Perspective

My years under a hard hat deepened my appreciation of design leadership. Leading a design team while conquering fee, schedule, and budget bogeymen is not easy. Teams need design managers, but not to apply rote management practices. Teams need leaders who “get” design. Designers do too. Working in one of the country's best construction management companies, I have found ways to bridge design and management differences. That cross-industry perspective drove me to share my insights.

“Literary style is nothing less than an ethical strategy—it's always an attempt to get the reader to care about people who are not the same as he or she is.”

– Zadie Smith

Surveying my personal career asymptote made me abandon the status quo. It was time to buck inertia – and my comfort zone – to take on a larger cause. This is the book I had to write. In it you'll find issues and opinions, problems and solutions. One thing you won't find: apathy. People care deeply about designing and building. It's profound. When you talk to people who make buildings for a living, you will not find nonchalance, you will find passion. That was a joy to affirm and gives me hope. Look at the interviews. None of them say things are fine, or that they don't care. If you're reading this, you feel the same way.

Owners, designers and builders share another trait. They have a common desire to create new realities. Facing obstacles like conflicting information and limited resources, the best of us stay positive. What we need now is a new reality for how we work together – positive thinking about “managing design.”

While many recognize and discuss these problems, few are moved to action. In the decision to redirect my career, I decided to do something about them. That choice changed my life and broadened my reach. I am trying to cultivate others to do the same.

“Watch out – he's a dual agent!”

– Antoine Predock, FAIA, AIA Gold Medalist

“Dual Agent”

In 2002, my employer, Atlanta-based Holder Construction, was working on the Flint RiverQuarium in Albany, Georgia. Holder served as construction manager and worked on the project with Antoine Predock Architects. Their project architect was Sam Sterling. As Sam and I got to know each other in the early days, I proudly described my role: “As someone who has practiced on both sides, I can speak two languages! I can translate design intent into constructible form.” Sam looked at me and said, “You know Mike, I mentioned that to Antoine. He said, ‘You know what that means. It means: watch out, he's a dual agent!'”

It gave us a good laugh, even though the sentiment is emblematic of the mistrust that lurks in the weeds of our professions. We've got some weeding and fertilizing to do.

“Without you guys pulling us out of the budget inferno, we wouldn't have had a project.”

– Sam Sterling, AIA

A few years later, I ran into Antoine at the American Institute of Architects' national convention in Los Angeles, moments after he had been awarded the AIA's Gold Medal before thousands in the plenary session. After I congratulated him, he was quick to remember “how great it was to work with Holder.” We'd succeeded in getting our project back in budget and realizing its vision. (See Case Study 3 in Chapter 24.) His. Ours. A nice closure. His colleague Sam Sterling would later say, “Without you guys pulling us out of the budget inferno we wouldn't have had a project.”

Creating more of those kinds of memories is what this book is about.

Evocation, Provocation, and Paths

Can talking with people through interviews evoke enough emotion to change the order of things? Can it invoke thought or provoke action? I hope so. It would be rewarding if it could cause even a small positive movement in one person, project, or firm. Designing and building can be filled with the joys of serving, collaborating, and making, but need a little attention, redirection, and inspiration. Like those of other technical professions becoming more complex, design and construction graduates are being forced to choose a specialized path or create a niche. For architects, the traditional vectors are still available: design, technical prowess, communication and people skills, marketing, and more. But now, add energy, environmental skills, design management, facility management, and digital wizardry.

Odyssey: Me to We

Like most design projects, this book began with an idea and a step. Then another. It gained focus and took shape. It began as an introspective look at the nature of design – a bridging, psychological inquiry into the minds of diverse team members to draw conclusions on the amorphous, immensely challenging nature of managing design. But I quickly learned that before drawing conclusions, the analysis had to move beyond “me” to “we.” It grew to have an extroverted focus, polling experts from a broad landscape to recognize problems and to find possible solutions.

