- I'd like to introduce also Harold Adams, FAIA, a faculty member in the Department of Architecture who was just awarded the National Academy of Construction Science's highest honor, the National Medal award.

So congratulations, Harold Adams.

(audience applauding) And I've decided to use Bill Ader's original Norwegian pronunciation of his last name.

So Bill Ader.

He received a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Bachelor of Arts and Economics at Oklahoma State University.

He is a founding member of the American College of Healthcare Architects, and he is currently a visiting scholar at Texas A&M.

He previously served as a professional fellow for the Center of Health Systems Design and the National AIA Academy of Architecture for Health as the board of directors.

His education in economics and architecture, plus 30 years of professional experience, has led to an amazing career that maximizes value.

It is with great honor and pleasure that I introduce the visiting scholar at Texas A&M University, Bill Adler.

(Bill clears throat) - I'm not used to such an introduction.

It adds up kind of fast sometimes, I'm afraid.

(chuckles) Well, it's my real pleasure today to get to introduce our speakers, our presenters from HDR.

I was doing a little research on them and found, and thought I knew a great deal about them, but I found out even more quickly by the numbers.

The nation's largest architectural and engineering firm, they're global in their scope and their reach and they touch upon every building type, either architectural or engineering, known to mankind probably.

They're currently ranked number one in the country by building design and construction in their giant 400 list.

But I got to know them because years ago, I was their competition.

At least the firm I worked with, we flattered ourselves to think that we were competing with HDR.

So, my job was to always know where they were, what they're doing, and how they were doing things.

And, I learned and grew to respect them really beyond measure.

They are truly a firm that believes in innovation and leadership, and they demonstrate it every day with every client.

And the reason I can say that is because it's the people, ultimately, that provide leadership and innovation.

And we're truly fortunate today, to have three of their members that can speak to, and that are in fact, leaders and innovators.

Now, it's hard to believe that they're not all aggies because of that, but it just lets that occasionally somebody slips through the system and feed goes somewhere else.

Chad Anderson, he was the managing principal for them and will be part of the team today.

Actually, he was a graduate of Texas Tech.

Dan Thomas and Crandall Davis are both aggies, which is great.

I happen to be a PCIP as was mentioned.

Also, I'd want to mention this thing about Dan, Dan and I had been working together on a white paper for Hayek and on climate change.

And it's just been a real pleasure to work with him, just to see how intelligent he is, how hard he works, and how focused he can be.

And just by way of advertising, we will be presenting that white paper next Friday, just before this time for the fall Hayek member.

So I'm going to turn this over to Crandall Davis.

Crandall is a health principal with the firm and like I said, an aggie, and he'll introduce, as they go on, Dan, an aggie who's a health principal, and Chad.

So with that, take it away HDR.

- Thank you, Bill.

I'll just take an opportunity to introduce myself and the rest of the team will do so as well.

First of all, we just want to make sure you can hear us well.

Everybody can hear us okay?

Thumbs up?

Yeah, very good, very good.

Making sure.

Why howdy, class of '86, Crandall Davis.

I am a health principal out of our Dallas office and spent quite a bit of time coming back and forth.

So, I'm looking forward to the opportunity to do so again and a little less.

So the last 24 months or so Dan, - Howdy, my name is Dan Thomas, a healthcare principal at HDR, that's brought back to kind of grow our practice and healthcare master planning and design.

and it's an honor and a privilege to be here today to talk a little bit about collaboration, and teaming and large projects.

And I'm Chad Anderson, I've been the managing principle of our office.

I've been with HDR for over 12 years, but I've been in this role for about a year and a half.

And I just appreciate the FCC letting the Big 12 in for this.

(members discussing program works) (members continue discussing program) Well, , Bill, we've covered a little bit about us, but , ACR, we have been around since 1917.

It did start off originally as a pure engineering office and it's just grown over the company.

Born out of Omaha, Nebraska is where our corporate headquarters is.

We've been in business for going on our 105th year, but we have over 10,000 employees.

And that's throughout all of our businesses, from architecture to building engineering systems.

and you'd see civil to what we call our big engineering.

Transportation, water resources, and things of that nature.

So as Bill alluded to there's really not many types of projects that we don't get involved in.

We have about 225 offices around the world currently, we have 19 domestic architectural offices here in the United States, of which we have three here in Texas, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.

When you look at the numbers more just related to our architectural practice, little overgrowth about 1750 employees, although I think that's grown a little bit here over the past couple of months, that hiring is difficult right now.

So we need a handful of you to go ahead and hurry up and graduate or you to get done, get done, come on.

