ARCHITECTURAL FIRM CASE STUDY:
ANDREW ARCHITECTURE
AND
ARCHITECTURE 501 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN TEAM MAGENTA MAREK PULA RICHARD IGNACZ RAYA JAGHOUB KEGAN WITHAM ISAIAH FELTON NILOOFAR MOHEBBI ASHTIANI ADRIENNE STROHM
FELL
DESIGN
ANDREW FELL ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN Case Study 515 Hickory St #101, Champaign, IL 61820 In corporation with:
ARCHITECTURE 501: Architectural Parctice Team Magenta: Spring 2017 April 11, 2017
Marek Pula Richard Ignacz Raya Jaghoub Kegan Witham Isaiah Felton Niloofar Mohebbi Ashtiani Adrienne Strohm
In corporation with:
CONTENTS Abstract Executive Summary Introduction Main Body
Project Type Focuse
Business Strategy
Organization, Behavior & Design
Legal Aspects of Practice
Marketing Strategy
Project Delivery
Project Management
Financial Management
Risk Management & Professional Liability
Professional Ethics
Human Resource Management
Concluding Statement
Supplemental Data
ABSTRACT
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
INTRODUCTION
PROJECT TYPE FOCUS About 45% of the company’s focus is on apartment buildings (new construction and remodels), 35% residential (new and remodel) and 20% commercial (usually on the bottom floor of apartment buildings). The firm’s motto is to get every project in Champaign-Urbana. We will take pretty much any project but we especially welcome bigger projects and/or projects that allow us to be more creative. They mostly design in Illinois (98%) but have also done projects in Iowa, Tennessee, Mississippi, Wisconsin and (I think) Colorado.
ORGANIZATION, BEHAVIOR & DESIGN Conception and Growth Andrew Fell, principal and owner at Andrew Fell Architecture & Design, achieved his firm roots by attaining both his bachelor’s and masters degree in architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Throughout the following years, Andrew and his wife, Deborah Fell, worked in east coast states such as Mississippi, Missouri, and New Hampshire, but eventually chose to permanently reside in Champaign to raise a family. Fell worked for various companies such as Gary Olsen, Russ Dankert, and the Gorski Reifsteck firm. After being disappointed with the operating style in the firms he worked for that prioritized work and put family second, Fell decided to set his sights on ownership. In 1999, Fell decided to test his luck by opening his own firm which he still owns and operates to this day. He opened his firm with two employees who both had to work from home due to child-birth and family raising. In 2010, Fell welcomed his third employee who now has four children under 10 years of age and also works from home with the exception of 2 office days a week. Interns were hired each summer to gain business and output momentum, including Adrienne Strohm, who has been working with Fell for four years full-time. Employees have come and gone, but Fell Architecture has gained a consistent workforce of 2 additional full-time employees, 1 full-time intern, 1 student model maker, and 1 student drafter. Fell Architecture & Design performs an evenly distributed amount of commercial, multi-family residential, and single-family residential projects. In 2013, AFA performed 63 local projects including a narrow duplex near First Street and Armory in Champaign. The most reputable project AFA has completed is a four-story duplex at 1004 S. First Street in which massing leans out of the structure. This project was completed for Scott Cochrane, a repeat client, who is a tavern owner and apartment developer. Since 2013, Fell has completed residential renovations for many University of Illinois professors.
Management Theories AFA operates on a form of “principalship since a majority of the responsibility rests in Andrew Fell, who is the owner as well as the principal. As principal, Fell has eliminated drafting and 3d modeling from his workflow. As a result, he receives commission and delegates individuals to projects. Since most employees work from home, project management and delivery is dependent upon coordination through email. Overall, management has shifted from Fell to empowering employees with entire projects.