Terms

In this book, the terms “architect” and “designer” are used as generic shortcuts for architects, engineers, interior designers, landscape architects, graphic designers, and the cornucopia of design professionals and consultants who contribute to projects. Gender terms (e.g. he, she, we, and they) are used interchangeably.

The term “owner” is used for owners, users, owner's representatives, program managers, developers, and others whose job it is to manage and shape design, and direct teams.

“Contractor” refers broadly to construction managers, general contractors, trade contractors, manufacturers, suppliers, and vendors who implement, build, and install designers' visions.

“Team” refers to the breadth of participants needed to design and build.

The “industry” spoken of refers broadly to planning, design, construction, ownership, and operation of commercial and institutional building projects.

Countless others who offer support are consciously excluded, including the legions of code officials, regulators, financiers, and others who react to and support the work of designers, owners, and contractors rather than manage it.

Focus

If you seek a comprehensive design methods overview, you have chosen the wrong book. J. Chris Jones wrote that book in 1970. Its title is Design Methods. His pioneering book surveys more than thirty-five design methods in an academic research context. Readers seeking instruction on how to run a design firm should look to Chuck Thomsen's Managing Brainpower and Art Gensler's Art's Principles. Those wondering whether to become an architect should consider Roger K. Lewis's approachable classic Architect? A Candid Guide to the Profession. If you're looking for the one-size-fits-all answer on how to manage design, you won't find it here. What you will find in Part 2 is a conceptual model of fundamental principles useable to manage a team during design and construction of a project. They are called Project Design Controls.

“The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.”

– Winston Churchill

Precedents: Anecdotal Dearth

Shockingly, despite centuries of practice, the art and science of managing design are still new subjects. Scant literature exists to inform us. Little research or applied sciences exist to bridge the disparate cultures of designers, contractors, and owners. A few good books have been written on managing design. Most approach the subject from a pure management point of view, as if design were an objective, measurable set of tasks. In my experience, that is far from the truth. Working beside notable professionals has given me the sense of how architects think. As designer, manager and principal, I did what they did.

Managing Uncertainty

At the 2018 AIA National Conference in New York, I reconnected with a study called Managing Uncertainty and Expectations in Design and Construction. This McGraw-Hill Smart Market Report by Clark Davis, Steve Jones, and Carol Wedge, with the AIA's Large Firm Roundtable, studied issues we will discuss. Presenter Steve Jones's observations included:

“In designing and building we're trying to build one-of-a-kind assets out in the weather. In this study, we're trying to find out what drives them into the ditch. This data has never existed in our industry. With it, we can have adult conversations about these issues, not act like a bunch of mercenaries out to protect ourselves.”

Industry best practice calls for planning and teaming first. But many projects do not start that way.

“What's the root cause of these dysfunctions? It's that the pace of change is exceeding the pace of construction.”

– Carol Wedge, 23rd June 2018

Why don't owners correct this? Because their corporate incentives and jobs can discourage it. For one-time, nonserial builders, projects do not follow patterns. They are risky. As business people busy with their jobs, these owners may push design and construction onto the backs of their hired professionals.

“Owners don't want to own the fact that – with their project team – they've created a startup.”

– Stephen Jones, 23rd June 2018.

Consistent with this book's findings and framework, this research by Dodge Data & Analytics offers hard data and useful tools. Among them is a free project contingency calculator, useful in managing design risk. To download this report, see www.construction.com/toolkit/reports/project-planning-guide-owners-project-teams.

Outreach: Provoking Change

Standing on the shoulders of Tom Peters and Bob Waterman's 1982 In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies, and Jim Collins and Jerry Porras' Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, I reached out to leaders from the country's best firms. This semi-scientific approach would be more credible than my own experience. How were things working for them? What were they experiencing? What could we change to be better partners? Unlike Peters and Collins, I did not study firms. Instead, I asked questions to get perspectives on issues facing the profession to understand the nature of the design-management continuum, and ways forward.