And then the 19 offices in domestically, but we have 38 architectural studios throughout the world.

And anyway, go ahead and next slide.

All right.

So looking at other locations around the world, we kind of covered the amount of them, but we've got offices in Australia and Canada, China, Germany, the UAE not listed on here.

We've got the Singapore in addition to, like I said the 19 offices that we've got in the United States.

So we are a full service.

As far as the architectural business group goes, we are a full service architectural firm.

So that's everything from architecture to environmental sciences, building engineering, MEP services, interior design, landscape architecture, which is actually led by another aggie, Trey Heaton, here in our office.

And plenty of other services that we provide within the architectural business group.

Go ahead and move to the next one.

And so we do more than just architecture.

These icons represent a lot of the things that we have in our tool kit of services.

Some of the biggest things, growing services that we do is predictive analytics.

that's a service in forecasting, that's a service that we really use to help our clients make informed decisions about where they're going to spend their capital, and understanding everything from the demographics to which services they need to be investing.

But you can see all the other things that we do, from structural engineering, market demand, and all these things, we can do all of this in house.

- We also have a component of benchmarking and that's one of our tool kits that we use based on our healthcare experience.

We've over the years created a database that really talks about our purpose, benchmarking our predictive utilization as we're designing community hospitals and large hospitals, that we have our own internal benchmarking process that we use to help us guide us in developing the facility.

- Next slide.

Also, as Bill mentioned, we are constantly, continuously listed at the top of our various service lines in the rankings for engineering news, building design and construction, world architecture.

So within each of our major market sectors, we are consistently one of the top firms, and not just in the country, but globally that these are just a few examples.

Go ahead and move on.

- So our design for the topic today is really talking about collaboration and bringing the right team and then producing the best service for our clients.

We here at ACR really embrace collaboration within our design philosophy and our process.

And we'll talk a little bit about how that is implemented as we move to the project.

But we are here to serve our clients and to build healthcare spaces that are going to impact our communities for health and wellness, And then also meet the expectations of our clients, because they ultimately are making the big decisions of where they're going to place their healthcare facilities and other hospitals and how we're going to expand in the future.

So to simplify, we really like to say that what we provide, our design philosophy, is that of providing architectural excellence.

- And I questioned what is architecture excellence, or good architecture?

What defines us?

- So it's a broad answer, but architectural excellence is going beyond obviously just good design, right?

We've got to have good design, we've got to have smart design, we have to be thinking about not only our client's needs and budgets, but the environment, equity.

All these things that are trends that we're looking at with teachers.

But it also means that we've got to manage these projects appropriately.

We've got to, , collaborate withy sometimes dozens, if not several dozen collaborators on any project.

And then we have to close out and finish the project strong.

We have to make sure that we provide the client with what they've asked for, and that the project ends on a great note, that we did all the march, and most importantly, we also like to say we're in the relationship business.

So we just want to make sure that we start a project and we end projects in a collaborative nature and just deliver excellence.

And these are just some of the numbers of awards that we've won over over the years, you can see 33 design awards, AIA design awards in 2015.

And we were actually winning a lot of awards in terms of our sustainability efforts.

We have been leading the way when it comes to sustainability.

In fact, we were the first large firm to join USGBC back in the 1800's.

A long time ago.

So we're proud of that.

And of course, the interior design work and plenty of engineering awards as well.

Go ahead and to the next slide.

Are you controlling it now?

- No.

- So, , as we mentioned, collaboration is key to the success of our project, but what really builds great collaboration is our team, and understanding that we have many different team members that come to the table and bring their expertise and their knowledge.

And the Dallas Fort worth health practice we have, as you can see on the slide, this is our bulk of our team members.

We have project managers.

We have project architects.

We have our planners and designers.

We have our health care consulting and our data scientists, and we have to trade at spring, and site and urban planning.

And we're bringing all of these people to creating the right team for their client.

When we start to look at work and look at our clients' personality, or on matching our team, the best team with their teams in order to collaborate.

Next slide.

So in the next couple of slides, we're going to kind of demonstrate some of the projects that we've- go ahead?

- Could you come back to that slide and identify the aggies for us please?

They're a little hard to see.

I can tell some of them, but could you go through?

- Yeah.

So myself and Crandall, and then we've got Juarais, Frank, and then Trey there, there we go.

We got one, two, three, four, five, yep.

- And there's three Red Raiders on there too, so point that out.

- That's Chelsea.

