Author Archive
Posted on October 16, 2008 - by Pete
Green Roofing
Chicago City Hall
I just read a very interesting article in the October 2008 issue of Professional Roofing magazine (www.professionalroofing.net) by Thomas Hutchinson. Tom is principal with Hutchinson Design Group Ltd. in Barrington Ill. and he is very concerned with some directions the roofing industry is taking. In particular, he is worried about some of the unintended consequences of the drive to green roofing materials and designs. What appears to be his biggest concern is the impact cool roofs have on condensation inside buildings. I will try to quickly explain his concern. The basic problem is that moist internal air can move into the joints in the insulation boards under the roof membrane. When this air comes into contact with the membrane, condensation forms which results in water in the roof system. This can lead to mold, drips and a variety of other problems. BJG has long been a proponent of two layer insulation systems with staggered joints for just this reason. It is more expensive to install the insulation in two layers, but it is really cheap compared to trying to solve the mold issue after the fact.
Another of Tom’s concerns involves creating reflective roof surfaces. “Cool Roof” design theory is that by making the roof more reflective, you cut the buildings heat gain and therefore reduce the summer cooling costs. Tom asks a very interesting question: “Where are we deflecting the sun’s rays to?” He reports that there have been instances where the light reflected off of a roof has heated masonry to the point of cracking, sent glare into adjacent buildings and melted insulation in EIFS systems. I haven’t seen any of these problems, but they certainly need to be considered when selecting a roofing system.
Another interesting topic in the article involves fastening of insulation board to meet FM requirements. Tom reports instances of condensation within the building deforming the insulation boards and, if the boards are not properly fastened, they can cup and from lots of little ponds on the roof. The fastening pattern to resist cupping may greatly exceed the fastening necessary to resist uplift. If the cupping loads are not considered, the roof system will not perform. I don’t think this is a major problem for those of us who work in the land of wind and un-ballasted roofs. Tom mentions 4 or 5 fasteners per insulation board. We generally have 8, 12 or 16 depending on jurisdiction and location on the roof so I don’t expect to encounter that problem but it is still good to be aware of the potential.
Other issues that are discussed that we have observed involve landscaped roofs, installation of solar systems on roofs and life cycle cost assessment utilizing environmental lifetime cost in lieu of economic lifetime cost. Tom also makes some interesting predictions about the future of the roofing industry which I think have some real merit. For those of us who are roofing geeks, I recommend reading the article for all the details.
Posted on October 14, 2008 - by Pete
Car Dealerships – One Building, Many Clients
Reno Toyota
BJG has worked on several car dealerships lately. We recently finalized a Mazda Dealership and a Kia Dealership, a Toyota Dealership is currently under construction and a combined BMW / Porsche / Volvo Dealership is scheduled to open in the next couple of weeks. Car dealerships are really interesting projects. At first glance, they seem like fairly simple buildings. However, I don’t think anyone who hasn’t done a dealership has any idea just how many constraints, requirements, and other miscellaneous stakeholders are involved in the typical car dealership project. Of course, everyone assumes that the owner of the dealership is the “Client” and that is the case. However, the owner of the dealership has to answer to the auto manufacturer. All of the auto manufacturers have corporate design standards that need to be included in order to be an “approved” dealership and to be eligible for all of the various goodies that come with approval. The number of constraints is often hard to imagine (and usually a little difficult to determine). Corporate standards dictate what the exterior cladding will be, what the floor tiles needs to look like, how many square feet are needed for each of the dozens of different spaces within the building, etc, etc etc.
Bill Pearce BMW Porsche Volvo
Of course, you also have the various jurisdictions’ requirements. Every City has a planning department with requirements that need to be met. It becomes very interesting when the planning department’s needs are in conflict with the auto manufacturers. Kind of like being stuck between a rock and a hard place.
If all we had to deal with were The Client, The Auto Manufacture and The City, life would be complicated but not too bad. However, it is also important to consider the needs of all the other various vendors. You have the sign guys, the lube guys, the car wash guys, the specialty flooring guys, etc. In addition, you have the typical General Contractor / Sub-Contractor coordination to get done. Another issue that needs to be considered is that the auto manufacturers have pre-approved vendors for many of their standard components. These vendors are often overloaded and therefore, getting installation dates for their respective projects can be tricky.
