Multi-tasking

Just thinking about why it's been a while since my last post. Work has been busy, and not just for me, it's the whole office running around like crazy. It's the good kind of busy though, and everybody seems to be handling the stress well.

I'm assisting on a new project which is going to be technically very interesting and should be a Revit project, but isn't. The garage project is going full steam ahead, and (sadly) the big headache project just won't go away.

I've had about two weeks now where almost every day I'm bouncing between multiple tasks on multiple projects with each task interrupting another. The weird thing is, I like it. It used to be that this would stress me out and I'd go home frustrated. Now I feel like I'm accomplishing a lot in my day and am leaving work satisfied. What a change from the fear I was feeling a few months ago.

I was just thinking that the blog was meant to help me learn how to be a leader, and that now that I'm leading more maybe I didn't need to blog as much.

I'm still not a Leader yet though. As good as I feel about myself, I know that in the eyes of my employers I'm not where they want me to be yet. This is good. It's not supposed to be easy after all. I'm glad that I'm enjoying it.

Knock on wood.

What an Architect Does

We stretch the truth in public, or just omit relevant information that might be detrimental if admitted at the time.

As I've said before, things in my office are slow enough that people get asked to work at different levels than what we might normally wish to.  In my case it means that on one particular I'm working beneath a project manager that is younger than me, got licensed after me, but admittedly is much better at the job than I am.  I admit it's a little hard for my pride right now to be in this position, particularly because I'd like to be proving myself to my bosses as a PM on my own projects (which I am, but I could use a new project of my own right about now.), but like I said, this guy is good at what he does so I am learning from working under him.

One hallmark of his style is that he pushes a very aggressive timeline and we are running through schematic design, design development, pricing and contract/construction drawings at much faster pace than I'm used to.  Meanwhile he's managing several other projects and a new baby at home - like I said he's good, but he's no superman, you can tell the pace is tough on him and he is tired.  But he still produces results.

In parallel to this aggressive design/bidding track that he's got us on, he's also working with the town to get the project approved by the Historical Commission, this is similar to my Special Permit problem that is almost worked out.  He somehow managed to get us on the docket for the Historic Commission meeting the day before he's supposed to go on vacation for 2 weeks.  His time off was planned well in advance, but our boss, the Principal in Charge of the project got the sudden opportunity to go to Romania for 10 days over that same timeframe.  This is great because we were simultaneously pushing out a pricing package, and if all went right we'd have the Commission approval and 2 weeks for the bidders to review the drawings and for me to field their questions.  No problem.

Then the Town fails to advertise the hearing correctly and therefore have to delay it by a week.

This leaves me holding the bag.

At first my boss was at a loss for what to do, and I was a little put off that he didn't just ask me to do it right away.  Regardless, I told him I could do it.  (Authors note, I've never presented at a municipal hearing before).  Fortunately for my pride he agreed and the PM gave me a very short briefing on what the issues were while our boss emailed the client to tell them that not only would I be presentation, but that I done this many times before.

This is a lie, my boss knew it at the time, but the truth he was trying to convey to the client was that I could handle the situation and they didn't need to worry.

I spent the next week thinking of that line from Ghostbusters.  They're responding to the call at the hotel and the manager is clearly had no faith in Pete Venkman and the boys and Dan Ayroyd says: "Don't worry, do this kind of thing all the time."  We, the audience, know it's a lie and hilarity will ensue.

It did for them, and a bit for me as well, though I didn't get covered in ectoplasmic residue in the process.

The day comes, I'm late leaving, then I hit traffic (naturally) and I'm nervous because on top of all this I'm meeting the client for the first time.

I'm late to the meeting, but in time for our presentation slot, and fortunately the client intercepts me in the hall.  She's not far from my age and puts me right at ease with a smile and a warning to watch out for the woman on the Commission with the oxygen tank.  She slips me a letter from their neighbor saying they had reviewed the drawings and had no objection to the project - to any of you out there reading this thinking about going through a project like this, getting your abutters on board early is a HUGE help.

The petitioner before us is still going strong at 7:20, 5 minutes before I was supposed to start, which I was glad for because it gave me time to see how things worked there.  Turns out this Commission is a bunch of concerned citizens who mean well, but really want to meddle in how things happen in their town and don't really want to see things change.  All that the petitioner wanted was to put up a picket fence so her kids didn't accidentally chase a ball into the street.  Simple, go for it.  She spent nearly an hour with the panel talking about fence height (3 feet or 4 feet?), painted or not (of course it should be painted white), where it should be places in relation to the property line, and even the width and spacing of the pickets.

If that seems like a normal function of your government then you should really think long and hard about where your tax money goes!