- So the next couple of slides, we're going to show some of the projects that we've categorized as our collaboration projects, but all of our projects were collaborated, or are of a collaborative nature, but these kind of highlights some of the main focus, one being with the community and client, one with the contractor, one with our education, our doctors and physicians.

And so Chad's going to talk a little bit about university medical center.

- So for this project, UNC health, this is in Red Raider land.

This out in Lubbock.

This is the county hospital that serves not just Lubbock county, but virtually all of west Texas, and even in eastern New Mexico.

And their main campus is on the Texas tech campus tied in with the Texas tech health science center.

But in order to compete for business, they had a gut feeling that they needed to build a new facility in the south, the southwest part of Lubbock, which is where all the growth is currently.

And through our predictive analytics, our data analytics, we were able to dive into all of that data and provide them the information that they needed to be able to make that decision, that, yes, indeed, this is a good investment.

They were able to take it to the board and say, okay, we're going to build a facility in Southwest Lubbock.

But they knew as part of that, they needed to do something a little bit, they being the client, the UMC, the administrative board, they knew they needed to do something a little bit different.

So we discussed a lot of different options, but one thing we talked about doing was branding this as a health and wellness center.

For one, trying to create something that actually brings and draws the community in.

So it's not just a place where people go when they're sick, or they need surgery, or they need to go visit the doctor, It's that we actually are bringing in, like I said, the health and wellness component.

There will be a gym as part of this project, and actually monthly, pays a monthly basis gym fee, just as you would for 24 Hour Fitness, or lifetime or anything like that.

It's obviously not as big as some of the gyms, but it's still a good size.

It's going to be nice to be able to go there.

We'll also bring in the rehab component, but what it does is it starts to bring people in, in the door and get comfortable with this new facility and actually just be a part of the community.

So this has been on social media locally, but the community is excited about this.

So it's actually a tight site in the southwest part of Lubbock, and really this was important in terms of, as we talk about collaboration, how critical it was to work with Trey Heaton, our site lead to make sure that we were able to fit the components of this building on this site, get all the required parking, all the required retention.

And this is Lubbock it is flat.

So, getting the drainage, it took a long time to figure out all the parts and pieces just to get this project to work with the program that the hospital wanted.

And you see that blue highlight there on the east side of the property, that's some additional property that UMC purchased.

That's going to be more for stocking boxes, if you will.

They're going to be more for independent doctors that will have a relationship with the hospital, but we needed to think about not only this site, but how could we connect to these other additional sites as those projects were built out, or as these sites gets built out.

Next slide?

- Okay, well, let's just cut to a close up of what we're talking about, but what you've got on the north side, so the north side, you see the wellness and the MOP, that's where the gym is, and then separated by a very large expanse of lobby and then an outdoor courtyard.

And then the hospital was on the south side.

So that was, one, trying to divide up those components, but that courtyard really brings the two together.

They can use it as outdoor space, not only for rehab, for community events, but also for outdoor education opportunities.

- It just enhances the wellness destination for the community.

I think one of the things, going into the project, at the very beginning, this project started out as an ASC, a surgery center.

And then as we discussed about the vision, and how we impact the community, and the collaboration of the team and the executive team, and just reaching out to the community, we realized really quick that it needed to be a hospital, but then tested.

It needs to be a destination, a wellness destination.

And so that's kind of how the genesis of this building was displayed or created as we moved through the project.

- Chad, you've finished CD's in just this month.

What's the biggest lesson learned on the collaboration with your team with your local architects?

- Well, we have an issue that's coming up.

We do have a local architect that we've been working with on this one.

And really, this co operational role has gone really well.

At this point, the biggest lesson learned is making sure that we fully understand the capabilities of some of those that we may partner with.

So it took a little bit more training.

for lack of a better word, on our end to bring them up to speed with the level of documentation that we're used to.

We've been in Revit for a long time, And they're new to it.

That's a minor thing, but really the biggest collaborative nature I would say, of this particular project, was really working with the administration to work through what this would mean to the community.

Identifying ways to get people to notice this and to embrace it.

Like I said, it's not just another remote hospital plopped in the middle of a town.

Let's go to the next slide.

I think there's one down.

Here with a real quick stacking diagram, you can kind of see that on the left hand side, which is the north end of the site, is where your fitness rehab, and you'll see they call it MOP, MOB, POB, there's all kinds of different terms.

It's basically just medical office space.

They call it a medical office plaza.

And then on the south side, on the right side, is where all your medical components are, surgery, imaging, they do have a small inpatient unit.

And remember, we are building in future shelf space for whatever they may need.

We anticipate within a year or two, they're going to quickly realize that they're going to need to grow.

