- Welcome to those of you here in the studio audience and welcome to those who are joining in virtually.

It's great to have you.

Today, we continue the Architecture for Health Friday lecture series and our theme for this semester for this series is what can young architects, recent graduates do in the profession that's meaningful soon after their graduation?

Rather than facing the traditional tedium of door details and flashing sections, what can they do participating in a project that's meaningful without having to wait a lot of years to get there?

And we kicked off the series last week and it was terrific, and this week will not disappoint.

The featured firm this week is HDR known to most of us as a great healthcare architecture firm and we're happy to have with us today two of their young professionals telling the story that we want told.

First, I'll introduce Frank Volpicella.

Pick your Italian pronunciation.

Frank, it's great to have you.

Frank's an architect with HDR in the Dallas office and Frank is one of our own.

Frank finished at A&M in 2014 with his four year degree, '16 with the masters in architecture, with the certificate in health systems and design that A&M is proud to offer.

And shortly after that, in 2018, Frank got licensed and has since practiced in the field of healthcare architecture as a specialty.

We're gonna hear today from a project on which Frank was the project architect.

Joining him on stage is Peyvand Aliamiri.

We practiced that so many times, I still stumbled.

Peyvand Aliamiri is coming to us from Iran via San Anton, and Peyvand did her B Arch degree in Iran and then did her masters at UT San Anton and joined HDR working in this health field.

And the project that we're going to hear from today, Peyvand was the designer.

Peyvand is one step from her very own license in architecture as well.

So we're excited again, we're having the firm's showcase young rising talent for this series and that's exactly what we wanted to see.

So without further delay, Frank and Peyvand.

Welcome.

- Thank you very much, Ray.

It's great to be here.

As Ray mentioned, my name is Frank Volpicella, I'm an architect in the Dallas office and I'm joined by my good friend and colleague, Peyvand Aliamiri.

She's a senior project designer in the Dallas office as well.

A student myself at Texas A&M, but it's good to be here on the other side of the audience.

So as Ray mentioned, this semester's prompt is something that's very, very unique and very fun for us.

This is really a fun topic for Peyvand and I to talk about as young professionals.

So we really want to talk through our path, the first few steps of our career, how that growth within the office and outside the office affected that path.

And finally what the impact has been both in our professional 8:00 to 5:00 workplace but also outside the office.

And so we have a lot of fun paths and stories to share with you this afternoon.

So I know many people that have attended the lectures have been somewhat aware of HDR.

We're a global presence, global firm with more than 11,000 employees around the world.

Architecturally, we're about 1,200 employees and you may have seen many of our staff members across Dallas or Houston or all over the country come in for Hayac, career fairs or instances like today.

So I know we've had a fingerprint on Texas A&M'S campus for a little bit.

Pertinent for the Architecture for Health lecture series, we've been number one in healthcare for the healthcare firm, "Building Design" magazine for a number of years.

I certainly want to share with you some of the expertise that we have today.

- This is our office.

We wanted just to have a photo of our Dallas office because we have, like, so many different offices, but we too are proud of our Dallas office.

We get lots of light, we have a two story office, we have this very fun architect, we designed the office so we liked it to spend our time in it, but we want to just share it with you because we know like people have so many different layouts of offices and our approach at HDR Dallas was to have this kind of like an open office studio.

We wanted to collaborate more and elevate that culture of collaboration.

So you can see we kind of listed some of our services and teams that we have in our office.

We have like electrical engineer, health planners, archeologists.

But when you walk in, the beauty of it is just like we all sit together and that increases the collaboration.

It doesn't matter if the person next to you works directly on the projects that you are working in, but you can always tap on their shoulder and ask your question and learn from them.

So you saw the office, but these are the people that sit on those desks and work together.

This photo I think was taken post COVID kind of scenario.

So we don't have everybody in the photo.

We still have some of our folks that working hybrid or traveling for work.

But the two most important people, I guess, or so-called, in the photo.

So we have Frank, the project architect and myself, project designer, and it was not intentional, but somehow we made a shape of heart, so it worked out.

- So as Peyvand mentioned, we're just two people representatives of the HDR Dallas office and I want to make sure I'm sharing with everybody today how I got to that project architect position and all those steps that happened in between.