In the end they kind of punted and gave her permission to move forward only after building a mock-up of the fence on site and submitting photos of it for further approval.  Gods help her.

Thankfully, my presentation didn't take as long as hers, and it seems that the panel was already 60% on board based on the preliminary drawings we had submitted to them.  The first question was about whether we'd let the copper roof patina (naturally darken and turn green over time), the answer to that is yes.  They wanted to know if the client knew the neighbors, which she does, and then she went on to claim that she had spoken to both neighbors and they were fine with the project.  After a few more questions answered satisfactorily they moved to approve our project and we were out the door in less than 20 minutes!

Outside my client admitted to me that she hadn't spoken to one of the neighbor's that she had claimed to, and she thought it was hilarious that we pulled this off even though I had never been to her house before! Ah, more little lies.  For a second I wanted to let her in on the secret that I had not done this before, but we were looking good in her eyes, no need to ruin that!

You see, even though I went to a lot of school to become an Architect, very little of what I learned was actually relevant to my day-to-day job.  In fact, the most important thing that happened to me at school was during my second semester of grad school when our professor assigned us a project and a presentation for each time the class met for 2 weeks.  That meant I had 2 days to pick a design solution, refine it, build a model, draw it and then present it.  Following that I had 4 days to do the same, then 2 then 4.  I learned pretty quickly how to make a little work seem like a lot of ideas in those 2 weeks, and by the end of the semester I knew I could present almost anything with little preparation.

That's a skill Architects share, and one that I had kind of forgotten about.  It's good to remember that I still have it.  

Change

Can people ever really change?

We all want to think that we can; that ending the bad habits we have is just one decision away. Yet we all know that seeing someone really change is rare. You might notice a change in someone when they've met a new person or started a new job, but like so many New Year's resolutions to make it to the gym, those changes tend to be fleeting and it's not long before that friend of yours is back to being like who they were before they tried to make the change. I know it sounds cynical but more often than not the honeymoon period ends.

Yet on another level, the events in our lives are constantly changing us. Sometimes its the mundane aspects of life, like rudeness on the street and other times it's major ones like becoming an aunt that change us. One of these experiences can renew your faith in a positive meaning of life, and the other can reinforce the futility of existence. The way life has changed you leading up to those experiences will shape which of those turns out to be the positive experience.

Time and time again it seems that experiences in life tend to only harden people, to make them keep things internalized and to not let others see them being vulnerable. Cynicism again, but it I don't think too many of you would disagree with that.

I had an experience in grad school where through a series of decisions that I and those around me had made led to me being alone for about a month straight. Classes were just over and many close friends moved away, there were two friends that I had actually pushed away on purpose (one for the better, the other less so), I was dating someone who was traveling for several weeks (we broke up right after she got back), I moved into a studio apartment, was looking for a job, had no TV, no internet (this was about 12 years ago), and my family was in another city. I had the self awareness to know that this experience would change me, and I was determined that it would make me stronger.

I spent a lot of that time reading pulpy science fiction and playing video games on my ancient computer. I knew pretty quickly that this experience wasn't good for me. i didn't exercise, I didn't volunteer, I didn't pick up any hobbies - in fact I did nothing to better myself at all. This was an opportunity that was terrible for me to miss, and miss it I did.

The purpose of this blog is for me to push myself to be better at my job. It's helping, but I don't need to simply be better at my job, I need to be better at my life. I had a bad experience a few years ago and I've internalized pretty much all of my response to it. This has lead me to some pretty dark places inside and once again I've managed to change myself for the worse without trying to or even realizing it until now. The negative effect that this has had on me effects all aspects of my life, and I'm sure those around me note that change in my everyday behavior. To be sure, I'm not spending all day moping, I do enjoy much of my day to day life, but this internalized grief weighs on me and has changed my humor. I'm less funny, more abrupt, withdrawn and irritable.

People can change, and I believe that we are dynamic beings constantly responding to an existence that can be very hard and very, very beautiful. But it's easier to be changed by life rather than actually being the one making the change. At this point for me it's like the sum of the parts of my are all balled up into the coma of a comet and the one small part of my psyche that has remained unchanged is leaning hard against that giant mass to try to change its course. I want a different orbit than the one I'm on, but do I have the energy to alter the direction of that mass?

As always, the Deep Beam has to try. His survival depends on it, but can anyone do that from within?

The truth is probably not, change comes from without, and so I need to find the place that will help me make the change to my orbit.

Life is always good at the starting line.