And whether that's inpatient services, or additional imaging services, they've got the space to do it.

Next slide.

And that is just another good bird's eye view of the site.

And one thing, some of you may have picked up on and noticed this is Lubbock, this is west Texas, and yet all that glass and entrance way, that is facing due-west.

Yes, we're aware of this.

We've been working with the client.

And the client really, he said: I want this to look clean, clear, crisp.

He was like, I do not want shade, so no Neko shades.

So we have been exploring what is really a new product on the market, it's called halio glass, and it is a what we call dynamic glass.

And so it has sensors all along the roof that pick up the amount of sunlight, and the glass can actually shade and adjust based on how much shade or sunlight, or not, that exists, so that they don't have to use shading devices, Neko shade, in order to accomplish glare reduction.

I see there was a question, "were lighting designers part of that?"

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah.

As part of this we have both, we've got lighting experts within our interior design team, and we have some within our electrical engineering team as well.

Next.

And this was just looking from the east, you kind of see that outdoor courtyard space.

It's much more well-defined now at this point in CD's, but that's intended to connect back to those eastern-most parcels where those additional doctor's offices will go.

Next.

And another bird's eye view.

Next.

Okay.

- On the next slide, on this side what we're seeing is an example of a multi-tiered collaboration as well.

Our county projects, and specifically our civic projects, sometimes they take a little longer to germinate, and this was an example of that, almost a decade in the works.

Winning the project, working with a local architect, E R O, who we're working with down in Hidalgo county.

And then Navid project.

It's going to be a great example of the collaboration between us.

the local architect, and again, on the client, our county client, it'll be open when within a month or so.

We've finished meeting up and it's being operationalized right now.

Next slide.

- It includes 30 courtrooms.

It's the second level with the replacement for their current county.

Stability is a little over 360,000 square feet.

Next slide.

And Dan, talk about our collaborative effort on this master plan.

- This is a strategic, and facility master plan for the university of Arkansas' medical center in Little Rock.

And so when you're working with academic medical centers, and large medical centers, the teams can get really large as we address it, interviewing stakeholders, the physicians and the tamper, so there's a multi layer of folks that you've got to bring together under one vision.

And what was really interesting about this concept, about this master plan, is as we started to look at how are we going to grow the outpatient, the cancer, the research component, how are we going to start to look at the site, and the campus, and how it grows in the future?

And it's one of the things that we've rallied around in creating this innovation center building is that center building.

But the big decision that we had to go through was that we are repurposing an old patient tower.

And in conversation of getting everybody on the same page, we were taking a look at not tearing down the building, but actually creating this innovation center by adaptive reuse.

And then this became the guiding principle, and the goal for the campus of how we're going to set this campus up for the future.

So we had multiple teams, and our team was large, and bringing those ideas and thoughts together in a collaborative approach would not have been successful if we weren't collaborative for this project.

Next slide.

- Okay.

Texas Health Resources, this is up in Denton, Texas, so just north of the metroplex with the 235 east and west coming together.

This is located literally right at that, wishbone connection, right where it forks.

So this example of collaboration is more focused on the positive experience outcome in terms of having a contractor on board early.

This contractor was Dvr Construction.

They were involved in pre-construction from the beginning and the collaboration with them on this project was probably one of the best experiences I've had working with contractors, very collaborative, they're bringing great ideas to the table from the very beginning to make sure that we're not only just meeting the client expectations, but helping manage the budget, having ideas on how we can construct something, how we can prefab, what components could be prefabbed and brought to the site.

Not only did it control quality, but control costs.

So this was a great experience.

So invariably almost every project, you're going to see an increase from what the budget was, to what was the price in the end with the materials and everything.

It's been a pretty crazy market over the last couple of years, especially this past year.

But this was a great example where the variance from the budget in the beginning to where we are now was, I can't remember the exact percentage, but it was really pretty tight.

So a lot of that was due to the collaborative nature of working with the contractor really early so that they knew exactly what was going on with the drawings, and we kept them up to date.

We were sharing the BIM model with them throughout the design phases so that they could kind of continue to take a look at things and keep a pulse, and touching base with their sub-market, just to make sure that there was no surprises.

So really it helps maintain cost control, really, really well.

But this is a women's bed tower expansion, it's replacing an old women's building that's on an older part of the campus behind the main hospital that has just become derelict.

Good educational moment for your students here, that existing building used to be a brick building.

And when they built the new hospital, the main campus, a new main tower with the med surge beds, they wanted to make the old building look like the new building, right?