In 2016, as Ray mentioned, I was a graduate myself of Texas A&M, got my Bachelor of Environmental Design in 2014, graduated, continued on to get my master's of architecture here at Texas A&M.

In the middle of that, I actually interned with HDR.

I was an intern for two summers back to back, 2014 to 2015.

So for my personal starting point in my career, I went to the Texas A&M career fair as many of us here in the audience have done so before.

I met with Crandle Davis, our health principal, and Trey Heaton, our site planning principal.

And I got to meet them, I got a good start into the HDR world.

I started an internship for those, again, those two consecutive summers and then started my career shortly after that in the summer of 2016.

In 2016, I was also a resident of Austin, Texas.

I visited Dallas a few times, but I was a local to Texas and didn't really know too much about Dallas, but I knew that was a great place to start my career, especially with the people that I've met previously in my internship.

As well as both academic and professional starting points, I got married in 2016 so there was a lot of fun things going on in about a three to four month period where I got to learn a lot of things very quickly.

And also I was a want to be Tom Cruise impersonator as well.

In that last photo too as well, Rachel Matthews was a good friend of mine and she was an intern at HDR and so there's a fun candid snapshot of us doing a fundraiser in the halls of HDR.

And so I want to make sure I also communicate a little bit about some of the significant milestones in the first few years of my career that led me to be a project architect in the project that we're gonna share with you today.

Graduated in from Texas A&M in 2016.

The first project that I started on was a 200,000 square foot bed tower expansion for Christus Trinity Mother Francis in Tyler, Texas.

I actually worked on that project with Fernando Rodriguez, who's here at the audience with us from the Houston office.

And I started as a project coordinator before I was architecturally licensed.

Shortly after I attained licensure, I continued on to be a project architect for Texas Health Resources, for the Denton Campus, the Center for Women Project.

And that's the project that we'll share with you in a little bit today, and that's the second hat I wore.

The third hat, I'm currently a project manager for a North Central Surgical Center up in Dallas.

And then one of the other final subhats that I'm wearing right now is AIA Emerging Leadership Candidate for the local Dallas chapter as well.

Woven into all of those career milestones are a lot of extracurricular things as well.

I sponsored a grant with the HDR Foundation for the Local Boys and Girls Club of Greater Dallas.

I became a licensed architect in 2018, so I had to burn some midnight oil a few nights early into my career.

Later on in my career, I was selected for a BOOST mentorship.

It was an internal mentorship program with HDR and that was a significant part of my growth milestone that I'll share here in a little bit.

And then perhaps most importantly, most fun for me right now, I'm an Architecture for Health lecture speaker, something I've always wanted to do.

So I'm excited to be here with you guys today.

And then finally, as part of those career milestones in my path, there are just as importantly personal milestones.

I graduated, got married, bought a house, went on a few bucket list National Park trips and had of son in all of those fun times.

- So who is Peyvand?

My turn.

So similar to Frank, I think the overall career path had a lot of mutual moments that we shared, but I decided to kind of take it through a different perspective as an international student.

And the reason I wanted to do it, because I know that there are lots of international students in this program, so I thought it would be maybe helpful to share some of those moments through that lens because I know how stressful it is and how confusing sometimes it gets.

So when I moved to the US, there are like some key things that I just wanted to share.

Like one of them was that when I moved here, I didn't have any professional network or I didn't have any connection, and that could be very stressful because you feel like you're four years behind of everybody else and you're just fresh here.

Another thing is that I was on student visa, and I know how stressful that can be because you have this unknown future and you don't know how to focus on it.

And one of the other thing is just English was my second language.

English, I should say, is my second language and will always be my second language.

But I wanted to emphasize on that.

Don't let that hold you back because it's okay, and it's something that I'm proud of.

It's okay to have like, you know more than one language, like, what's not to be proud of?

But also I had the very good support of my extended family in the US because I know that a lot of students come here by themself.

I came here by myself, but I had some relatives that I could get their support, and I just wanted to acknowledge that.

So very similar again to Frank.

The reason we both I think didn't pick this linear line that shows our lateral growth is because that's not the case.

It has ups and downs, it has challenges, it has moments of frustration, but it has moments that you are the most proud of.

It's literally like this lane.

So 2010 to 2012 is when I graduated from college in Iran with my Bachelor in Architecture.

