Every Monday morning, team members in the Philadelphia and Princeton offices gather together via video-conference to discuss firm news and upcoming events and projects. Since 2003, founding partner Allan Kehrt, FAIA, has delivered his Monday Morning Musings, weekly slices of personal insight into the design profession, to the firm. To comment on any of his posts, send an email to us. We look forward to hearing from you. |
| September 26, 2005 Lean We will be employing a new approach to designing and building in our Lawrence University Campus Center project. The owner and the contractor, who is already on board, are inviting us to become a part of a project approach called Lean Construction; they are convinced it will result in significant savings. The process concept was developed originally through the efforts of W. Edwards Deming as he applied his management expertise to Japanese industries beginning in the 1950s. His management methods had a profound effect as the country recovered from the devastation of World War II, and the success of his approach was largely responsible for their ability to enter the United States automobile market and beat us at our own game. The process was perfected by Toyota but is now used extensively throughout the world. Because the process has largely been used by single corporations in pursuit of efficiency and quality control, it has never been adopted by the American construction industry that has operated on an adversarial model for its lifetime. Adopting it to our industry requires a new cooperative relationship among architect, client, prime contractor, all the way down to subcontractors who will be brought on early in the project to price and purchase materials and equipment as decisions are made. The project is exciting and the process is interesting; time will teach us how it really works, but we are optimistic. For those interested in reading more try: www.leanconstruction.org |
| September 19, 2005 Rebuilding The city of New Orleans is in ruins and the next step for the future of that wonderful city is unclear. However, not since the Chicago fire has a greater opportunity existed for America to rethink how we organize and build our cities. And not since then have we been in a position to fail as spectacularly as we might. America has shown itself to be less than visionary in the way we have approached planning in the last century and it will be a tragedy for the city of New Orleans and America as well if we are unable to make this process and product a shining example of intelligent urban design. There have been great strides made in the understanding of urban environments during the last thirty or forty years as we built and demolished our Pruitt Igoes, watched sprawl devour our countryside, and found some success in rebuilding and repopulating a few of our inner cities. We really do know what makes good urban environments and we know that without vision and leadership, and properly designed economic incentives for good development those environments will never come to be. As it always is, the future is ours to make. Let's ensure we do it well. |
| September 12, 2005 Traffic Congress recently passed a transportation bill in excess of 250 billion dollars, the majority of it for highway improvement. It will make traffic worse. Study after study has shown that adding lanes to existing highways or building new ones will increase use until the traffic returns to the point it was at prior to the addition. The phenomenon is known as "induced traffic" and is only now being recognized for what it is. It is the result of the initial reduced traffic that new roads or more lanes create. People reexamine their commuting time and decide that they can live further away from their workplace. As more people do this and as developers build more housing that is now a greater, but acceptable distance from centers of employment, the traffic returns. Very few traffic engineers consider induced traffic in their computer models, but it is what makes their dire predictions a self fulfilling prophesy. They predict there will be more traffic so new roads are necessary; when they are built, they fill with cars, thus proving them right. But other studies have shown that removing roads will actually reduce traffic as people find alternative ways to travel. As we try desperately to fight the sprawl that is enveloping us, we need to understand thoroughly the issues involved. |
| September 6, 2005 Transitions There is a growing industry among management consultants to provide services that help the owners of closely held companies transition to new ownership. The nature of assistance they provide is particularly helpful to service companies, which are difficult to value inasmuch as they produce no goods. As firms grow and younger individuals assume positions of responsibility, those individuals want to understand that they have a future with the organization. Consequently, there needs to be a plan in place that allows them to both understand there is a future, and allows them to take some responsibility for creating it. There are architectural firms such as Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott that have continued to transition from one set of new owners to another for over one hundred and twenty five years. It is clear they have a plan in place for succession and that it works. When a successful firm reaches a point that its owners understand it will continue on after they are gone, the implementation of an ownership transition plan is one of the most important thing they can do. |