At the same time, I gave presentations to some of their leadership groups, speaking the truth, planting seeds to shift perspectives and provoke change. I modeled these talks after a campaign I led from 2005 to 2012 called BIM Education Awareness Momentum and Use by Partners (BEAMUP). That effort contributed to changing behavior within the industry.

Audience

What kind of readers can benefit from Managing Design? Everyone! Owners, architects, contractors, and emerging professionals. Whether you are an engineer, interior designer, trade contractor, student, teacher, experienced pro, or early career aspirant, the issues and opportunities in the introduction, conversations in Part 1, and Project Design Controls and actions in Part 2 can open your eyes. This book is for:

• Architects wrestling with the age-old demons of designing to budget, fending off contractor advances, or musing their future
• Owner searching for ways to lead design and construction teams in a complex world – with unfamiliar tools and processes
• Contractors and trade contractors faced with incomplete, uncoordinated drawings and untenable schedules, and mystified about design thinking and process
• Teachers, students, engineers, software gurus and technologists

The notion that architects, contractors, and owners are the only ones suffering from these issues is limiting. The design–management continuum applies to any creative endeavor – software, cooking, advertising, graphic design, software coders – you name it. The discussion looks at alternate thinking to bring these thought modes together for a common cause.

In reading this book, experienced professionals may find it tells them what they already know for their own discipline, but not for the disciplines of others. Blending disparate cultures is challenging. Designers, contractors, and owners have different educations and motivations. They think and speak in different languages. By understanding one another better, we can better align to serve our clients and one another.

Project-First Attitude

What is design management? Activities that achieve projects whose program, design, and scope stay within their budget, delivered on time, with good collaboration, design, and documents. Achieving this takes many forms. Tools and techniques help. Focus, responsibility, and assigning team member responsibilities do too. On good teams it is not about contracts or who's in charge. No one says it better than Holder Construction's Michael Kenig: “It doesn't matter who's doing what, as long as what needs to be getting done is getting done.” His advice advocates a project-first attitude – the hallmark of a successful collaborator.

How to Use This Book

Managing Design is organized to accommodate a variety of reader types. Those who prefer a linear approach can absorb it front to back, building conclusions. Others may prefer a selective route. If you are interested in one voice type or theme (e.g. owner leadership) or are familiar with one or more interviewee, skip around. Digest it as you like. Solution-oriented readers can move ahead to Part 2 to find a skeleton whose experiential bones offer design control best practices. Learn something new or affirm something you believe. Design your own path.

In the book's margins, in addition to interviewee quotes, you'll find empowering nudges from famous artists, musicians, improvisors, and rulebreakers, including unexpected people like John Prine, Jimmy Carter, Miles Davis, T.S. Eliot, and B.B. King. Why? Because design involves having the freedom to venture without fear of failure. Risk taking. Managing design does too. It's an art and a science; one that demands that its practitioners go freeform and play off their bandmates.

Play on.

Applied, Not Basic

This book is about understanding design process to keep it in some semblance of organized, rational behavior, time, space, and financial parameters that support construction. These are foreign constructs to many architects—things foisted upon them. Maybe they had one management class in school. This study avoids management basics: how to set objectives, fee budgets, proposals, and workplans.

The book does not offer legal advice. Readers must apply its findings in their own way at their own risk. The focus is on what's different from conventional management – design anomalies: how to apply thinking, resources and tools to manage design directly – and with constructors and owners.

The book's tone and interviews cast doubt on whether design can be managed at all. Certainly, there's no one way to try. The process seems more a question of how to ameliorate differences. What you'll find is a trove of perspectives from industry leaders and a conceptual grid for design control thinking you can apply in a way that suits you best.

Questions

Three questions can be drawn from the book's title: Are you managing design? Can design be managed? And what does the future hold? This book will answer all three, through dialogue. Do we need to manage design and change processes? Keeping quiet, or simply talking and not doing anything differently has not worked.