I worked for almost two years in a firm and decided that I wanted to pursue a higher education and move to the United States.

In 2014, I graduated from UT San Antonio with my master's degree.

I started working in a small firm in San Antonio as like an intern for a few months, which now I'm very thankful for it because I think that was the moment for me to realize that I would like to pursue the rest of my career in a large size firm.

If I didn't have that experience, I might have been always that part of my mind, like kind of thinking, "Oh maybe I would've wanted to work on a boutique firm."

But that wasn't the case for me.

In 2015, then I officially started at HDR as a project designer and got involved in their project and worked like for five years.

In 2019, I became the project designer, which meant like, basically it's like that milestones that you get to be more involved directly on the projects and with your clients.

And just like a few weeks ago, I became a senior project designer, which is very exciting and I'm looking forward to what the next years will bring to me.

But there are moments that I think I appreciate those moments and I'm proud more of those moments than those certain milestones and times in my career.

And the reason is you have this set of responsibility, you have a job description, you have daily tasks that you need to take care of, but you have opportunities and moments that you need to speak up.

You need to create those moments.

You need to stand out and find yourself, prove yourself, show that you are more capable of doing just like daily tasks that are in your job description.

And we both had those moments.

I think those moments helped me more to stay and be the person I am today.

And some of them, very early on, even before I started, for example, was I tried to quickly adapt to the culture in the US and learn the industry because for a lot of us, the practice that we come from is very different than the practice in the US.

So it was important to learn about it before you start in the career.

Or like build that network.

You don't have the network, like work with the network that you can and grow and expand on it.

Get involved in the AIA committee, which is like what I did, I got involved in the AIA committee, or at your firm.

Like I started on the things that I was passionate about.

So if there was a diversity and inclusion chapter that we could have in our office, I volunteered to be chair on that and kind of that way, I can extend my networking with the nationwide HDR folks.

And then at the very end, one of the latest things that I'm very excited too is that I'm participating in a design bootcamp at HDR that is just focused on a design-based career.

And for those of you who are wondering what my student visa, work visa, like all those process went away.

Just wanted to quickly touch base that I was student visa.

After getting a full-time job at HDR, I got my work visa and then a few years later, I was able to get my green card.

And a few months ago, I finally became a US citizen.

Thank you.

Is it worth it?

Absolutely.

Was it challenging?

Yes, it is challenging, but just be patient.

Take the steps, don't try to skip a step.

But yeah, at the end, it's worth it, and it's gonna work out.

- [Frank] And so first of all, I want to make sure and point out Peyvand probably needed a four-lane highway for all the things that she's accomplished in the past few years.

But on top of all those steps early in our career, there's a growth culture at HDR and outside of the office that helped Peyvand and I grow to the professionals that we are today.

And so we're gonna share with you a couple catalysts for that growth here before we talk about the main project responsibilities that we've been in charge of.

So in 2019, I mentioned a few moments ago that I was part of a mentorship program at HDR.

This was a very premiere mentorship program that they select 12 members out of the 1,200 community architecture business group to participate each year.

And they align each of those 12 young professionals with a leader throughout the company, both international and domestic.

So people could have been paired with someone in the Germany office or paired with someone in the Australia office.

And so I was very fortunate enough to be selected and partnered with the managing principal of the Omaha, Nebraska office, which is our headquarters, the managing principal, Matt DeBoer, who I wish I could grew up to be as cool as him.

He's a great guy and he's a good friend of mine to this day.

But I worked with Matt for that year to learn not only about what we do during the 8:00 to 5:00 work hours on projects, but how the practice of architecture evolves beyond just the workplace.

And so we took on a business case proposal to work on one of our local offices to grow our practice.

And I worked alongside those other 11 young professionals and their mentors to kind of form this really fun constellation of networking throughout, you know, all the 50 states but also throughout the rest of the world.

And so for me, the most fulfilling part of that growth opportunity was to connect to all those professionals.

And what was really interesting and really fulfilling for me was to see what they've achieved locally in the Dallas office, what they've achieved domestically and within our own industry, but also what they've done with other leaders of other architecture firms within the industry and really form that network of success and accomplishment that I personally have grown a lot from to see.

- Yes, so back to what Frank mentioned about the culture and then how that BOOST program internal mentorship we have at HDR.

