benefits of being able to link the room data sheet and the revit model is the ability to check for discrepancies. One of the challenges to checking for discrepancies is that the room data sheet, by its very nature, as a briefing document, will have a lesser level of information and development than the model. For example the room data sheet is not the place where colour schemes are usually proposed, although material types will be. So for example we need to check that the room designated in the room data sheet to have resilient flooring has some kind of vinyl or linoleum in the model – not a particular material type.

At the same time as I have been considering these technological and software issues, I was also wondering if room data sheets were in fact the best method for communicating with clients and the design team. The point of the room data sheet is to transfer information between the architect or interior designer to the client and then back to the wider consultant team. The problem is that you hand a client a stack of 50 room data sheets and ask them to review all the details and (unsurprisingly) many do slightly freak out at how much work they have to do to review all of this. It is also hard for people whose brains don’t seem to cope well with picking up small discrepancies and errors in a pile of data presented in this format (and I admit to being one of them myself). Whilst many clients have trouble reading plans, I find there are just as many who find the visual communication of the plan more effective than the numeric/data format room data sheet.

Another issue is that as rooms or spaces become larger and more flexible with multiple zones or activities taking place within a space, does a room data sheet work anymore? Is a room data sheet going to function for a whole or even half a floor dedicated to activity based working? The amount of information on the sheet and the level of uncertainty about where within the floor an object is required means that it is probably not going to work very well. I think the room data sheet has to become an activity data sheet, but I’m not quite sure yet entirely how this would differ from a room data sheet. Much of the information would be the same, but somehow it seems more flexibility might be required.

The risk with room data sheets is that such a process can sometimes be too regimented. Its not so difficult for a laboratory or a hospital room where the room contents are more rigidly fixed by the functions and understood by both client and designer. But in a fast tracked project or more design oriented projects, it can be hard to manage the process of sufficiently developing the design to the level needed for the client sign off on the room data sheets. At what point in the office fitout design is it determined that reception will have a lounge versus armchairs versus an ottoman. Is that level of detail to be included in the room data sheet? If its not it means that the client hasn’t signed off on the idea, but if it is some detailed decisions may be locked in too early compared to other parts of the design process. I have to say I don’t feel like I have the answer to this problem.

Anyway, over several months of thinking about these issues and discussing with colleagues, I decided that I would set myself a deadline for my exploration of the automation of room data sheets – I submitted a talk for Revit Technology Conference on this subject, What’s in a Room: Revit Models,Room Data Sheets and Interiors. You can download it here.

What’s in a Room? from Ceilidh Higgins

At the same time as looking at the linking of room data sheets to a BIM model, I explored how I could use this data in more visual ways, displaying room data via coloured floor plans. At this point, it would be quite an efficient process to be able to produce both plans and room data sheets as required depending on the project stage and client requirements. Its also probably a useful workflow for design and construct projects where full detailed documentation is not being produced by the architect. The process is pretty simple using Revit, BIMLink and Excel to create a bi-directional link between excel room data and the Revit model.

The outcome is that the workflow demonstrated in this presentation is a very practical one for the many projects that currently use room data sheets and a BIM model. Whilst its not a perfect solution to integration, there are many efficiency and accuracy gains. I don’t think I’ve come up with the perfect alternative to room data sheets though, and certainly haven’t solved the problem of managing more open design problems or larger activity based spaces.

I have added an extract from the slideshare presentation with a room data sheet example after a request in the comments.

Do you use room data sheets? Do they work as part of your design process or do you think there is a better way? Would you like to integrate your room data sheets and your BIM process?

P.S. I’ve started work full time again after enjoying a long sabbatical. I’m at Daryl Jackson Robin Dyke Architects. The Midnight Lunch will continue, but posts may be a little less frequent than before.

Image Credits: Original colour image by

by shershe

Is your architecture or design client value for money?

Posted on June 11, 2013 by ceilidhhiggins

Last week I started a discussion on how the client and their expectations impacts on the cost of design. Whilst there was some hope expressed on linkedin about this next post offering solutions…I’m not really sure I’ve got the answers. As I was originally writing this blog, I found that as I wrote I was moving more and more towards discussion of another contentious topic – competitive tendering. So today, while I continue pondering the impact of the client, this has segwayed into a consideration of the problems of competing tendering.