So the new building was EIFS, so what they did is they decided, well, we're just going to slap EIFS on this old brick building.

And they didn't realize that brick absorbs moisture, and they put on EIFS, which traps moisture.

So needless to say, the building had a little bit of a mold problem, and remediation to resolve this was going to cost, the cost of rehabbing that existing building would have been half the cost this brand new building was, so that the return on investment was a obvious choice.

Go ahead and move on.

- So as we talk about collaboration, how do we do collaboration?

What is the key elements that it takes to bring these teams together so that we can collaborate?

Well, it's all about process and communication, and then developing a process that fosters collaboration on all aspects and key stakeholders that are involved.

Go to the next slide.

So we've talked about pulling together the right team, and the right team that we propose for most of our projects consists of programmers, designers, planners, project managers, project architects, and interior designers, and then just our support staff.

And then our subcontractors are NET guys.

The secret is pulling the right people, the right personality to foster that collaboration and understanding each other.

The next slide, it's all about how we've worked together.

Chad and I, and Crandall, and we've worked on a lot of projects together and clients wanted to see that energy that's brought because we've gone through a project together, we know each other.

And so they'll ask for a team project matrix, and they'll ask what projects we worked on, and the makeup of the team that are proposing the project.

And then they also want to look at our commitment level.

What is my engagement on the project?

Is it little, or is it a lot?

Because when we go to an interview, they want to know that the people that they're interviewing are going to be on the project for the duration.

- Yeah.

And with that, the reason why that's important, is there's obviously a lot of clients that have experienced what they refer to as bait and switch, right?

You bring in one team for the interview or for the proposal, and then they ended up getting another team.

So we're seeing this a lot more where they want to see that commitment of the folks that they're meeting with, the folks that are being proposed, the folks that come to these interviews, this is actually who they will be working with.

So it's important that we're making sure that we're putting forth the right team, and the people that would be able to commit to that project.

- Next slide.

So as we've talked about collaboration, and getting everybody on the right page, and understanding the goals and guiding principles, allowing our clients, there's several tools that we use.

And one is rapid prototyping that we use.

We bring the users, the key stakeholders, and we actually do a paper doll, or a day in the life series, that we just really start to look at how we're going to lay this space out.

There's a couple of things that this does for them.

This allows us to get full buy in on our project and our design and our thoughts.

And we can rally around a common vision and goals, but it's hands-on.

It's allowing that energy of the project to come alive within the prototyping assessments.

So, the next slide.

And as we start to transition from pre-design, imagined design, and we use the tools and most of them using the mock-up process, where we actually mock up the spaces and bring in the nurses, the physicians, and all the key stakeholders, and we actually do prototyping within the mock up a room or space.

Anything goes from low fidelity, where it's cardboard and stickers, to high fidelity, where we start to look at simulation where it's actually materials and finishes, and they can actually use the room to simulate their treatment plans, or however they want to operate the space.

- And that can bring you in another level of collaboration on a team-standpoint, because your building partners are usually going to be involved at this point.

And they may even be putting together these mock-ups.

- Next slide.

So with virtual reality and mock-ups, we're using all of these technologies to help really convey our design thoughts and the design, and then allow our clients to see, touch, and feel what they're actually going to get when it's built.

One of the things that we've noticed along different projects, is that we understand documents, We understand for one, we see through them easily, but a lot of our users have a hard time reading plans and understanding our architectural language.

This allows the key stakeholders, nurses, and physicians to actually get their hands wrapped around what we're actually going to build for them, and the built environment.

- Next slide.

- So as we've mentioned, guiding principles are one of the things that we as a team and as a project are very keen to, all of the stuff and the delivery of projects.

And we usually have a visioning session, and we will establish these guiding principles with the client.

And these will actually be the bedrock of helping us to make decisions, from the beginning of the project all the way to the end.

Go to the next slide.

And we'll also establish our key success factors for the project.

We've got success factors as a design team, what we want to see as the outcome.

And then our clients have success factors that we want to establish.

We establish these at the very beginning, to find a vision, what's the vision of the project, what are we trying to accomplish here?

In collaborative teamwork, you've got to establish that we are going to be a collaborative team.

We're going to have environments that allow us to talk and to communicate and have trust.

Establish equal trust, that we trust each other, from our contractor, from our CEO of the hospital, from our design team members there's a level of trust that we have to build in order to create this project.

And human centered design, lean principles, these are some of the key success factors that we feel are paramount to the success of a project.

Next slide.

So as we talked about communication, one of the things that can be a major fatal error in a project, is lack of communication.

And how we communicate with each other.