I think I'm proud to say that in HDR, we have this culture that we were both lucky that we were able to fit the culture that we wanted.

I want to say that every company has its own work culture, that doesn't mean that this one is better than the other one.

It's important to find the culture that fits you the best and helps you to grow.

And we both were lucky that we found that culture early on in our career that we were able to grow.

And we have these great programs that help us to become better leaders in our career.

But what is important is, it's always very valuable for us when we take that culture and wanted to make an impact outside of HDR.

So when Frank or people like myself, that we get these mentorships within HDR, higher leadership, we want to find different ways that kind of transition that to a future leader that could potentially become part of the HDR, and we do it in so many different ways.

One of them that I'm very proud of because I was also involved with it and it means a lot to me, is this mentorship program that halfway through COVID, we started working with the Prairie View A&M University.

And the idea was that we felt like there is the gap between the young leadership and future leadership that are ready to start their career, but are not done with school yet.

And some of the other mentorship, we looked at it, they were like very rigid, they just had one set of goals and they wanted to filter everybody through that program.

So we were like, "Okay, let's have a different approach.

Let's kind of craft this flexible mentorship and design the goals and mentorship based on what they want to achieve.

So if somebody wants to work on leadership, we'll do that.

If somebody wants to become a designer, we'll do that."

- And so probably the best way for Peyvand and I to explain what we are able to accomplish and what those first steps of our path, but also our growth opportunities is to discuss our project responsibilities and the many hats that we wore as a professional at the HDR Dallas office.

For both Peyvand and I, our careers aligned for a particular project, as we mentioned a few moments ago, Texas Health Resources Center for Women up on the Denton campus.

And we're gonna share these next few slides a little bit unorthodox.

We're not gonna start from the floor plan and work our way out, we're gonna share some key learning points along the way and we're gonna end on a floor plan.

So this was a 200,000 square foot tower expansion in Denton, Texas.

There is an existing main hospital located in Texas Health Resources.

That's been the kind of the cornerstone of their care in North Texas for about 20 years.

They have a Center for Women on the southeast part of their campus that has gotten a little older.

And so their care and their delivery model needs to evolve.

They needed to move all of those facilities and all of those patients onto a new part of the campus where they could lead that next level of care into the future starting, you know, in 2019.

So in that year, Texas Health Resources, we had already been working together, HDR and Texas Health, for a number of years, but they had engaged HDR to work on a master plan to help determine what that expansion would look like and what's the best case scenario for them to not only lead that campus, but lead all of North Texas.

And that's a very careful balance to expand upon an existing facility with modern technology and modern care.

- It is, it's like basically Greenfield project, as we call it, like a standalone project are amazing to work on because there is just like a blank canvas that you can work on.

But expansion projects are more challenging.

I like them better, I like to be challenged, but it's like the story that there is already a resident and then you are this new neighbor that you're wanting to be respectful, but also you want to kind of elevate and push the other neighbor to be better too.

So when we started working on this projects, as Frank mentioned, like on the master plan, it was important to go over all the criterias, consider all the challenges, constraints of the projects that making sure that we are planning for a better future by not sacrificing any of the existing in the facility.

In the master plans that we worked on, we had a objective, we have the goal, it's very important to early on capture those because as you work on the projects and you go further and get distracted sometimes with some of the other things that comes up, you always need to have, I always print some of my objectives and just like make sure that I go back once a while and just make sure that I'm still helping and carrying on the program and the design, following that vision that we had.

So this was the time that we brought everything to the table, we worked as a team together, designer, planners, site designers, everybody, and making sure that we are having this comprehensive vision and comprehensive plan that elevates the patient care of the campus.

- And one thing for the master plan in particular, as you see on the screen behind us, there's a lot of diagrams and there's a lot of imagery that looks malleable and flashy, but this also sets expectations for the client.

And so throughout the lifespan of the project design process, it's a way for us to check each other and say, "Hey, are we really accomplishing exactly what we set out to accomplish?

Not for just the stakeholders in the company for either side, but for the patient and end care experience?"

And so as Peyvand and I walk through these next few slides, it's really important to remember that we have different hats and so I'm gonna see things through the lens of operation and coordination and kind of the end of the life of the project being delivered, and Peyvand's gonna see it from a much different perspective of the design and planning and everything for the holistic approach of the decision making process.