Organizational Culture Being the only single office to house AFA employees in the region, the firm in Champaign has a total of 10 employees: 1 principal (the only licensed architect), 2 consultants, 3 interns, and 4 design associates. Since the number of employees is not large and most work from home, the form consists of a singular studio that stretches responsibility from design to finance. This asset of work-from-home directly influences the organizational flexibility and workflow. Employees are positioned at workstations along the perimeter and since each is responsible for their own projects, adjacencies regarding professional experience do not occur often. More than often, employees may be moved based on availability. However, each employee has a
special background and degree such as a bachelor in interior design, a bachelor in computer science, or an MBA dual-degree that may seemingly demand adjacency to similar skillsets for social support/resources. All employees are expected to contain some skillset in IT and some form of marketing/financial aspects.
Teams can be hierarchically organized when there is a pressing project that needs to be completed on time. In this case, employees who are working in the office remain at their stations and work on projects simultaneously. All employees (which exception to Fell) do some form of drafting, 3d modeling, and interaction with clients. The contextual dimensions of the employees who work from home affects the diverse proximity to clients. One employee works from Iowa and a client has been attained as a result.
The structure is directly consistent with the strategic vision of Fell who devotes work-life balance heavily towards the family realm.
Culture Acclimation While AFA does not provide “lunch and learns”, break-out spaces allow moral support and social resources to transgress from weekly meals that employees take together, sometimes as an act of goodwill when someone leaves the firm.
Organization Behavior Organizational arrangement and behavior directly influences AFA’s operating style. Because of the need to focus on a healthy lifestyle rather than high income, AFA allows its employees to work from home and provide the ability to generate clients nationwide based on relationships outside of the professional discipline. Income is something that the firm always wishes to increase, but because of this focus on family life, everyone essentially becomes their own untitled project manager. This organizational culture guides people’s behavior in terms of performance because working from home removes the pressures of deadlines and dreads of commute time. Employees enjoy working from home because commute time is a negative in that it removes priceless work hours. Andrew Fell as owner directly permeated this culture to employees by instilling this organizational lifestyle into their performance and behavior. Most individuals at AFA find refuge in the firms disorganized collation by finding value in it.
Communication, Coordination & Structure Changes A majority of AFA’s coordination and communication occurs through servers supported by a BIM design process. Since the office space allows workstations to be located in close proximity, oral coordination is never out of reach. Weekly meetings are very rare and occur once every six months. Individuals are sometimes shifted around due to availability and schedules (school, etc). Structure changes can occur if an employee falls behind on workload. If this occurs, additional employees are assigned to the
ailing individual. Clients also request revisions most of the time, so if the original project associate (depending if they have additional workload) is busy, projects may switch to a new individual. This allows employees a healthy exposure to numerous projects and issues.
Organization Structure AFA opened in a residential house at 302 Wests Hill Street in Champaign within the confines of a single room that was eventually converted into an office. After adding a second room, the space began to become crowded from workflow and employee count. Fell has since moved his office to 515 North Hickory Street in 2014, a former Blind Man Building, and expedited the remodeling process such as the addition of a second story for apartments and layout alterations. Renovations continue to be performed to enhance efficiency and generate increased deskspace such as alterations to the “office workspace and overflow”, the back two stations and the expansion of the “boss” station. This location also provides unique assets: proximity to downtown, little traffic on Hickory, and is visually easy to find.
Organizational Life Cyle Andrew Fell Architecture & Design is experiencing peak employment. The company has doubled in size over the past two years growing from five employees to ten. Considering the start of the firm took initiative 20 years ago, this is a large number. Resources and the attraction of working from home have grown and allowed this increase in employment. This strategy is consistent with its strategic vision of providing employees with a healthy lifestyle while generating high levels of client satisfaction and repeat clients.
