a good architect is an enabling orchestra leader

Business901 Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems

The Strength of an Architect is in their Collaborative Abilities

Copyright Business901

A Good Architect is an enabling Orchestra Leader Guest was Zachary D. Evans

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Zachary Evans is an architect and partner at Kelty Tappy Design, Inc., a Fort Wayne architecture, planning, and urban design firm. A Ball State University graduate (Muncie, Indiana), Zach holds professional architectural registrations in Indiana and Ohio and is certified by the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB). He is an active member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Fort Wayne Chapter, and currently serves on the City of Fort Wayne (Indiana) Downtown Design Review Committee.

LinkedIn: Zachary Evans Twitter: @zdevans

A good Architect is an enabling Orchestra Leader, not a Distant Composer.

Joe Dager: Welcome everyone. This is Joe Dager, the host of the Business901 podcast. With me today is Zachary Evans. Zach is an architect and partner at the Kelty Tappy Design firm which is an architecture, planning, and urban design firm. A Ball State University graduate, Zach holds professional architectural registrations in Indiana and Ohio and is certified by the National Council of Architectural Registration Board. He's an active member of the American Institute of Architects and currently serves on the city of Fort Wayne's downtown design review committee.

Zach, I'd like to welcome you and maybe a good lead-in question is why did you choose architecture as your profession?

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Zachary Evans: First of all, thanks, Joe, for having me. It's an honor to be on the podcast. Architecture is a very interesting profession. It's got several different aspects. I think at a young age I admired a lot of the mystery involved in what an architect does and it took some digging to find out. I think a lot of the general public has questions about what architects really do during the day. Do they play with markers and design all day long or do they tour around and inspect construction projects? I think that's really what got me involved.

Joe: What'd you find out? Did you find out that they tooled around, played with markers?

Zachary: During the college years the education of an architect is a small sliver of what the actual profession opens up to you. During college you spend a lot of time in the programming and schematic design phases of a project where you either develop a program for a client or you're given one and you produce a few concepts and then start to refine those concepts. But, typically, you stop pretty quickly. You don't actually get to develop the whole project or create construction documents or see a final product. It's a pretty narrow view of what the full design process is. Once you enter the workforce, either on internship or following graduation, you have your first job, you find out there's a lot of work that goes on before I actually get to start any type of design work. That can be picturing financing or meeting a client for the first time and how all that works, some contractual items.

Then afterward, after you have a design concept that's agreed upon, there are several iterations of the design that you have to work through with the client and all the





consultants that are involved in a project, which can be almost up to 10 or 12 different consultants on a large project.

Joe: Well, I look at Ball State is one of the leading universities in architectural design that you chose, they've always had a great reputation. How much time do they take in teaching

you about design? Did you take an art class to broaden your horizon there and learn how to sketch and everything?

Zachary: Sure. The program I went through was a 10 semester program and every semester you had a design studio that you spent about 12 hours a week with supervision, with instructors there. Each semester there was a different focus on design. There were books and architects that you would study from different periods. There were courses on architectural history and theory. We took courses on different design mediums such as water color, model building, computer generated, four plains elevation, and 3D modeling.

Joe: Is there a pattern to a thought process an architect has?

Zachary: There is a little bit of a pattern. I think the biggest factor and biggest item that you're taught is to not get stuck in one mode of thinking. There are three steps. You have to be willing to take a step back and conceptualize and brainstorm on an item. If you're moving down the design path and you're not sure about what's going on or your client, if you have a client, is not comfortable with where you're going you have to take a step back, brainstorm multiple options, test those options, and then move to the next level of detail. Typically, the resulting design that you have or concept is a combination of the options that you made.





Joe: What you explained to me, architecture incorporates a huge part of the business aspect of the project and you're the front runner or the person that oversees everything. Is that true?