I had a meeting on Friday with my client and the General Contractor that we're in the process of hiring to do the project.  We did a walk-though of the house with a salvage expert and identified which items in the house might have some value in salvage and which could be thrown away.  We're basically discussing door panels, door hardware, windows, cabinets and plumbing fixtures.  It was really interesting because there's the potential for the 3 people already on the project (Homeowner, GC, Architect) to have 3 different ideas of what should stay and what should go.  For his part, the GC thought that everything should go, which is good because it meant that he read our drawings and specifications correctly.  I had some ideas of what might be able to be reused or have other salvage value, but some of it didn't make it into the drawings just yet because we hadn't met with the salvage person yet.  The Homeowner was disappointed that we weren't reusing more of the doors on the project, which is something that can still be up for debate.  He's got his eyes on some light fixtures that might be original to the house that he wants to clean up and reuse, but what surprised me though was that he also really wants to find a use for some wood panelling up on the third floor.

One of the bedrooms up there has some really beautiful tongue and groove wood boards that make up the entirety of the walls and ceilings (it's an attic space so much of the ceiling is sloping).  The feeling of the room is very much like an old cottage on a lake somewhere, and I would love to leave it as is, but its not the right thing for a house in suburban New England.  Any family that moved in there would tear it down or paint it over to make it a kids bedroom.  It would make a great home office, but it's very dark and masculine so it would be hard to work with.  More importantly, there's no insulation behind it so we have to take it down to insulate properly.

Between the 4 of us we came up with a plan for the Homeowner to meet up with one of the GCs workers and they would work together to try to un-install (not demolish) the wood panelling.  The client very much wants to learn and actually perform some work here, so this will be fun for him - in fact I'd like to help too, but I don't know if that'll fit my schedule.  The intention is for them to take the panelling down without destroying it and then he will spend some time figuring out how to clean it up while my boss and I try to come with a way to use.  I'm already thinking of cabinetry or some wall panelling in the mudroom, it's a neat design challenge that is pretty exciting really.

I know from past experience with this salvage operation there can be trouble with some GCs.  Sometimes they get a low price on demo because they're basically just going to take a sledge hammer to everything and throw it in the dumpster.  It's hard to reuse a smashed sink or bathtub, so that won't work for our salvager.  So, it will cost the GC more to un-install items and then they have to ask the client for more money on top of what the salvage company is charging to place all the salvaged material.  This can lead to bad feelings early on in a project because the client can feel that they're getting nickeled and dimes and can mean that the salvage isn't actually done due in order to cut costs.  This leads to a wasteful abandonment of useful material, and can cripple attempts to get points on the LEED for Homes rating system (a major goal on this project).

Fortunately, its looking like our GC has allowed for careful de-installation of much of the material we have in mind to salvage and so it looks like this particular problem won't actually be a problem.

I left that meeting with a good feeling because, for now at least, Client, Architect and GC are all on the same page.  I try to savor that feeling because it will surely not last.  There are 4 versions of what the project is, one in each of our minds, and another is embodied in the drawing and specifications that we base the contract on.  I can assure you that those 4 versions of the this project are not the same and at some point there's going to be a conflict between what's expected and what's been budgeted.  I can only hope that this conflict will be a while from now and will be minor.  My other project was a near total disaster of missed expectations and underdeveloped budgets and has lead to my company and the GC losing money.  I hope that I've learned some lessons from that and won't be repeating that experience here.

But for now, we all seem to be on the same page and are happy, and I'm going to try to hold on to that feeling for a while.  

I've got a bad feeling about this

It's a very distressing feeling when you're telling your boss that you understand what he wants you to do and that you have no problem getting it done in the required timeframe while looking him in the eye and getting the feeling that hes disappointed in you.

I had that feeling today and the only thing I can think that he's thinking is that I should've thought to do what he was telling me to do already.

The Deep Beam candid answer is that I had thought of much of what he was saying, but since it involved the Special Permit that we've been working on for months I was hesitant because I wasn't sure what the City wanted to see.

I hate this feeling because while I, and you True Believers, know that I'll do better next time, the next time I get into this kind of situation with this boss is likely to be a long time from now. What do I do in the meantime to let him know that I'm learning from my mistakes and from his experience?

One way is to simply lead, which is the theme of 2011, but that's not easy for me. I need some backbone building exercises.

I am trying to lead and in some situations I've done so effectively, but me taking the lead on a problem often means that my bosses don't find out there was a problem in the first place. Nice catch 22 huh? In don't really want to be That Guy who goes around telling stories about how awesome he is for handling things.

I guess I keep thanklessly going on trying my best.

Live via satellite.

Normally my postings are written hours or days after the event I'm describing, but today, on a very special installment of Deep Beam, I give you a posting mere minutes after the event.