Often the project brief (or lack thereof) is the beginning of the problem. Whilst developing the brief can be part of the architect or interior designers scope, if it is teamed with unreasonable contract conditions or unreasonable interpretations by the client, significant additional work can be required. I have encountered contracts which expressly forbid the designer from claiming variations due to a prolonged program, limiting the number of meetings or site inspections or from an increased project value. This, to me is incredibly unfair on the part of the client. When the brief is little more than this – design a 5,000m2 fitout in a new building of 5 storeys to accommodate 400 staff in a mix of open plan and enclosed offices with support facilities. To me, the program and budget are key considerations in my scope, the scope is not just the final construction documents. Whilst it is true that the architect or interior designer could increase the construction cost due to design decisions, it is equally true that the client could increase construction costs and the amount of detailed design and documentation required due to their decisions on a higher level of acoustics or particularly extensive and complex joinery requirements as examples. I guess the decision has to be made at the fee proposal stage – do I take this risk of bidding on an very undefined scope and how do I (if possible) cost this into my structure. If the client then gets unreasonable in assessing variation claims, this is a recipe for cost overruns. In the end this kind of client should suffer with reduced quality for their project, but often they don’t, because we as designers still want to do a good job and keep the client happy. And our companies can often somehow think they will be able to make the money back on the next job, but in my experience its hard to make this work if you are dealing with clients who require competitive tendering on every job.

At the other end of the scale I have seen very detailed briefs, which (I thought) set out the clients full expectations of activities and deliverables. I responded to this detailed scope, pricing accordingly. We were even shortlisted for a tender interview. However, it turned out the client was interviewing all the tenderers (there were 3-5 selected tenderers) because there was such a large difference in the fee values (I think it was something like 200%) and they wanted to ask further questions of each party. I thought the interview went very well, but then we didn’t get the job. When we asked for a debrief, we were informed that we were offering a ‘blue ribbon’ service and that the client couldn’t afford this. So apparently the project had gone to someone with a much lesser level of services than they had put the tender out for, and a matching lower price. So much for fair tendering processes. If they didn’t want our ‘blue ribbon’ services, we should have been given the opportunity to price the same as the other company – or perhaps if they weren’t fixed on the services but on the outcome (eg the fitout) then they shouldn’t have specified all the detailed meetings, reports and the like in the tender. Very frustrating.

Although the tender process makes these things worse, even with more involvement with a potential client up front there is still no telling. Just like a job interview, it is a pretty brief time you spend with someone, where both parties are on their best behaviour. Later when things start to get even a little bit difficult or go wrong it could be a different story. Or it could be that the people change, or additional people get involved in the project. Having a user group that violently disagrees with the project manger/property person responsible for delivering the project can be a challenging process to work through for both the architect or interior designer and the client representative.

The most time consuming client I ever had, was one who used to pop into the office every single day for weeks at a time. She had decided to personally take charge of the colours and finishes. Whilst I wasn’t happy with that, the client organisation had agreed she would do this (I think that people thought it would reduce our workload! Little did they know…) If I told reception I wasn’t available she started to ask for the other project team members. She would then ask to come in and look at the samples library – but she wouldn’t just be doing this quietly on her own, the whole time she would be asking the opinion of whoever had let her into the office and they couldn’t get back to their own work. At the end of the project she sent back a removalist size carton of samples. We did actually end up charging the client extra fees, and thankfully in this case, the organisation was reasonable and recognised the additional work we had incurred due to the behavior of their staff member.

For me the problems is that these different client attitudes have costs attached and this time can also impact upon the project program. We have planned the project process based upon certain time periods, and its not always a simple matter of throwing extra resources against the project when the client requirements expand the time required. So how do we as an industry change this? We can’t always work for repeat clients that we know and understand, where we can somewhat predict their behaviours and expectations at the fee proposal stage. Particularly when it comes to competitive tendering we don’t have the opportunity to get to know the client. Or if we do know them, we might overprice the job or the opposite, we can win the job by offering a lesser level of service than the tender calls for. In my view, we as an industry need to take some responsibility for this. Architects and interior designers need to be less hesitant about defining scope and claiming variations. All architects and interior designers need to take responsibility for this, as often client attitudes are determined by the other architects/consultants they have worked with in the past. We need to educate our clients. But I also think that large client organisations, who purchase architectural and design services frequently also need to take responsibility. In particular, in Australia, government at all levels is a large user of architectural services, generally uses competitive tendering processes and frequently promotes one sided contracts. Clients need to understand their roles in the process and what has been allowed for in the fees. The staff involved need further support and education. Value for money does not mean cheapest. The conditions at tendering stage need to suit the actual project expectations. Client organisations need to judge project management success on more than just keeping consultant fees down.

If one of our largest clients (as an industry) treats architects and interior designers as not worth being treated as professionals with a high level of skills and value, what does that say about our profession? What is your experience – do you think competitive tendering offers the client the best outcomes? Do your clients understand that program or meeting attendance is part of the scope and can impact on your fees? What kinds of additional services have your clients expected without changes to your fees?

Image Credits:

by Philip Taylor PT

How many architects or interior designers does it take to design a building (or fitout)?