- Sometimes we wear each other's hats too, but.

- Yes.

(both laugh) - And so talking about patient experience a moment ago, one of the early things that we wanted to make sure, we took into the minds of who would be using this facility, it's expectant mothers or recent mothers.

And so very early on before we even had a floor plan, we looked at circulation and prioritizing levels of care.

So behind me this looks like it's much advanced for what it is, but we took things as basic as we could and applied it to, you know, a three-dimensional circulation path.

We wanted to see if a mother came in with a prescheduled admit for her antepartum and labor delivery care, basically a new, you know, expectant mother coming in for the first time and having a prescheduled due date.

She would check in through the main lobby, she'd be transported up through the public elevators, and then admitted on level four for the rest of her patient care experience.

Alternatively, as we all know, that is not always the case.

There's a lot of surprises in pregnancy and things that not everybody could foresee.

And so part of our expansion was to provide four designated OB ED exam rooms.

And so these would be almost a first level of triage and first level of pre-admit to make sure that the mothers are in stable condition before being transported to a level four LDR or C-section room on an expedited trauma level elevator.

And so it sounds like a lot of fancy words, sounds like a lot of design thought that went into this, but a lot of what we do just boils down to who's using it and how did they get what they need.

- And I think these two diagrams are a great example, showing that diagrams are not just for portfolios and design awards.

Like, if we, like, represent them very well, they can become a very good visual tool to work with the user, with the clients that they're not architects, they don't know how to read plans or things.

So like, use your diagrams always in a way basically as a translator, right, to basically transfer that language in a way that they can understand and follow your story so you can get the best feedback that you want to.

So I kept going back and forth whether I should include these slides or not because in the first glance, it just feels like two identical photos, but that's actually the point and I think that's what I'm most proud of.

So to my left, you'll see the rendering of the design we had through the end of SD early DD.

And the other side, you see the professional photography once the project was built and occupied.

And what I'm proud of is that building looks 99.9% the same.

And I think that's a very, very important thing.

A lot of time as a designer we tends to design things that looks glorious, but at the end, you see the final build photo and you're like, "Well, this looks nothing like what we saw earlier and we are hoping for."

And don't get me wrong, what I'm saying is not like that we need to sacrifice the design, but we need to be smart about our design.

So like when we get the opportunity, like think about it, what's the budget, what are the constraints, what can be built, what is the area that is the most important for these clients?

And design smart in a way that by the end of the projects, you don't get half of your building chopped out and changed.

So I wanted to share it with you because I think it's like, to me a good design is when you look back and you're like, "Oh, so I got all that building actually to the reality."

- And speaking of reality, one of the really unique things about this project in particular was that Texas Health Resources engaged HDR to perform a women's forum for this project.

So that means we actually met with expectant mothers and recent mothers in a just conversation setting.

They actually hosted it in the HDR Dallas office I think in the end of 2020.

And so we had one of our conference rooms booked out and so we met with mothers to understand what they were looking for in their healthcare experience, and recent mothers, what worked best, what didn't work.

And that was everything from the built environment, but even things down to furniture, what their husbands didn't like trying to sleep overnight.

Was the water hot or too cold?

Was it easy to park?

Was it easy to find where they needed to go?

So there was a lot of holistic decision making that was brought in from not only the user groups of the clinical staff, but the very, very end users of the mothers and the babies, which I think was really, really remarkable for this project.

- It was.

Even wayfinding.

Like, was it easy when you arrived, you are stressed out, where to go?

- And so we like to think our impact in the office directly impacted everybody- - Yeah.

- In the North Texas maternal community.

So when we're talking about a patient experience, it really is a combination of everything I just talked about.

Yes, it's the design that Peyvand and I work on every day, but it's also this machine of furniture, artwork and equipment that goes into everything that we have to anticipate.

How does that artwork, you know, form a conducive healthcare and healing environment with evocative natural imagery?

How does the space design tie into that?

How does the furniture fit our space and is there proper mechanical, electrical and plumbing considerations?

And even down to the equipment, which is sometimes the unsung hero, a lot of times you don't want to see the equipment.

And so how can we design that into the built environment to make the patient have more confidence and comfort level and also remove a lot of those things for patient and staff circulation.