Zachary: Every case is a little different, Joe. These days’ architects work for contractors,

we work for clients. There are even architects that have become developers in their own right, create their own projects, they secure financing and secure property, and then they act as their own client and either build a speculative building or maintain those projects down the road after they're built. These days some architects are creating work for themselves and they're getting pretty creative with their own business model.

Joe: During the design process where do people struggle in creating the concept? How do you go about that?

Zachary: Architectural design, just like any other creative activity, it's not something that can be forced out. Although there are many extremely talented designers out there nobody can expect them to churn out ground-breaking designs all day every day so some time needs to be taken for rest and inspiration.

Joe: You're not sitting there, let's say, in front of a computer and you've got to force yourself, you've got a deadline. That doesn't really work well, does it?

Zachary: No. We all have deadlines. There are things that we do to try to break a brain freeze, if you will, if we're trying to come up with multiple concepts. Sometimes we just need to open up a book or design magazine and go through and try to receive some of the inspiration from the pages of the magazines. Sometimes we go out and just take a tour,





either just walking around town or going to visit certain case studies or projects that we think might provide us with some inspiration. A lot of times we'll call other designers in. That's why collaboration is important. Just having one person's view or opinion of a concept can be limiting.

Joe: I find it really interesting that designers have a tendency to collaborate really well. Is that the reason for it, that they maybe have better receptors or something like that to try to stimulate ideas?

Zachary: Yeah. I think it's part of the atmosphere and attitude you have on designing. If you think there's a right and wrong answer it's probably not going to go very well for you and you're going to stumble a little bit trying to develop concepts. If you have an atmosphere where it's free to throw out ideas and allow others to challenge those or build upon them I think you're in a lot better situation to come out with a wide range of concepts to develop the next stage from.

Joe: You mentioned earlier that there's a lot of different ways of customer involvement in recent years. Have you seen any trends that are happening that is different than maybe when you first started?

Zachary: I haven't seen any definite trends. I know that with the increased use of the Internet and all the quality information on the Internet our clients have become a lot more educated on the design process itself and construction materials and techniques. We've had clients come in and tell us what structural system they think is most appropriate for the building and we try to back up from that, especially if we don't have any type of design or design constraints set yet because that's something we'll work out with our design team





along with the client and include their input. We always enjoy hearing stories from our clients about them wanting to be architects when they were young. A lot of our clients enjoyed taking a larger role with the design team in creating a design for their project, to play architect. We always encourage that. The more customer involvement they have, the more involvement they have with our design team, the better the result's going to be. It makes communication a lot easier because they're trying 110 percent to understand where we're going and they're onboard with the ultimate goal of the project.

Joe: You really try to go out and create a co-creation type atmosphere with them?

Zachary: Sure. We don't want to just consult with them. We want to pull them in and engage them on the team. They need all the consultants, the engineers. Typically for a job you have mechanical, electrical engineers, you have a structural engineer, landscape architects. Sometimes you have artists who will design artwork. Interior designers that help us create the interior atmosphere, pick out furnishings. We encourage as much involvement with the client as they're willing to put in. We do have some clients that hand over a specific task and they want us to call them when it's finished and others that enjoy coming up to the office every day, taking a role in the project and seeing how it progresses.

Joe: Is there a way that you set expectations of projects?

Zachary: Absolutely. That's why the early customer involvement is extremely important. We try to spend a lot of time educating the client on what our process is. Every architect and every design firm has a different process that they like to go through and they involve different timelines. We try to lay all that out upfront, typically verbally and in written





proposals so they can take it home with them or take it back to their business and absorb it a little bit. But managing expectations upfront is key. If you get down the road in a design project and the owner's upset for some reason because it took too long or they thought they were going to get a different product at the end. It's really the design team's fault for not being outgoing and aggressive in engaging the client and making sure their expectations were managed properly.

Joe: I'm always intrigued the modeling concept of architecture because most people have a problem with visualization. I think that's what separates designers are that they've got this idea. They can visualize the whole thing and a lot of people struggle with that. How do you start with prototyping modeling? Can you talk me let's say through a smaller project, a little bit of some of the modeling characteristics, steps that you go through with the customer?

