Knowledge to forge your future:
Managing the practice
“Architectural practice has become one of the major design problems of our time. While addressing this problem will demand changes in how we practice, it must begin with a redefinition of design.”
Thomas Fisher, Dean, University of Minnesota College of Design
Knowledge to forge your future:
Managing client relationships
Start a project in the Client’s Comfort Zone, and keep it there through to the end – no matter what it takes – and you will have a satisfied, loyal and trusting client.
Knowledge to forge your future:
Managing risk
Risk shadows your every step whether you think about it or not. Anyone can sue you any time for anything. Ignore practice risk at your peril.
Defending your practice takes time, money and raises your insurance premiums.
The better alternative: Keep an eye on risk. Walk toward it, embrace it, and create the low-risk practice that will give you the competitive advantage you need.
Knowledge to forge your future:
Managing quality
Quality, at one end of the spectrum, simply means fulfilling requirements. Less is failure.
At the other end of the spectrum, quality means exceeding all expectations, creating an outcome that raises the bar, that sets a new standard of excellence.
A benchmark example is Sir Norman Foster’s Millau Viaduct in France.
Near Millau is an equally impressive 2,000 year old Roman aqueduct; amazing quality for its time: Pont du Gard. Read more.
Photo credit: © CEVM Eiffage / Foster+Partners
Knowledge to forge your future:
Managing design
Design and managing design process, however closely intertwined, are different functions requiring different mindsets – perhaps thinking “outside the square”.
Knowledge to forge your future:
Managing projects
How to manage projects has evolved in the 85 years since the Empire State Building was built.
Dozens of new strategies have been – and are being – tested, but no silver bullet has yet been found. Where are we now?