So it really kind of culminates into this mega cog of a process at the end of the project delivery.

- Yeah, and I think these two images, and I think we have two more, they are a visual representation of what all the coordinations that Frank mentioned.

Like, in the first glance before, like, this is like an interior shot of the lobby of the project, but there are so many little things that goes into it.

And, like, from my perspective, one of the things that I would like to share, it's like in the lobby shots, you see at the like far end of the shot, there is like a elevator core.

And one of the thing when we were working back and forth to elevate the wayfinding and to make the path more accessible was that we wanted to not treat the design as just like a wayfinding on the outside of the building and wayfinding inside of the building, we wanted to have a very continuous path to make everything easy to find for our patients.

And one of them was the elevator.

We thought about what if we bring the exterior material from the exteriors all the way inside of the lobby and kind of wrap the elevator.

So even from outside you see this very dominant tower, but then you get inside and you can quickly click and say, "Okay, that's where I need to go."

But that one little thing took days and days of coordination because it was the details from the exterior comes to the interior, it changes.

There are all those different materials for the interior designer that are coming together at that moment and we had to coordinate all of that together, just making sure that it's working in the best way possible.

- [Frank] And a couple fun things from my perspective as project architect, we're thinking about the patient experience with how we organize our signage and wayfinding and patient circulation, that main concourse that you see on your right, all along that path, evidence-based design principles were applied to let that patient or family member see not only were they came in, but where they parked.

And Peyvand mentioned at the elevator lobby, on all four floors, you are given a 180 degree view of the parking lot.

So you're able to see where you came in at all times.

And so that helps orient patients have confidence knowing where they're going, but also how to get back out once it's time for their care model to leave.

And one last fun thing, for those of you with really excellent vision, you'll actually see Peyvand in the shot as a model.

But then one of our good friends, Shelly, she was an interior designer, she was actually pregnant in this shot and so she was able to model for the photo while actually being a model for the project.

And a couple quick notes regarding the patient room itself.

This is a labor delivery room, talking about artwork, furniture, equipment.

From a project architect perspective, there's a ton to coordinate, but it's so important, especially in the patient room.

We had inboard patient toilets to maximize the amount of daylight.

Again, evidence-based design principle is allowing as much daylight in the room as we possibly can.

But also it's really important to note what you don't see.

There is an infant bassinet in the far left wardrobe where you don't see, it's tucked away out of the patient circulation, the staff circulation, but it also looks better.

You also don't see the staff workstation right as you walk in the room.

The staff is given an alcove right next to the patient head, so they could have that direct line of care without any interruptions.

So it's fun to talk about everything we do from a design perspective, but it's also fun to look at what you don't see.

And in particular, the patient bathroom, one of the design principles we had for this project was to make it as spa-like as possible.

Let's remove all of that institutionalized aesthetic institutionalized metrics of everything we like to see for a healthcare setting.

Get that paper towel dispenser out of there, put it recessed, make ergonomic smooth contours within the tile and make a back-lit mirror to make the mother feel more empowered to feel pretty, more empowered to feel like she's not in a patient room.

- I've seen a lot of patient room toilets and this is by far the nicest one.

I feel like I'm in a hotel every time I see it.

But yeah, I think adding to all of that, like on my side, one of the things, especially on this project that was very interesting to follow, it's like little things of moving that mullion one inch down, and how did it start?

It's just like the mechanical needed more space, the interior designer needs to lower their ceiling, then it was impacting my window.

And one of the things about healthcare projects especially is that it makes it challenging, but I'm up for a challenge, so I enjoy it better because it challenge my creativity is that it's like there are so many regulation and things to consider for the patients.

So like for example, from the standpoint of the patients laying down on the bed, you just want to make sure that you keep their vision, right?

And at the same time, you want to provide as much as daylight in, but then you don't want to have a glare into their eyes because they're sleeping.

So let's say we have this beautiful window and then somebody comes and just says, "Oh by the way, FYI, this was on my way of ceiling so I think we should move it one inch down."

And I'm okay.

But then you remember that that one mullion was aligned with all your horizontal reveals around the building.

So that means everything around the building needs to go one inch down but that changes your model.

So it's like one inch, but it's making a lot of differences.

And you need to work together because if the interior designer or MEP people hadn't told about it to us, so then I would've not noticed it and then that one inch difference would've bothered me for the rest of my life.