Skill Development Performance reviews do not occur at AFA. Each employee is responsible for skillset development which occurs through the healthy circulation of projects. Projects circulate if the original project associate is busy and provides health exposure to many different
case scenarios. In this regard, BIM and technology becomes the supervisor and acts as a mentor to employees. Interns are essentially exposed to the full experience of the firm from the beginning. While it may be overwhelming for interns, social support is bountiful and provides employees the ability to ask questions. While AFA does not formally have a mentor program, Andrew Fell acts as the unofficial mentor. Fell is the only licensed architect at AFA so mentorship initially begins within his professional expertise. As mentioned before, smaller levels of mentorship occur based on the interaction of employees and technology/projects.
LEGAL ASPECTS Relationships With Consultants Two women that work part time from home are hired as consultants for the firm. One is a licensed architect, the other has her bachelor’s degree but years of drafting experience. Both are full time mothers and have been working for the firm for at least ten years each.
Illinois Practice Act Architectural seals are displayed on the first sheet of the drawing sets that are submitted to the city. The principal signs off usually. On projects in Tennessee and Iowa, the “consultant” in Iowa seals the drawings because she is licensed there. Because there is only one registered architect in the firm, he has primary control over most projects. Employees may take over a project and occasionally check in about the project progress, but the principal ultimately has control over all the development.
MARKETING AND STRATEGY Return Clients One way is being willing to work very personally with the client. And although we may not have the fastest and most accurate work, in this area, we are known to be creative and a firm with great design work. Many of our clients are repeat clients because of this. We are able to get creative within the constraints we are given. Many clients have been our clients for years. Several of them own very big companies in Champaign-Urbana and therefore, they have quite a bit of influence even in their personal lives; they can further spread our name to other potential clients.
Marketing Strategy The firm just want to build connections, especially with people we think may have the means to not only connect us with potential clients, but also those who have the means to allow us to make something interesting. Because of the large number of buildings we do in the area we also are able to spread our name through articles in the news (regarding new construction). We also have a new, revamped website: andrewfell.com. This strategy hasn’t changed much, and no investment has been made in marketing research. The firm’s design practices doesn’t market to anyone in specific. Every once in a while a new client will appear due to a referral from a previous client.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT Resource Allocation and Monitoring The owner/principal of the firm oversees everything. He assigns different tasks to people mostly based on what needs done soonest (will give the task to someone more experienced and faster) or who currently has the least amount to work on. With the people that work at home, he routinely checks on them usual via email and usually when the client is pushing for more work. For those in the office, it’s easy because he can easily ask the employees what their status is. Usually, he will ask at least at the beginning of the day what we’re working on and finding out where we are at on certain projects. He will usually tell us if there is something more pressing we need to work on instead. Essentially, it’s usually on the principal to delegate.
Sub-Tasks Often it depends on the type of project. For a typical apartment building: it will sometimes start as a “competition” (unless the project is from a repeat client) and one of the employees will be asked to put together schematic floor plans, elevations and renderings. Usually this comes together as a booklet. Once the client is won over, then meetings with the client begin, generally with the project manager and maybe one other person depending on the size of the project in attendance. Next, there is a stage of refining floor plans and the basic aesthetic of the exterior by continuous correspondence with the client. Once these are more or less finalized, construction projects will begin. If a smaller project, the firm will do all the architectural, structural and MEP drawings. If large, a subcontractor will be used. Usually, it comes down to two major tasks: correspondence with the client and making the construction docs.
Task Duration The principal has a general idea of how long a project should take from experience. If the client is particularly demanding (or a “big shot”) we will try to get the project done faster. To be honest, if the client is not very demanding, the firm will take advantage of this and work on their project at a slower rate so as to be able to spend more time on the more demanding projects.
Sub-Tasks Often it depends on the type of project. For a typical apartment building: it will sometimes start as a “competition” (unless the project is from a repeat client) and one of the employees will be asked to put together schematic floor plans, elevations and renderings. Usually this comes together as a booklet. Once the client is won over, then meetings with the client begin, generally with the project manager and maybe one other person depending on the size of the project in attendance. Next, there is a stage of refining floor plans and the basic aesthetic of the exterior by continuous correspondence with the client. Once these are more or less finalized, construction projects will begin. If a smaller project, the firm will do all the architectural, structural and MEP drawings. If large, a subcontractor will be used. Usually, it comes down to two major tasks: correspondence with the client and making the construction docs.