Reno Mazda
Another complication with many of these vendors is that their work needs to be permitted separately. For example, the box that the car wash goes into is part of the building. However, the actual car washing equipment is generally sold as a system directly to the owner. These vendors generally are not familiar with local jurisdictional requirements and may not have the appropriate licensing to get their work permitted. This can be especially tricky in seismic country. If the vendor is from the east coast, they may not have appropriate structural calculations for their system and therefore cannot provide it to the building department when requested. By default, the resolution of this problem falls on the design team. Not a big deal if it is only the car wash - a big deal when it is the car wash, the parts storage mezzanine, the auto lift systems, etc.
Reno Kia
Some may find the above to be reasons to not work on auto dealership projects. At BJG we look at it another way. We are in the design business because we love solving problems and interacting with people. Our project managers enjoy orchestrating the high level collaboration needed. And our architectural and structural designers revel in the attention to detail necessary from construction documents to shop drawings to make the prototype a reality. The more complicated the job and the more people that are involved, the more fun we have.
Posted on September 18, 2008 - by Pete
Nevada Business Journal Roundtable
Yesterday (09/17/08), I participated in a roundtable sponsored by the Nevada Business Journal (NBJ). Essentially, this was a group of leaders from prominent engineering firms in the State of Nevada. NBJ hosts a yearly group discussion which they then use for an article in the November newsletter (actually, they alternate Engineers and Architects – for some reason, they invite me to both of them). This is the 3rd or 4th of these that I have done and it was really interesting how different this one was from past roundtables. Two years ago, the only thing everyone talked about was how hard it was to find the people we need to turn out the work. Last year (with the architects), people were still cautiously optimistic. This year, everyone was talking about marketing, how to deal with low ball competitors and how to improve morale after layoffs.
However, the thing that I really learned from the roundtable was that the best firms really see this slow time as an opportunity. We all got a little fat and happy over the last decade or so. Now we need to look at our operations and get more efficient. We need to focus on identifying and keeping our best employees. We need to eliminate the unnecessary expenses that have crept into our operations. We need to train our employees on how to be flexible and adaptable. Finding commissions is harder and more competitive than ever. The best firms are continuously looking for different businesses that they can move into. We all have a cadre of highly trained problem solvers working for us. What we need to do is find problems for them to solve. Sure it sounds easy, all you need is to find a problem. There is actually a lot more to it. First, you need to find a problem that you can profitably solve. Lots of problems can be solved if you don’t worry about the cost / benefit ratio of the solution. The best firms are able to find problems and identify who the solution will benefit. When the benefit accrues to someone who can afford to pay for it, a job is waiting to be had.
At BJG’s 2007 Strategic Planning Session, we set up our “Create a Project” team. The whole purpose of this group is to go out and find problems that need to be solved, determine if the cost / benefit ratio works and also make sure there are adequate resources available to pay for the solution. I have to admit that we haven’t been as successful as I would like with this initiative. What I am bringing back from my roundtable experience is that we need to focus more on these creative ways of improving our communities if we are going to weather the slow times.
Posted on September 5, 2008 - by Pete
Cost vs. Value
We recently submitted a proposal for a project of a type with which we are very familiar. I thought (and still think) that our fee was very fair and was the appropriate fee given the amount of time necessary to perform the tasks in order to assure that our client had a successful experience. Three firms of similar size and expertise provided fees. Our fee was in the middle. We were 10% lower than the third firm but we were 40% higher than the firm that gave the lowest fee.
When I evaluate contractor bids on our projects, I generally feel that we prepared a good set of documents if we get 4 or 5 bids with a total spread of 10-15%. Here we have a case where the work level is not as fully defined as it will be when the documents are done so a wider spread is probably acceptable. Maybe 20% total spread between three numbers might be reasonable. 50%, however, seems odd. What other elements might contribute to this spread?
It is possible to perform design services to a variety of levels of quality and it is important that all design firms understand the quality that the client wants. In this case, all three firms have worked for the client in the past and should therefore have a good idea as to the quality required so lack of understanding of the client’s needs should not be an issue.
There are, of course many ways to break a design fee apart. In particular, some firms exclude services that the client will need from their scope and then charge the client extra for that service when asked to add it. I really hate this approach because I think it gives the entire design industry a bad name. It does, however, make a firm’s initial proposal look very attractive to a potential client. If clients get used to this, it may even be possible to keep a client happy while doing it because they may just assume it is the way the industry works. I like to think professional design firms are better than that. The public, however, tends to evaluate all professions by the lowest standards they see (for example, lawyers). Firms that take this tack are therefore responsible for lowering the reputation of our entire industry.