- [Frank] We would notice it for sure.

- Yeah.

- And so we purposely put this slide at the end of our presentation because this is a floor plan.

We normally start with the floor plan as the first thing we see, but that's not where the lessons are learned.

The lessons are learned, everything we just showed.

And so one thing I want to make sure we point out too, for just, again, the program, this was a very concerted effort for all the project team members, Peyvand and myself included, but dozens of other people.

We had to continue care of patients throughout the lifespan of this project, through design for all the departments you see on the screen uninterrupted.

We had an emergency department expansion, we had cardiac and outpatient therapy, we had conferences, women's imaging, which is a very, very sensitive programmatic element.

Postpartum, antepartum, labor, delivery, C-section.

We even had to remove a helipad and make a temporary helipad.

So there are a ton of different factors from an operational standpoint that we are charged with helping coordinate from both of our perspectives to make sure that the patient is able to go home safely at the end of the day.

And I think one of the best parts to end our presentation is a site visit.

So again, if you have sharp eyes, you'll see both Peyvand and myself in these last two slides here.

- The short one is me.

(Frank laughs) - So what better way to establish our path, our growth, and our impact by showing the next generation of architects and young professionals in our office the lessons learned that we just showed you.

And so we took them on final site visits, punch lists, photo shoots, and we got to share every step of the process and what worked and what didn't work in live time with all of our staff.

And I think what's also really fun about these photos that you just saw, we included our interns, the interns went with us on punch lists, site visits, but they're also the models in the photo shoot you just saw.

And so we really take pride in growing that next generation of architects, just like Peyvand and I were growing in the first steps of our career.

- And I would like to add that like early on in the career, you would think, like, "Oh, you're gonna go to this site visit every single week."

But a lot of time, that's not the case.

I mean, for so many different reasons, your project may not be in the same city that your office is at or like you may get very busy with some other projects and the timing doesn't work.

So my advice is if the opportunity comes around, take it, don't like let it go because it's very important to be in person on the job sites and see the progress of the building.

And we just wanted to wrap it up with this diagram because what we shared with you today was just like a very, very small glimpse of the last 10 years of our career at HDR, and we want to make sure that you understand like, both of us kind of created our own path and yet our path was very different than each other in some ways.

So it's important to make sure that the end of the day, maybe 30 years from now when you are CEOs, like, we may sit like in the same chair, but the path that we took to get there was very different than each other.

So there's no one path.

Like, you are in charge of creating your own path based on your personality and based on where you want to be.

And thank you for having us today.

- Thank you very much.

Great to be here guys.

(audience applauds) - [Ray] So who has a question?

Any questions from the audience?

While you're thinking of the question that you want to ask, I just have to say how impressed I was.

It's remarkable, this series is allowing the firms to showcase their young talent and their young firm leadership, and it is mind numbing, just overwhelming.

I mean, clearly there's no surprise that the firm chose y'all to represent the subject to us today.

Thank you.

- [Peyvand] Thank you.

- Terrific presentation, great message and obvious career success so far with much to come.

Congratulations.

Questions?

We have one coming.

- Thank you so much, Frank and Peyvand, and excellent presentation.

My name's Chipang Lu, I'm the associate director for the Center for Health System design.

And it's really impressive what you have done, you know, the career path, totally different path, but you know, you just presented what you have done that's, you know, showing your excellence in a excellent firm you have, HDR.

So my question is that the career fair is coming, right, for Texas A&M University and School of Architecture.

And you know, Peyvand, you mentioned that initially you went to a small firm for your early career, and then, you know, compared the small firm to HDR and HDR offer you more career, you know, development opportunity.

So for the career fair and then for those students that have been doing the internship, in a, you know, firm in the United States, what kind of advice you would be giving to those students who are going to career fair, and then, you know, what they can find out whether this firm is appropriate for me to, you know, spend several years, or you know, the whole career in the firm.

What kind of questions?

Yeah.

- I could talk for a few hours on that.

Yeah, we're happy to talk about that.

At least for me personally, I'll quote one of my favorite professors, George Mann, "It's all about attitude."

I think one of the most important things is to have a very positive and engaging attitude going into your work experience.

I think for me when I started, there was a lot I didn't know and that was completely fine.