I just had a phone conversation with a GC that I thought was simply to arrange a time to have a different phone conversation tomorrow with my boss. Instead it led to her almost walking away from the job. I'm stunned not only at the direction the call took, but also at how cool I remained through it.

First off, yes I said that the GC was a she, which many of you may know is rare, and I'll continue to call her that even though she is not actually licensed in this state. It's just convenient; she owns the company that has a licensed GC but so far I speak with her more than him.

The gist of things are that she's the higher of two bids by about $300K, and she knows it. Our internal agenda for tomorrows call was to make sure that the low guy hadn't missed something that she had caught, but we told her it was to better understand her costs (also true). When I picked up the phone I hoped I'd get her to say that we're on for tomorrow and that's that. Instead she went right into talking about her number for the Electrical scope of work and how they priced the drawings and specs and her number was fair. Then she went on to say that it was professionally disrespectful to her that we were having phonecalls and not meetings. That was the first time I was stunned by her call. I tried to explain that we hadn't even gotten to the call yet since we kept having calls to set up the call!

The conversation went on and at a certain point I just decided to let her go and I'd say as little as possible since she was off on a tear and going a mile a minute. Pretty soon it came out that each number in the price had a 15% fee added to it for potential mistakes or other cost overruns. She's also charging about 13% straight overhead and profit on everything, therefore the client is paying 28% of the cost of the job that potentially does not go to any physical thing that will be part of his house when it's done. Amazing. When I told her that the other GC wasn't charging the additional 15% overrun fee because if he made a mistake it would come out of his profit she was floored. Basically she wasn't willing to put her profit at risk in the way that is pretty standard in the industry. That 15% delta is going to lose her this job.

At this point I still hoped to get a time to talk tomorrow, but then she went on. She straight out told me that there was no way she could do the job for the lower GCs price. Effectively she was taking herself out of the running in this competition! I thanked her for being candid and told her that if that's the case it was the clients call. A few minutes later the call was over and there was no need to have the one tomorrow.

I'm proud of myself for keeping cool and not punting the call to my boss, but also because I realize that I couldn't have had that conversation a year ago. Not only am I more confident now, but I also have more experience and know better what to say to people who are older and more/differently experienced than I am. It's amazing to have experiences that allow for such clear self-examination.

Feels good.

Change Orders

As promised last week, here's the post about Change Orders.

So what's a change order?

A change order is the instrument by which the construction cost as stipulated in the contract is either increased or decreased.

When do you need a change order?

When the scope of works is changed, which can happen for any of a number of reasons.  The homeowner can add scope by deciding they want something more than what was in the original scope, like say a jacuzzi, or another bedroom, which would be a straight add.  A client can change from a more expensive to a less expensive building material (value-engineering), for example from a slate roof to an asphalt one.  These are elective change orders that the client initiates and usually aren't that much of a problem.  In the case of an add, the GC is happy because they get a mark-up on the additional work, so their profit increases.  Similarly if the Architect has a design fee that is tied to construction cost, they get an increased fee to cover the additional design work that the change requires.

There are also change orders for "unforeseen circumstances", which are conditions that no one could justifiably have predicted.  There could be rock ledge under the area where the basement is intended to be, termite damage in a wall that was meant to remain untouched, or even the discovery of hazardous materials like lead, mould or asbestos where none was anticipated.  In these cases the team of the GC, Client and Architect come to a conclusion as a group to decide if the situation was truly "unforeseen" and a change in scope, or if the GC should've had a reasonable expectation that the problem was there and provided funds in the contract amount for it.  These change orders can be hard for a Client to swallow, but usually they can be made to understand their necessity.

The worst kind of change order is for omissions in scope.  This could be because the GC failed to understand the project as bid, or that the Architect either described the scope inadequately or omitted something that they Client had requested.  Omissions in scope caused by the Architect are in my mind the worst (I'm biased) because it means that we've (I've) failed or misunderstood the Client in some way.

By the letter of the contract (depending on the form used), if the Architect and Client can show that a disputed area of scope was in fact in the original drawings or specifications then GC is bound to provide the scope without an increase in cost.  It seems cut and dry, but it's actually pretty tough to deal with because it calls into question what else the GC has made mistake on.  Inevitably there are arguments over who's responsible for the cost and it creates a contentious atmosphere at the job site, which leads to aggravation and discord that get in the way of making progress on the project.

The finger pointing can lead to any of the three parties to the contract being responsible for the cost.  We've seen how the Client and the GC can be responsible, but at times (rather perversely) the Architect can be on the hook for the cost (Something that has happened to me quite a bit lately and is really hard).

With this as background I'll be writing future posts about my experiences in being on the butt-end of change orders, and all of the negativity that can go with them.  It'll be good times.