Project Scope & Communication Through communication with the client. This may take several meetings to refine what the client wants (usually they don’t know what they really want). If they have a general idea, we will design options and see what they think - back and forth, back and forth. Whoever is “leading” the project is the contact. Contact happens essentially as needed or if the client is particularly pushy (most of them are).
Decision Making Hierarchy Usually for smaller projects, employees in the office will have their own projects. They will be in charge of making most of the decisions on their own. If for some reason there is a need for a big decision to be made, it is given to the principal to decide. He is very laid back, though, and doesn’t mind giving control to the employees. In fact, I think he would love for his employees to be able to make all the decisions. All the employees (except for the interns) have the same title. However, there is one man who is more of the “second in command” to the principal and he works on some larger projects and will sometimes be more in charge of delegating tasks regarding these projects. From there, it’s based on seniority (who’s been at the firm the longest) but it’s usually pretty democratic and collaborative. If the project manager is the principal (which it usually is), he is in charge of communication with the client and contractors, the financial stuff, the “sealing”. He doesn’t do any work on the computer. He will sometimes hand-draw schematic drawings but the employees will do all of the work that needs to be done on the computer. Employees don’t feel the need to impress and can feel comfortable asking questions to more senior employees. Therefore, the project manager doesn’t always have to be the one to answer questions and assist with minor things. There’s a general more laidback feel in the firm when there aren’t particularly bossy/entitled people in the firm. The drawback is that the project manager does have a lot of responsibility. While they may not be in charge of making all the drawings, they still have to ensure they are correct and do all of the background work with the client. It can be a lot when there’s over a hundred projects a year in a ten person firm.
FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT
PROFESSIONAL ETHICS Ethics is an important issue at Andrew Fell and is always taken with utmost care. One such issue regularly encountered by the firm is attempting to strike a balance between designing for the owner or. designing for the end user, particularly in relation to student housing. Most often, developers favor quick construction that ensures as many leasable units as possible, while residents would prefer open rooms, and quality construction. These issues often come to a head and it is up to the architect to strike a happy medium between the two, however that is not always possible and sometimes requires a choice to be made.
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT Human Resource No dedicated Human Resource Management department exists in Andrew Fell Architects because of its limited size. Due to this, the firm principal, Andrew handles the majority of issues that may arise but most often issues are resolved between individuals before they are discussed with the principal. Andrew Fell has a yearly review system where all employees come together to discuss the direction of the firm, workflow and how to improve it, the work itself, and even company morale. These reviews are less focused on the individual, and more upon how the individual is a part of the firm.
Hiring/Firing The firm receives a large quantity of resumes on a fairly frequent basis. A list of them is maintained until the firm finds itself in need of more help, after which the principal, will sift through the options available. Often times he will get the opinions of other associates and individuals to see if they deem them a potential new hire. If they do, then they are contacted for an interview. Often, new hires and interviews have been informal as at least four of the staff have been hired based off of reference from another individual without a formal interview. The firm rarely if ever has had to terminate an employee. More often than not, it is summer interns that leave the firm of their own will that account for the majority of employee turnover.
Education New employees are subjected to a trial by fire when they first enter the firm. The firm’s size dictates a distinct lack of support structure available for those new in the profession. This slack is often taken up by the more senior of those working there in a very informal manner. Those just beginning their IDP training are shown the basics of what
they need to know to draft and how the firm works. Luckily it becomes easy to fulfill the required hours of the AXP because individuals are often exposed to many different phases of construction. As such, it is unlikely that newer employees will be stuck only drafting. Full time employees have often completed all required education, anyone who has not is often an intern that plays a much smaller role in the firm.
CONCLUDING STATEMENT