A firm could be in dire financial straits and would need to take a job at any fee just to keep the doors open. If this is the case, I would think we would need to look back on what the firm has done over the last year or two that caused them to get into this condition. If they have been doing a poor job managing their business, they probably are going to fail eventually and this sort of pricing is only going to hasten the end. When they do fail, the client is going to be left holding the bag and the industry’s reputation will suffer some more.
A design firm could use inexperienced people on a project and thereby reduce their costs. This would probably be a disaster for the client since it takes a lot of experience to know what goes into putting a building together. It might be possible for the firm to make a buck even while the client struggles to keep their project going. Another idea that can only result in lowering the reputation of our industry.
I am also confused why firms feel the need to lowball fees given the demographics of our workforce. Even when the economy is as slow as it is, finding quality employees for design firms is very difficult. We live in an age where there is more work than can be performed by the staff available to the industry. Basic economics says that when demand exceeds supply, prices rise. Why then would any firm feel pressured to levels that are inconsistent with quality work?
Productivity is one of the great buzzwords of the last couple of decades and I’m sure that we have become more productive as an industry. Unfortunately, a December 2004 white paper by Haskell indicates that productivity in the building industry as a whole only increased our productivity by about 33% since 1966. This is, by the way, well below the gains of the US economy as a whole, but that is a discussion for another blog article. Anyways, given the minimal productivity gains we have experienced, it seems unlikely that any particular firm is hugely more productive than any other. In addition, I assume that firms of similar size will be even closer in efficiency that the industry as a whole. So I don’t think that efficiency can justify the difference in fees in this instance.
A firm might give lowball fees in order to “buy” their way into an industry or a geographic location. If this is the case, the firm probably won’t survive in the given industry or geography since they will have created an unprofitable fee expectation for their prospective clients. I don’t see how this can be good for our industry either.
So, what is the answer? In this particular instance, I really don’t know. I would be interested to learn if the firm in this case consistently gives lowball fees or if this is a one-time aberration. The answer to that question would go a long way to understanding what the issue is. In any case, I really don’t understand why anyone who goes through the extensive education and experience necessary to lead a design firm would then have so little respect for what they do that they are willing to risk our industry’s reputation by giving lowball fees and subjecting us all to the potential problems discussed above.
Posted on August 18, 2008 - by Pete
Key Performance Indicators
All businesses have Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). The purpose of a KPI is to provide a number that can quickly and easily give you a feeling for how well your business is doing. For example, I have a friend who sells Cellular Phones and Service. One of his KPIs is number of people walking in the door. Since he knows how much, on average, he makes every time someone walks into one of his stores, when his foot traffic starts to increase or decrease, he knows that he needs to adjust his business plan accordingly – either increase marketing, hire additional staff, reduce costs, whatever.
Now, this may surprise a lot of people who work with architects and engineers, but Architecture and Engineering are businesses also. Therefore, we need to have KPIs in order to manage our activities. One of BJG’s most important KPIs is Utilization. Utilization is the ratio of time working on projects to total time worked. BJG has a companywide target Utilization Rate of 62%. However, the Target Utilization Rate for individual BJG Staff Members varies significantly. The maximum Utilization Target is about 80% and the lowest is 5% or so for administrative staff. While the 80% maximum may seem low, it is important to consider that Total Time includes Vacations, Personal Time Off, Mandatory Training, etc. so 80% really doesn’t leave a lot of time for non-billable tasks when one is at the office.
What makes Utilization effective as a KPI is that is that I can track BJG’s profitability fairly accurately by tracking Utilization. When Utilization drops, it is time for us to ramp up our marketing. When Utilization gets too high, we know that we need to hire more staff or our current staff will start to burn out. The other great thing about Utilization is that we can get results immediately and in real time – as long as people fill in their time sheets. I can plot companywide Utilization and compare it to monthly revenue and/or profitability and the graphs align nearly perfectly.
Another of BJG’s KPIs is Employee Retention. At BJG we strive to be the employer of choice for talented, motivated and ambitious design professionals - we work hard to make this a great place to work. If I am doing my job as the company’s president, BJG’s staff are engaged and excited about their jobs. Engaged employees generally don’t leave so I can track how I am doing keeping employees satisfied by tracking employee retention.
In addition to the above, BJG has a few other KPIs that we track such as client satisfaction, revenue factor and core value conformance. All of these help us run our business which, in turn helps us better serve our clients. When our business is running smoothly, we can really focus on being Responsive to our clients’ needs.