Zachary: Sure. Architects are trained to think visually and a lot of times young adults get involved in architecture because they always think visually. I think a lot of people who aren't in architecture can do that but there are a many people that cannot visualize a three dimensional space in their mind so modeling becomes extremely important. We do drawings in two dimensions and three dimensions. Typically, the two dimensional drawings are for the construction drawings that are given to a contractor for building purposes and the other type of modeling is done digitally is 3D modeling. There are really two different

reasons to do modeling. The first is for design intent. These can be digital or physical models that we do early in the design stages, especially when we're doing the conceptualizing and brainstorming.





We use cardboard or foam cord boards. Sometimes it's as crude as hot glue guns and cardboard to create something that you can turn, flip upside down, and hand to a client that helps us get a sense of what that space might feel like if they were inside of it, if it were a full-size structure.

Digital models we use to convey design intent works well. There's simple programs that can be used such as Google SketchUp and more complex 3D modeling softwares that are out there that we use. The real purpose of those is to allow the design team to work and coordinate a conceptualize design and convey that information to a client.

The second big type of digital modeling is typically use a little bit later, after a design at least has been approved conceptually and moves on to one of the middle stages of design that we call design development and is BIM. BIM stands for Building Information Modeling and has become very prevalent lately and is really the software of the future and process of the future where all of the building systems are put into a single digital model.

The structure is modeled, the mechanical system including all the ductwork and air handlers are modeled, all the architectural elements are modeled, the doors and corridors. Also all the written information, product information, design intent statements, can be included in it. It's a single file, single model that contains all the information for that project. It can even be used by contractors to work off of during bidding and construction.

Joe: It's not a 2K file is it?

Zachary: No. They can be pretty large, Joe.

Joe: It sounded pretty detailed.





Zachary: It is and we've seen it being used the most in healthcare projects, any type of project that is systems heavy. When I say systems heavy I mean all of the things in the wall. In healthcare projects, we typically see a lot of air and gas buried in the walls. If you're working two dimensions it's too difficult to chart every item in the wall or every item above the ceiling and being able to coordinate that prior to construction. What happens is the contractor gets up to the site, he pops a ceiling tile, and there's a fire suppression line running right here his duct has to go. With the bin software, the vast majority of these problems can be resolved before the contractor even gets on site. It is very beneficial, especially for the systems heavy projects.

Joe: Is there much virtual work nowadays where you're sitting there collaborating on the screen with clients and contractors? Has that become a big part of your firm's work?

Zachary: It is. These days everything is moving so quickly that there are architects that work across state lines and even in other countries. There just isn't a way to keep up with the speed of business without using virtual meetings. There are even firms that have offices in the United States that will work on projects all day long and then send them to the cloud or send them over to their other office over in Asia and have them work on them all night. There are firms, worldwide firms that work 24 hours.

Joe: Does this remove more of the personal things or do you think that these things are

enabling to create more of a relationship?

Zachary: I think all this technology and the ability to collaborate is a great next step for design in general. Being able to collaborate with engineers and other designers with other





talents and perspectives on the same project only makes the outcome better for our clients.

Joe: Going back to the modeling, I always think about prototyping early and often. You use that feedback from them so there aren't any surprises. When you give them that foam

glued together piece and they turn it around in their hand, is that like a toy to the customer? Is he sitting there looking at it and turning it around in his hands, is that a good feeling of accomplishment for you when you see him turn it upside down and looking at it?

Zachary: It really is, Joe. I think any type of model, whether it's a physical model that we create or a virtual model that we create, it's like our baby. It's our way of conveying our design intent. There are some people that are able to see things visually and some people that need to hear things verbally, but if you can describe design intent along with either type of model I think you cover all bases and it's the best way to get design intent across.