“Qui tacet consentire videtur.” (He who is silent is taken to agree.)”

This expression reflects the “silence procedure” or “tacit acceptance” in law. As you will discover, neither the people interviewed in book, nor its author, are being silent. There is no tacit acceptance. Designers who work in isolation, disengaged owners, and builders who shun design process ownership perpetuate the problems.

The active verb/gerund title form “managing design” is used more than the passive/noun form (i.e. “management”) because managing design is an ongoing pursuit. Starting with intention and desire, attempts to manage design are often followed by quick reaction and adjustment. Experienced practitioners do it more slowly, with wisdom, self-leveling feedback mechanisms, and teamwork.

Goals, Data, People

The goal of this book is to expose issues and help like-minded people change them. Being iconoclastic was never a goal. Attacking cherished beliefs and long-held traditions offers no understanding or solutions. There's a lack of clear thinking and new directions. It's time for a new S-curve in architecture and building.

There is ample momentum – even hype – for using computers to cure our ills. Some interviewed in this book are that movement's staunchest advocates. But data driven design doesn't foretell the solution. Acts of design – and management – start with the numbers. Data are the basis that inform your thought process, but they don't tell you what to do. You can ignore, question, or refine them, or project them into the future, but without them what do you have? Nothing. How can you practice that way? You can't. That's why architects are “losing”: they're losing at data.¹ Contractors and owners wield cost data like clubs. In this book, data is one point of beginning for a new way to collaborate, not the be all and end all. People offer that.

Lost Horizon

In researching this book, I looked for precedents and visions to guide the writing. I didn't find many, and then it struck me. In the 1970s, during a quiet, graduate school summer in Ann Arbor, I learned of James Hilton's classic 1933 book, Lost Horizon. I devoured it – carefully, judiciously, appreciatively. The Zen of the experience was a marked contrast to my college-student excess. I sat quietly on my balcony absorbing this new thinking rather than washing it down with a cold one.

What did I discover in my reading? The valley of Shangri-La, a mythical place where peace and brotherhood are the norm, and no one ever gets old. Peace, serenity, and utopia in a hidden valley in the Himalayas. A place where monks and citizens live in harmony under one rule: Be kind. Wouldn't that be a fine precedent for how to design and build projects instead of fighting and burning out? A utopian fantasy? Maybe. But what if there's something to learn from Shangri-La about managing design? A little moderation? Perhaps one of you will be the next Robert Conway, the chosen one who ascends to be the new leader – to show us the way. Conway was a fighter, diplomat, and leader. Skeptical at first, he ultimately recognized his calling. Will you?

In Frank Capra's 1937 film adaptation of the book, one of Conway's traveling companions articulates our traditional approach: “If you can't get it with smooth talk, you send your army.” The default to conflict serves no one. Another says, “It's not knowing where you're going that's the problem, it's wondering what's going to be there when you get there.” Fear of the unknown is something we all face in our work. Conway looks to the future without fear. He believes in a new horizon. In design and construction, when it comes to collaboration, it seems we've lost sight of our horizon. Maybe you can help us find it again.

Time to Act

Is now the right time for this book? The “change or perish”' mantra has become a cause célèbre in the building industry. Is this book merely one more jalopy in a decades-long, slow-moving traffic jam? Like most design efforts the book was an exploration. Start and see where it goes. Now complete, its synthesis has multiple forms: a unity of minds with change as bond – a divergence of possible directions to foster that change, and a framework for design control. I accept them all. Traveling this path, I found interesting people, each with a unique perspective. Each with a passion for change. There were no passive observers, only experts willing to share their convictions and act on them.