Posted on June 30, 2008 - by Pete
Responsiveness – Not Just a Slogan
I just read an article in the June 4th edition of the ReD REPORT (www.theredreport.com) regarding the disconnect between Nevada Real Estate Developers and Nevada Power – the power provider in Southern Nevada. There are a couple of reasons that I thought the article was worthy of a comment. The first one was that the author went out of the way to mention that most developers were unwilling to comment on the record. It is implied in the article that they are all afraid of retaliation from Nevada Power if they say anything negative. This fear was juxtaposed in the article with comments from Nevada Power about their initiatives to reach out to developers.
Another interesting contradiction in the article involves Nevada Power’s mission statement “Be responsive to customer growth by performing the right service, on time, the first time”. Nevada Power then talks about their 10 step process for getting power to a facility, the need for developers to “understand” Nevada Power’s processes and the requirements of their application form which appears to require developers to perform research into 10 possible conflicts which would delay getting power to a site Looking at the list, it appears that only Nevada Power would be able to determine if conflicts exist.
The gist of the article is that Nevada Power, while claiming to be responsive, is anything but. Given BJG’s mantra of Responsive by Design, I implore all of our employees to make sure that they are being responsive to our clients and the other members of the team. Furthermore, if any of our clients, partners, fellow construction team members, etc. feel BJG is living our mantra, please contact me at (775) 827-1010 or pblakely@bjginc.com.
Posted on June 9, 2008 - by Pete
BIM – Costs and Benefits
I just finished reading the Spring 2008 edition of the Journal of Building Information Modeling (JBIM). This is a publication of the National BIM Standard and the National Institute of Building Sciences. There was some really interesting information in there. One of the first things I noticed was an advertisement by the US National CAD Standard (www.nationalcadstandard.org) detailing benefits of utilizing their standards. I wonder how many different “National Cad Standards” are out there. I know AIA has some, NSPE has some, etc. Just think how much easier life would be if we only had one “Standard”. Oh well, that is for a future utopian world to figure out.
One point that David Harris, President of NIBS makes that I found thought provoking is that the typical building contains about 10,000 generic products ranging from screws to cooling towers. Integrating all of these products into systems and modeling the performance of the systems within the overall building can seem pretty daunting. It is daunting, but it is also doable and will have immeasurable benefits to building owners and users.
Posted on June 5, 2008 - by Pete
LEED meets BIM
Those of us who keep abreast of changes in the construction industry have been tracking two major trends over the last year or two. One has been the move of “Green Building” from the fringes of the industry into the mainstream. While not every project is going for US Green Building Council (USGBC) LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Certification, most of BJG’s clients are, at a minimum, talking about what it would take to get their project “Certified”. Once that conversation starts, the entire project team can, as a group, can make rational decisions as to whether the LEED Certification effort is economically or otherwise justifiable.
The other major trend BJG | Architecture + Engineering has been tracking is the move toward Building Information Modeling (BIM). BJG has taken a very proactive approach to BIM. All of our projects are currently drawn in a three-dimensional information based modeling system (REVIT). This program differs from standard CAD systems in several significant ways. The primary difference is that models are not constructed by drawing lines. Instead, models are built by compiling objects with properties. For instance, every door has properties associated with it, such as a specific hardware group (door knob, lockset, hinges, closer, etc) and a swing direction. Other information that can be linked to an object includes material origin, delivery date, thermal performance, recycled content and price. In addition, the subcontractor responsible for installing the object can be identified, etc. In fact, there is virtually no end to the data that can be tracked within a BIM Model.
At BJG, we discovered that we can use BIM for our REVIT model, to help us determine appropriate strategies for achieving Green Design or LEED Certification. Through proper manipulation of the model, we can provide real time feedback on the cost and payback period of a variety of potential LEED Strategies including water use, insulation efficiency, glazing performance, etc.
When we decided to put the effort into moving into the BIM world, we hoped to be able to provide better coordinated drawings; calculate material quantities and budget pricing; generate construction schedules; and provide real time visual analysis of changes to the design program. Once we started down this path however, it occurred to us that we could also calculate recycled material content, water use, storm water runoff and perform energy analysis. Once the right data is associated to the model, the model will tell us what the cost to increase roof insulation would be and what the energy savings from the change will be. We are really excited by this combination of what we thought were two separate initiatives into a coordinated effort to improve our design and the opportunity it has provided us.