Not only is it just about building trust, but you've got to establish the leadership.

Where does the expertise stop?

When there are decisions that need to be made, where does that work go?

What body, or what stakeholder makes those decisions.

And as you can see with his graphic, usually there's an executive group that will be making the vision, and making the ultimate decisions.

And then you have the steering committee, and then you have a clinical user group, and then your user groups.

But as you can see, the decisions start from that executive group, and work their way up.

- I do believe that we have to level to our client, to show them how we're going to interact with these groups as well.

That's why it's important to make sure they be the main point of contact that are going to be involved, with that steering committee, and the rest of our teams, that we're going to be working together with them, whether it's a sub-specialty that is engineering or planning, and how they interact with those clinical groups.

- I tell this story about team building.

When I was working on Parkland back in 2010, and we had an opening.

And I went to the opening and my name-tag said Dan Thomas on our internal meetings.

But then when I went to the opening, it had Dan Thomas in it, at HDR.

And what was really exciting is that most of the Parkland folks thought that I was part of Parkland, because we integrated so well with the Parkland team.

And that's ultimately what you want.

You want a team that is integrated, and there's no dividing line between your partners, your architecture, and your executive team.

They're all kind of building this project together.

- And you're all working towards the same goal.

The question in the chat, it says, "aside from putting people in the teams, do we teach people how to be a vital part of that team?"

- Yeah, I would say as a project manager and as a leader in this practice, that's part of what we begin doing in coaching internally.

And also by reading the room.

In a meeting time, you may have to read the room and pivot, or redirect, whether it's a conversation or an individual.

So yes, we do teach that.

It is a part of what we, as communicators, have to know.

- And you do have people that are going to be on your team that are really good communicators.

And those that are really good technicians, you have to find the sweet spot and their passion.

- That, and I was going to say more.

I mean, yes, we teach you, but I say more than anything we have to live it.

We teach it by showing how you're a vital part of the team.

It takes time, practice and experience for, especially for the younger staff, to learn, to grow, but also to observe, right?

We often have really big teams, and there are so many important parts, and I do want to stress this.

Even down to that brand new person, just out of school helping support the documentation and all that stuff, there's so many opportunities to observe, to learn, and to learn from others just being in the team environment.

So you almost learn by osmosis.

Of course, that gives me a moment to temporarily plug, why it's going to be important, even moving forward, that we maintain some level of collaboration in an office.

I understand that flexibility is going to be a key part of our future, but I think it's important, in this profession especially, that we have those times together in an office where we're collaborating together, working together towards the same common goal.

Anyway, next slide.

- I would like to add as a principal in charge or as a leadership team, it's our responsibility to align our teams with their team, to foster that collaboration.

The personalities play a key part in building the right team for that client.

And so that's the key to some of that collaboration and the success.

As we transition into our process, as I mentioned at the very beginning, HDR is all about collaboration.

And we have designed our process around collaboration.

And we have an IDE process that's immersive design event, and it's really where the essence of our design processes start.

And at the very beginning of a project, we'll do our visioning statement, we'll understand the current space, how they're operating their current facility, if it's an expansion.

And then we'll develop their future space.

What do they do, how big is the building, how they want it to operate, what are the service lines they want to provide.

We pull all that information, and we have a collective IDE event where we bring all of the key stakeholders, all of the players that are going to help us complete this project into that environment, and we collaborate and we design the facility.

We've found that we can decrease our traditional delivery about 30%, so we can be on time and on budget, actually sooner.

It does reduce our design time.

We found that it also creates an owner and a design team buy-in early on, and so we can make decisions earlier in the process.

We can pull a lot of the decisions that we make in design development for the data.

And so then when we get through it, we can transition into documentation.

- Next slide.

- What you're seeing here, the more traditional description of the delivery of a project by phase.

But those first three, the pre-design, the SD and DD, by using our IDE of that we use that timeframe to reduce and collapse what is a traditional schedule.

You have to have a client by on this because there are some things that sometimes the clients infrastructure or enterprise will want, or won't allow.

If there's certain checkpoints or critical milestone with dollars and cents that they have to hit and allow for reviews.

But if the client is up for it, we will show we can reduce that timeframe.

- We're also seeing because of modular construction and the implementation of that, that we're also bringing our subcontractors and your manufacturer partners forward.

So they're understanding how they can manufacture the building components before we even start documentation, they can help us with understanding how we can create a modular facility, and that of course reduces time, and scope, and money.

Next slide.

- And contractually, if we can get all those people on board, including the build partner, as early as possible, and even further, to provide that opportunity for the client to save time and money from our standpoint.