How will it end? Will some deus ex machina resolve the situation? Thomas Friedman² talks about America becoming a dictatorship for one day, to demand that utility companies work cooperatively to share and fix America's energy grid. Maybe an omniscient benevolent government overlord can figure out how to fix the building industry's malaise. Until then, we're all we've got: enlightened owners, change-ready contractors, and fed-up architects, students, and teachers determined to go about things in a smarter way, together, starting with figuring out how to manage ourselves.

The Collaborative Quest

Design and construction leaders have survived by delivering great projects to clients, even as we acknowledge our flaws. On every project, owners, designers, and contractors work together. We rely on one another. This has worked surprisingly well, despite cultural differences and process-driven obstacles. Still, after many years and billions of dollars, inefficiencies, budget overages, and schedule challenges persist – all stemming from our collective inability to manage design.

A growing disquiet remains among designers and builders. Architects who left during the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009 are reluctant to return. Contractors battle a scarcity of skilled onsite trade workers. What's behind all this? How can we handle these issues and the different behaviors of project players? Can we fix what is wrong?

Absurdities

The absurdities of inefficiency, lack of work/life balance, and waste remain inherent in design and construction. Demoralized teams, unhappy owners, and frenzied contractors are forced to redesign and build before design is complete. Yet we do it again and again. Albert Camus, in his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus,” offers a fitting reaction:

“I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion.”³

I'm with Camus – it's time for revolt. And through this book, I exercise freedom and share my passion to reverse the absurdity. Join me.

Willing Suspension of Disbelief

As we ruminate on the state of things, as you evaluate the veracity of these claims, ask yourself: Do you consider yourself a victim? A poor soul laboring inside a lost profession? Facing burnout and losing cache'? Or are you one of its champions, exemplifying its value through actions and work? What motivates you? How you think and what you do can remake who you are. Speakers in this book (including its author) rely on generalizations in making their claims. As best we can, we'll break them down and get specific. Until then, I ask for your trust on this anecdotal journey to seek answers. While this book probes expert wisdom to gather data and confirm hypotheses, it also offers design management principles to cement understanding and use.

A Symposium on the Future of Practice

In October 2017, I attended “AEC Entrepreneurship: Creating a High-Tech Building Economy – A Symposium on the Future of Practice” at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in Atlanta. Issues and themes discussed included:

• The shift from “service” to “product design” in the design professions
• New organizational forms
• Supply chain integration and management
• Change influences external to the design profession (e.g. manufacturing and prefabrication)

Here's what conference presenters shared to frame the issues:

“When I founded the AEC Integration Lab at Georgia Tech in 2005, it was a problem. The contractors wanted to talk about problems onsite this week, [while] the research students wanted to talk about theoretical, leading edge work that would come to fruition in 10 years.”

– Chuck Eastman, 10/6/17, Founder, Georgia Tech Digital Building Lab

“At Columbia, I had a studio addressing anxiety about moving from service to product. As architects, we value the one-off nature of what we do. I'm trying to elevate this for even more impact at Georgia Tech, to create an educational system to prepare the next generation. I see six future practice drivers:

• Integration (we have to work with others)
• Specialization
• Automation
• Research
• Organization
• Value
• Transformation is happening. And it's coming from outside our industry.

“Design firms are getting paid more for change management services than for traditional design services per Jim Cramer and the Design Futures Council.”

“We're setting up vertical studios. Teams define a topic, choose an interdisciplinary partner, then look for funding. But the traditional architectural educational system hasn't supported that kind of interdisciplinary approach. And the accreditation board reinforces the old norm. It's a problem.”

– Scott Marble, Program Chair, Georgia Tech, School of Architecture

“It's rare to have the trust and respect for each other's minds where you can listen, hear, and see something deeper in what they say – that's collaboration.”

– Daniel Kahneman

“We got tired of trying to convince people to do things a different way. So, we decided to ignore what the rest of the world has done and do it ourselves.”