Joe: You're taking a step by step approach going through a client. It's not necessarily linear it's more iterative, I would think, that you're doing this, trying this, back and forth that you do with any collaboration. You're reaching out and doing this with your engineers and maybe other contractors and receiving feedback from them. It seems like a pretty overwhelming task and a great way to have scope creep.

Zachary: We always try to take it one layer at a time. When we make our first presentation of several different design concepts we try to give general overviews of each design concept and specifically highlight the key differences between the designs. Then we receive general feedback on those and work to come up with a hybrid solution of those different concepts. Once we go back to the design team alone, work out a few other





concepts, and go to the next layer. We do our best not to pile on all this detailed information during one of the early design meetings. That will come later once the client has a better understanding of the project goal and timeline.

Joe: Walt Disney always had a thing where they went through their design process, he

had different stages and he never let someone go back two stages to something. They could influence the stage before but they couldn't influence two stages back and that's how he stopped some of the scope creep.

Zachary: That's a great example. One thing we always stress in our office is if you get stuck, zoom up a level and take a look at what's going on. Same thing with trying to determine what a client's challenge may be. If they're out of space at their current location, they're packed in, they don't have room for employees you may take a step back and look at why is that? Is the space they have now inefficient? It may be that they don't need to add on, they just need to renovate the space they have and make it more efficient for their use. Any time we hit a stumbling block with what we're doing we try to take one step up and I think Disney's rule for that is pretty appropriate.

Joe: When I think of design thinking I go to the marketing side, the Service Dominant Logic from Steve Vargo, but when most think of design thinkers most think of IDEO. How do architects relate to IDEO and Tim Brown?

Zachary: I think Tim Brown and the IDEO organization does a good job of going through the three steps of the design process. If you boil everything down, you really have a prototyping stage, a testing stage, and then the refinement period and you repeat that. You don't go through each step once. Each phase embraces all three of those steps and





then you move to the next level of detail. If you hit a stumbling block you back up a step and repeat. I think the prototyping stage, testing stage, and refinement stage is really key to the design thinking attitude.

Joe: Have funding projects changed a lot? Are you seeing where there's maybe a different

type of funding, private funding more so than public funding?

Zachary: I think it's stayed somewhat similar of the recent economic challenges here in the United States. Public/private partnerships are a little more popular. We're seeing some private funding maybe incorporated with public funding, either state or federal funding, in order to get projects to go. We're starting to see some of the private work increase again. It's been at a pretty low level for the past couple of years. The public jobs have been moving along at a decent rate. But I think the advent of the public/private partnership has opened a new era in getting projects completed.

Joe: Is there a big difference when you're working for a public versus a private? Are expectations completely different?

Zachary: I think the expectations are usually very similar. The way we go about what we produce as architects and engineers are different, the legal requirements are different for public and private jobs. For instance, bidding. Public jobs have to be publicly bid. I think the expectations and the goals are usually pretty similar.

Joe: An architect gets to be at the ground floor. He gets to be at the beginning of the process. Most designers, as we discussed, are at the tail end where they get to make the thing pretty. We're seeing now, especially in service design, where that designer is moving





to the beginning now in the chain. He's no longer the last guy before it goes out to the market and I think a lot of that's got to do with user experience, customer experience becoming so prevalent that you have to gather that information upfront. The designer is the guy to do that. What tips would you give to someone that's moving from the tail end of the process to the beginning of the process?

Zachary: I think no matter what point a designer gets involved in the project there are always some constraints. They may be fewer and they may not be as noticeable. Say, for instance, an architect is on a green site there might be constraints with that site on where construction may occur, who owns the property, what the featured use of the property may be, zoning issues come into play. I think no matter how open and free the canvas looks I think there are always some constraints that should be looked at as opportunities. We were taught in design school that any constraint should be embraced as an

opportunity. It was a lot more difficult to design without any context or feedback than it was to have some constraints and parameters for a project.