The approaches that are listed here, The project management approach, are all built around these collaborative discussions that we've had today and how we try to show them on the project is whether it was discussed mainly around the client collaboration, or our design team, or building the team more, not to forget the local politics that come into play as well.

We always have an entity, whether it's truly a political entity like a city or state, or a community group that we are dealing with as well.

So engagement or approval on the right decisions at the right time.

We can usually move quicker as a design team than our clients can.

So we have to be leading them through those right decisions at the right time.

I've lived most of my career in the delivery part of a project, so the quality control has to be a key part of this collaboration.

We'll give the whole team quality reviews, anytime, any project we do here has a whole team review.

Ultimately, we are looking to be on time and on budget.

And that means, from a responsibility standpoint, there is going to be important contact on a project, That those in their study fill.

That may be a PM, or it may be a shared governance on a design team, between a PM and a designer, or it would kind of be handed off like a baton as you go through the project where nobody ever truly disappears, but that connection point might shift, or the emphasis of it.

I think that may be it, we've just established some questions and answers, and we answered a few as we went through there, but also any others that might be there?

- Can you hear me.

- Yes, can now.

- Great.

I just want to thank you for an excellent presentation and for your support over time for this program, and for what you've done in the health field, and in architecture.

To the students, these gentlemen, before Zoom, would get in our car and drive down.

And give a talk and then drive back, and that's about 400 miles, and spending a whole day.

And so this is a little easier for them, but I want to ask the three HDR representatives, Have you gotten any kind of a communication from our students being excited about your coming here, and sending you a signal that their radar picked up these three letters called HDR?

Harold had four letters, R T K L. He could have added the A in front of them with time.

So, but could you answer my question?

- Specifically, we do get an occasional reach-out from your students at A&M.

And not calling names out in particular, but certainly we do.

In the last 24-48 hours, no sir.

- Dan, did you?

- No, I haven't received anything recently, but us coming down wasn't ordinary.

But I think the interaction with the students and with your department is much easier to engage.

It goes back to that collaboration.

And I think that's what we're discussing right now within our profession.

We're Zoom collaborating and there's nothing.

I mean, Zoom doesn't substitute the face-to-face meeting that we're going to have, and I think as an industry, we're going to have to really think hard of how we consider, how we collaborate and how we get decisions made, because I can't build trust over Zoom.

There's something about a handshake.

There's something about setting up the table, rolling up your sleeves, and really working through a problem, versus sitting across from Zoom and going: "George, what are you doing, are you looking at your phone?

Turn your phone off.

Are you having lunch?"

There's just something that Zoom just factors out of that collaboration.

- So certainly, that camera on helps.

- Right the camera on does help.

(all laughing) But then you get distractions that come along with Zoom.

And in this new world, we're going to have to learn to modify and adapt, so that we still do build that trust.

- It's going to be a hybrid.

But it goes back to what we said at the beginning.

We really are in the relationship business.

- I'm being a little nasty today because I want to bring out a point.

I love the students.

And probably if I were a student in this class, I'd be thinking about the weekend and texting my girlfriend, but I try to have my camera on.

Another thing that encouraged me, and I'll be quiet in a second, about your presentation, is we asked the question about collaboration and beyond that you had the freedom, but you came back with a little visual that said that you read the program and you understood what we were trying to drive at.

And collaboration can take many forms.

And I use my period as a baseball player, second base, as a bigger experience for architecture.

Then I got an architecture school, and an art school before that.

So I hope I got the attention of some of the students, if they're awake out there.

(professor yodeling) Any students turning on their cameras, they get a million points and I'll report that right to Frank Lou Hahn.

I'm sorry to be so subtle, like a Mack truck.

Ah, we got a few.

(professor laughing) - We will be down there in February for your career fair.

We'll be down there for that.

Well probably won't.

I don't want to intimidate people cause I'm a Red Raider, so we'll send some aggies down there.

- Okay.

But you, you were great.

And come back, y'all come back, you hear?

Now to the students, it's not too late to send a followup letter with your signature lines and photos so that they see that you're awake.

And you want to get out there and get slugging.

So I will be quiet.

I got a text from my mother saying to shut up.

- Does anyone graduate soon?

We'll be looking for someone here soon.

- Oh, that's a break.

- So there's frequent questions in the chat.

- Go ahead and get to some.

- I noticed a couple of new questions in there since we answered the last one, which was putting together teams and teaching somebody to be a part of the team.

Do you have third-party project managers?

And the short answer is yes.