“When you think of building design like product design, the full promise of the feedback loop is realized. We engage with what's actually happening. We start with a research team, pose questions, do interviews, collect data, and use that information to inform design… It's the difference between siloed disciplines and a guild approach. More like deployment on a mission-based task. When we only had 15–20 people there was no bureaucracy, just direct communication. Little teams, like startups, that built autonomously. Each had capabilities for fabrication, surveying, construction management, sourcing, logistics, and a supply chain. We're doubling every year. We did 6 million SF in 2017, we'll do 12 million next year. We're redesigning how we work every year. We have to.”

“We hold the risk, so we can do whatever we want. Uncoordinated drawings become hedged assessments. No time is spent talking about fault. It's a global strategy with local tactics, so we allow for deviation. We give authorship, authority and control at the team level.”

– Federico Negro, WeWork

“I'm interested in the intersection of technology and project delivery—the exchange of information and risk. That affects how you get to widespread change. The building industry is sub-optimized to the point of failure. How do the players relationships change as a result? The BIM problem is largely done. As we've seen in the conference today, AECOM, Katerra, WeWork, all are horizontal attempts to eliminate transactions. Now, architects make construction documents and “dare” contractors to build from them. The problem is the supply chain structural challenges.

“We need to isolate the pieces and optimize performance. Then, the exchanges will evolve on a different set of transactional principles. We need to control outcomes by controlling the supply chain.”

– Phil Bernstein, Technology Consultant, Assistant Dean, Yale University College of Architecture

These leading change agents and thought leaders opened the door to a series of deeper conversations that help us understand why our siloed professions persist, and what we can do about it. Let's open our minds and listen to what they say.

The Emperor

It has become clear that design management is the unclothed emperor in the room. We do not talk about it, it lingers lonely in the background. We have conditioned ourselves to expect it to be delinquent. As a designer, you know management is needed, but those tasks are not what you signed up for. Yet clients and contractors care deeply about management. In the often-conflicted reality of practice, managing design is a fundamental question and has been for as long I have been involved. Likely for centuries. Just read Brunelleschi's Dome⁴. Author Ross King recounts the architect Brunelleschi doing cost estimates, being over budget, and needing value analysis cost reduction, all after competing for the work. That was 500 years ago. How can these issues be 500 years old and still not understood? One notable difference: Brunelleschi was intimately involved in deciding (and designing) how his creation would be built. He had to confront reality by devising ingenious cranes, gears, and mechanisms to bring his creation – the dome – to fruition. Today, we pass these things off as the contractor's means and methods. Clearly, the “master builder” is a bygone concept. Rightly so. Things are too complex for any one entity to manage everything. What to do?

Punctuated Equilibrium

As we look to necessary adaptation, most of us have a limited understanding of evolution. We imagine a straight, ever-inclining line. Experts tell us that things remain in stasis until an external force exerts pressure on a system or species. It might be the Ice Age or a forest fire, the invention of computers, or the internet. Whatever it is forces necessary adaptation. These evolutionary “cusps” generate stepped, not gradual change. Evolutionists call it “punctuated equilibrium.” Said another way, most of us don't change until we have to – or want to. This adaptation distinguishes survivors. Contrary to popular belief, Darwin didn't coin “survival of the fittest.” He said:

“It's that organism most readily adaptable to change that survives.”

– Charles Darwin

There's a difference between being the strongest, smartest, or fastest at a single point in time and being the best adapter over the long haul – Darwin's “fitness.” Which are you? Evolution selects based on survival traits. If we don't change, we face extinction. The data suggesting necessary changes exist. Let's use them. Longevity is a good success metric. Adapters survive.

Shifting Expectations, Value and Capitalization: Vicious Cycles

The equilibrium-punctuating events over these decades have had an unanticipated consequence. Beyond making it harder to cope with change they have shifted owners' expectations. Now that chaos theory and Moore's Law have given us software, hardware, the internet, and automation, owners expect teams to deliver buildings at close to the same rate these same owners can do a Google search. “Google can give it to me in seconds. Amazon can ship it to me tomorrow. Why can't a good team design and build my project in months?” They can, with a prepared owner and the right processes. Without those things, they don't stand a chance, but many are forced to try.