First step should always be brainstorming and throwing out as many ideas as you can on the paper. We like to use a dry erase board. We have a wall that's all dry erase material and we just get out the markers and go to it and talk while we're doing it. There are no wrong ideas. Usually we get several good ideas to take to the next level out of the brainstorming sessions.

If they don't work out it never hurts to bring in colleagues or consultants with in order to try to help out with that process.





Joe: Explain that process a little bit to me. You gather a group of people including the customer maybe, you go through some ideas, and you start doing it. How do you solicit ideas? How do you get it started? How do you get the fires burning?

Zachary: Usually it's through verbal communications. We try to get as much information

about the existing structure or existing site, any site constraints, zoning information, just about anything we can. We lay it out all on the table. Usually at that point, we've already had discussions with the client about what avenue they want to proceed with. We bring as many people crammed into the conference room we can. We get the markers out. Usually we encourage the client, also, and draw or write whatever comes to mind and then we always document it photographically and use all those ideas in the next iteration of the design.

Joe: You brainstorm effectively throughout a project then? Are you going back to that whiteboard three, four, five, six times during a project?

Zachary: We do. Every project... You always hit a stumbling block and we always try to take a step back, reevaluate the issue, and see if there's a better way to create a solution. We don't always go and use the whiteboard. Sometimes it's on paper, at our desk, or on the computer. Even when you're detailing a project, trying to complete construction documents, you may get to a handrail detail, for instance, that just isn't working out and

you take a step back and reevaluate the constraints and the parameters you have and try to come up with a few different options on how to solve that issue. Usually bring a couple extra designers in to take a look at it is the best route to go.





Joe: What have you found to be the most difficult thing being an architect that you didn't really realize going into it? Is there something that's like "Wow, this has been a tough road for me to get down?"

Zachary: Personally, I'm a pretty detail-oriented manager. I think that's a good way to

define my characteristics and it's always been a challenge for me to accept that something is a failure or it wasn't the best solution. Always having an open mind, always being willing to take input, take a step back and reevaluate the situation is key for any successful design project. Another one is collaboration. There's a lot of pressure to have a single figurehead on the design but every project has to have a willing client, a design team of many professionals, and a skilled contractor in order to create the built piece of architecture. It takes a lot of people, a lot of different talents, and there's no one person that can do it all.

Joe: What has been the funniest part? What have you come back saying, "I'm glad I'm an architect."

Zachary: There's nothing better than spending a year or two on a design project and seeing it completed and seeing the users take advantage of it, but really, Joe, the best part is to meet all the people, learn what they do for a living, learn what they enjoy, and be able to play a part in their success.

Joe: Thank you very much, I appreciate it.

Zachary: Thank you, Joe. I had a great time and I hope the information is useful.





Joseph T. Dager

Implementer of Lean Marketing Systems

Ph: 260-438-0411 Fax: 260-818-2022

Email: [email protected]

Web/Blog: http://www.business901.com

Twitter: @business901

What others say: In the past 20 years, Joe and I have collaborated on many

difficult issues. Joe's ability to combine his expertise with "out of the box" thinking is unsurpassed. He has always delivered quickly, cost effectively and

with ingenuity. A brilliant mind that is always a pleasure to work with." James R.

Joe Dager is President of Business901, a progressive company providing direction in areas such as Lean

Marketing, Product Marketing, Product Launches and Re-Launches. As a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, Business901 provides and implements marketing, project and performance planning methodologies

in small businesses. The simplicity of a single flexible model will create clarity for your staff and as a result better execution. My goal is to allow you spend your time on the need versus the plan.

An example of how we may work: Business901 could start with a consulting style utilizing an individual

from your organization or a virtual assistance that is well versed in our principles. We have capabilities to plug virtually any marketing function into your process immediately. As proficiencies develop,

Business901 moves into a coach’s role supporting the process as needed. The goal of implementing a

system is that the processes will become a habit and not an event.

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a good architect is an enabling orchestra leader

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