Posted on June 4, 2013 by ceilidhhiggins

No, that’s not the start of a joke comparing architects versus interior designers. And it’s just as applicable to engineers too. The question is really how do we determine how many hours it will take to design a particular project? I’m back to what seems to be one of my readers favourite subjects again – design fees. Last week a comment on my post on BIM-onimics queried the number of hours spent on some of the example projects. This question put me in mind of a number of issues I’d been meaning to blog about one day – the main one being how do you cost the client themselves into your design fees? To me this is often more difficult than the already difficult task of putting a number of hours on creativity. However the more I started to think and write on the subject, the more it has expanded, and so this will be a 2 part post.

As I mentioned in my response to the comment on the number of hours a project takes, and I’ve discussed previously (in my post What makes a great workplace design client) clients come in many forms. I find particularly in the areas I of design I have worked in (workplace, healthcare, labs), the client group expects to be (and in my view quite rightly is) part of the design process. But that said, different clients at both the organizational and the individual level have very diverse views about what their role is, what their architect or interior designers role is, what deliverables should be provided, how many review points they should have, how frequently we should meet and generally how much involvement they will have in the design (and even construction process). The client’s level of industry knowledge and familiarity with the design and construction process also differs. All of these factors will impact on the amount of time I spend working on a project – not necessarily designing, but managing the client inputs, reviews and approvals, answering their questions and producing documents which are specifically for their use and not a requirement for construction.

I don’t necessarily mind doing any of these things. The problem is that if I don’t know the client (and by this I mean both the organisation and the individual) at the fee proposal stage then gauging what kind of client they are and what their expectations might be can be exceedingly difficult, and in some cases downright impossible. If you’re lucky you have a client who is only seeking proposals from a small number of your competitors (or even better you are single select) and they may meet with you once or twice to discuss the project. You have a chance to speak directly with them to clarify the scope and their expectations. It may even be likely that if there was an obvious difference in scope between the proposals the client would come back to you to discuss this. Unfortunately, in my experience this has not been the norm. Maybe in some sectors and firms it is, which is great (give me a call, I’d love to come work with you!). Particularly when dealing with government or large institutions or organisations, competitive tendering becomes a more usual approach.

Even on an invited or short listed tender with a limited number of companies it is unlikely that there will be any significant interaction between the designers and the client representatives. Whilst a site inspection may be held, this usually involves all tenderers and doesn’t really provide an opportunity for the designer to get to know the client. The first time this is likely to occur is after you have submitted your fee, at a tender interview. Indeed for some larger open tenders, there is never even the opportunity for the architect or designer to speak to the client. The only means of contact may be via an anonymous procurement email address, with the whole tender process run by a different individual than the person who will be the client representative.

Especially when the person who becomes the client representative in the design stage has had very little involvement in procurement their expectations can differ markedly from what is documented in the tender and project brief. Individuals can have very different views over what constitutes a review or approval and how the design should progress. With some of my clients I know that if we have a meeting and I present some preliminary design options, I will get instant feedback and go away straight after the meeting to revise and develop the design. However with others, the decision makers are not in the room or further people need to be consulted, I will be lucky if I get feedback and direction 1 week later. These two scenarios affect my resource planning and my project costs. Design is not just dollars per hour, every time I start and stop it costs more. There is also the likelihood that during the time the client is reviewing the schemes they will have more questions, will ask me to explore more options and that overall there will be more meetings and the project will take longer. Now, I can and do try to reduce my exposure to such risks by including a detailed scope and program, limiting the number of meetings and options and other such assumptions within my fee proposal. But still, a number of scenarios have arisen for me in the past where for a wide variety of reasons other issues arise which further complicate the potential project costs or reveal interesting things in relation to the expectations of the client.

Tune in again next week to find out more about some of these issues, a discussion of competitive tendering and my opinions on what needs to happen to help sort out this mess! In the meantime, feel free to offer your own stories, suggestions and comments.

PS. My TEDx video is now available on line. Click here for the Audience Talks. I’m at around 9 minutes of the way through.

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by nordicdesign

The Midnight Lunch

The intersection of interior design, technology and the future of work

Tag Archives: architecture

Are you an architect if you don’t draw? Is a design manager still an architect?

Are you sitting in a half empty office? What would you do with all that vacant space?

Why is delivering on time so hard? Is it that architecture, engineering and time management don’t mix?

What could a workplace and a Chanel handbag have in common?

Spaced Out and 5 other mega trends in the property sector

It is mandatory that external walls are waterproof: What do client design guidelines, specifications and requests for tender have in common?

There is no I in workplace – the role of the individual in workplace design consultation

What’s in a Room: Room Data Sheets and the briefing process

Is your architecture or design client value for money?

How many architects or interior designers does it take to design a building (or fitout)?

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