To get to the bottom of why these old ways persist let's look from several angles.

From a design lens, the average practitioner was not trained to think as an entrepreneur. Design culture has not attracted or rewarded professionals with finance or technology backgrounds. It celebrates award-winning designers – so-called “starchitects.” The commoditization of the profession and its fees prevents most design firms from funding recapitalization. (See the Bernstein and Kanner interviews in Chapters 6 and 13.) Finally, the industry doesn't generate the profit levels required to significantly invest in new technologies. Why? Architects' fees are stuck at the same level they were 20 years ago.

“There is scarcely any passion without struggle.”

– Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 73

Contractors build wooden formwork by hand, pour concrete, then tear the formwork down – an archaic method, but still cost effective due to available, inexpensive migrant labor. Optimists draw parallels to the air travel industry whose profitability languished for years until it could finally raise prices and reinvest in better planes and airports. The AEC industry is still searching for its value points and the epochal timing that will let it do the same. Until we change it, the cycle continues.

Landscape

In surveying the sometimes apocalyptic design and construction landscape, little can be gained from posing a Mad Max future scenario of contractors, owners, and architects roaming the planet, killing one another off to survive. Based on leading practitioners' feedback, I borrow insight to pose recommendations for a positive future state. Far from being a searing indictment of the professions of architecture or construction, or their decline, the book posits challenges:

• Architects: Get with it! Learn to be servant leaders from industry leaders who have conquered management demons and figured out how to design and manage concurrently. Get outside of your traditional self-indulgence or comfort zone. Lead by example. Prove your value and learn to be teammates.
• Owners: Lead and engage with your teams. You do not have to know it all to lead designers well.
• Contractors: Practice random acts of kindness. Help your partners manage the unmanageable. Look out for everyone's interest.
• Trade Contractors and Manufacturers: Insert yourself into teams. Add nascent value.
• Students and Educators: Become agile. Let go of historic idiosyncrasies. Prepare practitioners for our current reality. Integrate future thinking. Shape a new culture, value model, attitude, and skill set.

Together, we can have a profound impact on creating more potent relationships and a richer collaboration landscape.

Self-Imposed Disservice

A recurring theme in many interviews is the architect's profitability. Fixed percentage, lump sum, or hourly fees constrain profit and limit innovation. Owners and AEs pine for a better way but are low on change tolerance and motivation. What we are doing is not working. Let's coach owners and project mates to set fees, schedules, budgets, and incentives that reward performance and value, not treat our design work as a subpar commodity. Can we agree on that? Fee reduction in the face of competition is a false economy in the long run.

Stereotyping

Stereotypes in any form present frightening challenges to overcome. They persist in our industry, but we do not have to resign ourselves to typecasting. Its very nature compels us to genuine change. Client and partner feedback and metrics, along with anecdotal surveys and experience, suggest inefficient teams are still too common. Recurring stereotypes plague us, including these:

• Owners “are” faced with business uncertainty; behind schedule on activating their projects; challenged to make decisions; unable to read drawings, use BIM, or understand current design practices; too busy to manage teams; reliant on contractors and architects to get along and deliver their projects.
• Architects “are” often behind schedule; designing over budget; less adapt in business currencies (time, money, risk); culturally isolated; ceding consultant control; lagging in digital technology; fee and profit poor; time pressed; challenged by code, consultant, regulatory, and material complexities; pressured to shape a new generation of leaders.
• Contractors “are” insensitive to, or ignorant of, design processes; schedule and cost driven; without regard for design; claiming the architect's territory.

Can we change? Can we prove “them” wrong?

Overlooking Things

I get reflective as I gaze back on the profession I have been a part of for 50 years. How are we doing these days? I ask.