And we can follow that up with the answer to the next question as well.

Emphasize the importance of having compatible teams on each side, and how you decide this before meeting your client in the initial interview process.

- Well, I think that goes with a lot of the sleuthing that you do when you pursue the work, understanding the key stakeholders that are actually going to be involved in the delivery of the project on the owner's side.

Chad mentioned that.

I think one of the big things that as architects, especially in healthcare, is that you've got to understand how to listen, and read people.

And I think that that's a talent or skill that I can't teach, but you've got to be able to step back and go, okay, what is that person thinking?

What's the demeanor of that person, and who would be a good person to work with that individual?

And my mind is starting to back to projects, and meeting the executive teams, I'm like, "Chad would be really good working with this individual."

Because I've stepped back and listened to the client, not necessarily what they're saying, but how they're saying it.

And how they present themselves.

And that goes back to George turning the camera on or off.

There's body language that we've got to learn to be able to read the room.

And because, like I said, you're building trust.

And if you can understand how and where the individual's coming from, and what their visions and their hot buttons are, then you can start to align your team members with that person.

And you can easily tell when it's not the right person.

It's blatant.

And you'll have your client go, "I don't want Dan to come back in that room.

You just leave Dan at home."

And you don't want that to happen, but that happens.

- It does, it absolutely happens.

- And as a leader, you want to be able to create that team that's going to create that synergy so the project will be successful.

if you don't have trust, it's going to be a hard road to deliver that project.

So I answered the question.

I probably went off too much.

- That was great.

I didn't mean to hang out laundry, but Jung Jao is a perfect example of a student, who's got his camera on and is smiling, and I'm sure he's going to have a great question to ask sooner or later.

I don't know what I had for breakfast.

I'm being my obnoxious self.

- So the next question is, Will changing the teams of the interviewing process continue until the project is secure?

Oh yeah, absolutely we can.

Sometimes, not to repeat what he was saying, but as much as it's about trying to find the right people for the job, sometimes you point out who's just not right and won't be part of the team.

And that happens, you've just got to understand the client.

You've got to understand what their personality is like.

- One of the biggest marketing factors and winning these awards is building that team relationship.

And if you build a bad relationship and they get a bad taste in their mouth, they're not going to hire you.

And like I said, it's about relationships and building those relationships.

and you might have someone that's doing the best that job that they can do, and is very talented and at the top of their game, but just didn't get along with an executive, and that's it, you're out.

We'll have clients that will put us on pause.

They say, "we're not going to look at ACR for another five years because of that individual."

And it wasn't that individual's knowledge or experience, it was just the personality conflict.

And there's nothing against that person, they just didn't mesh with the key leadership that you're working alongside of.

- So to answer your question, engagement in the team, and when you start working all the way through, in a perfect world, yes is the answer to that.

You would start at the beginning of a project, and follow it all the way through.

But that's not going to happen all the time.

At HDR is that a desire?

Absolutely.

But as the ebb and flow of work, and the project comes through, ultimately we're trying to take the individuals and make sure that they get experience at all phases of the project at the right time.

So yes is the short answer, but it's a little more complicated than that.

It is the goal.

- I'm going to give my one minute, my one minute spiel here.

In terms of all these students on here, we need so many different types of people and different types of skillsets in this profession.

We need designers, right?

But we also need good project architects and people that can put a building together and who know how to make sure it doesn't leak.

We need people who can do business development.

We need people who can manage and communicate with all these different parts of the pieces of the team.

We need great project managers.

We need people that understand and enjoy specifications to a certain extent.

We need people that enjoy all kinds of different aspects of this profession.

And there's a plenty of opportunities.

It should go without saying, that obviously we can't have nothing but people that do front end design, right?

Because we've got to have people to deliver the work, So there is a gamut of opportunity to find where your niche is.

And our goal, to reference what Crandall was saying, our goal is to make sure that everybody gets the experience working in multiple phases of a project.

And after a while, you're going to find out where your niche is, where your strength is.

And we're going to allow the opportunity to focus in on where those strengths really lie.

- Any other questions?

Maybe the students have left for trick or treat.

We're having a pie in the face contest at school and that's drawing a lot of attention, but Jung Jao hung in here.

But we'd like to say something and also bring it to a conclusion.

- Exactly.

Chad, thank you for your last comment about the diversity of opportunities that students should have in school.

And that's exactly what the Texas A&M department of architecture is working towards.

So I'd like to thank Crandall, Chad, and Dan, and HDR for another fantastic presentation as part of the architecture for health and fall election series.

(all applauding)