“Fine, if you overlook a few things.” ⁶

In that time, the universe we knew became a multiverse of tools, experts, digital processes, and communication modes. Some of us are having trouble adapting to it all and wondering what we can do. Including me. But it's hard to overlook things anymore. Design and construction are mature markets, yet after several decades are still in the early stages of adapting to the new economy. It's now clear that new forms of technology, process, and collaboration are required to embrace that shift. This book talks about how.

Answers are predictable when you ask practitioners how they feel about the state of things. Complaints ensue. A few optimists cheerily share half-full outlooks. But, after the venting ends, what you discover from the great majority is complacency. When asked how things are, the predominance of players agree with John Prine's assessment from his song “Pretty Good”:

“Pretty good, not bad, I can't complain. But actually everything's about the same.”

But they do complain. They have for years. The “same” condition described is one of declining profitability and increasing complexity. Not enough has happened to react or adapt.

Servant Leadership

Designers are misunderstood. In their hearts they are interested in long-term value creation, not a quick fix or fast buck. But they need help with delivering and getting paid from the rest of us. Because without them what do we have? Most likely an on-time, on-budget, God-awful mess where nobody would want to live or work. Are you with me? This book is about leadership and servant leadership, understanding and empathy, compassion and support. Managing design is about creating a shared sense of purpose: designers and builders who work together better. If that is not what you are here for, you may want to move on. If it is, let's go.

“Life is hard. It’s harder when you’re stupid.”

– John Wayne

Fundamental Flaws and Changed Conditions

In the theoretical “good old days,” AIA contracts, practice and processes were linear and assumed little change. Owner programs formed the basis for design. Contractors built based on largely complete, coordinated document sets. All this in a reasonable time frame. Architects used experience, judgment, and intuition. No machines, and limited data informed them as they worked alone or in small groups with little architect/contractor interaction. Architects got paid fixed or hourly fees absent financial incentives. Under this “fixed” worldview and slower moving era, owners who changed their minds, and contractors who discovered errors or omissions in the documents grappled with change orders and delays.

We do not live in that world anymore. While most design firms still labor under commoditized fees, they now have interest in surviving in a profession some say is “three recessions away from extinction.” Yet they show minimal ability to redesign their processes or value propositions. Those who want to revalue their services must reengineer themselves offline, on projects, or in radical new ways.

New Realities

In today's projects, things are different. Concurrent, not linear, phased processes are the norm. Change is constant. Contemporary teams know:

• Programs are often nonexistent, insufficient, self-created, and ever-evolving.
• Everything is changing and there is lots of data.
• A wealth of powerful, complex, largely-untapped machines, software, and infrastructures exist.
• It takes lots of people and mandatory interaction to cope with it all in much less time.

No wonder practitioners (and the people in this book) are talking. Borrowing Robert Venturi's analytical method, Tables 1 2 3 and 4 below contrast the new contexts, design conditions, and drivers that shape current versus past practice, the “complexity and contradiction” of modern projects.

“Quality,” Construction Administration, and the Afterlife of Design

Clients are most concerned about the quality of the final product. Long after the schedule, budget, design and experience are over, the building remains. Design, the construction it drives, and any design management discussion should serve the full project life cycle. Attention has traditionally focused on three areas: time, money and drawings – during design. The Project Design Controls framework speaks to starting projects, design scheduling, designing to budget, and the quality of design documents. But what about finishing them and building the building?

“Everybody is a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We're all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos.”

– David Cronenberg

“If … self-respect springs from “the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life” then rising to anger upon feeling slighted by another is a maladaptive abdication of that responsibility.”

– Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, 12/10/20171

It is clear we need new processes for designing, building, and collaborating. For architects, this includes demonstrating value and devising new ways of getting paid.⁷ These methods must accommodate and embrace change, machines, data, and people, not ignore them. For all of us, it means new ways to manage design processes to help creative teammates shore up their historic shortcomings.