We don't hire students because of what they know, we hire students because of how they think.

And so we want see that hunger, I think is the initial advice, your hunger.

It helps a lot to give students the confidence to do a little bit of research of the firms, knowing what they do and what opportunities they have innately based off of the practice that they have.

I think that's a tremendous step forward and I think have fun.

I think some of the most successful candidates and new hires that we've had, they've walked right into the office day one and they've engaged on their projects like they should, but they throw themselves head first into all of the fun culture opportunities as well.

Getting into fundraisers, getting into volunteer events that we didn't share on the screen, but there's plenty ways to show interest and intrigue that just goes beyond what the studio may teach.

Peyvand, what do you think?

- Yeah, I agree with all of them.

I think it is just stay eager, be persuasive because a lot of times, we see a lot of talents on somebody's portfolio and somebody's resume, but then when we start talking about, we don't see any passion there.

So there is potential, but it's just not out there exposed.

So don't be shy and know what you want.

I think there are like, when a lot of career fairs comes around, I know there are so many options.

So do your research ahead of time, not just to learn about the company, but more importantly for yourself to know that in what ways what this company has to offer is aligned with your passions are.

So if for example, I'm just saying something very, like recently had experienced is like we have a lot of candidates that they come and they have this great resume and then they keep talking about how much they want to work on multi-family, high-rise residential buildings, and that is great, but that means like they haven't even looked at our company's portfolio because we don't do that that much.

Like maybe sometimes in Australia office, but that's not what we are known for.

So for us, that moment we're like, "Okay, like, well, thank you.

Next time, maybe."

So just little things.

- Yeah, that's a good point.

And then, you know, in the career fair, you're not only showing your skills, but also the way, you know, you communicate with different people, right?

In the firm.

And that's a really good point.

- Yeah.

And I think one thing is like, I'm not saying it just because it's necessarily, there is a certain time given and that's just one candidate that we start talking to and we feel like, "Okay, we didn't get out of it," but it's also your time.

You could have spent that time talking to a another firm that does that kind of work, so it just goes both way.

It's like this golden day opportunity, like take the most out of it.

- Yeah, thank you so much.

And also I want to give a big shout out to Ray and Cynthia and others like Ruben, organizing this wonderful lecture series, not only for students but also for different firms to learn from each other, you know, to establish a culture for themself, you know, to nurture the students in the future, the young architects in the future.

Thank you so much.

- [Ray] Thank you.

- Thank you.

- We appreciate that.

Are there any other pressing questions from the floor?

I'll be happy to entertain.

We just have a moment.

I'll ask one more question to our guests.

Same question to both of you.

What did you learn in your training?

Let's just limit it to your schooling, college training.

What did you learn that became the most valuable when you transitioned from college to professional?

What was the class or what was the skill that you took to your career that proved to be the most immediately valuable?

- That's a good question.

- For me, it was one of my studios in a graduate school.

And I knew that this studio was different for me, but I didn't notice the impact that it had on me until a few years later when I got into the professional world and I kind of started looking around and kind of, that's the moment you start comparing the way you think about stuff with others.

And that was the moment that I realized that in that one particular studio, I learned how to look at the bigger picture.

And as a designer, basically go one step beyond, don't look at the building that you are designing, just look at the bigger picture.

What are the goals?

What are the bigger visions that you are gonna have?

And that, I think, was very important for me that I was just like, "A ha, I figured that out."

- That's a great answer.

Frank?

- [Frank] Flashing details.

(everyone laughs) No, I think for me personally, it's kind of more of a personal growth point, but I think every presentation, be it a midpoint presentation or a final presentation, really kind of sculpted more of like a communication skill that I didn't quite have when I first started studies.

And I think by the end of it, I had much more of a confidence and an intention with how I spoke and what I was trying to communicate to whatever audience that would be.

So for me, I think that's what it was.

You know, by the end of however many dozens of presentations by the end of my masters, I was like, "I just want to do the next one.

Have fun with it."

And so when I started my career at HDR, it was more fun for me to talk about things that I was doing, it was more fun for me to be in a certain situation in a conference room that I wasn't really engaged with at Texas A&M.

But I had the skillset adapted after that.

- [Frank] Well said.

Well, thank you once again.

Let's thank them for their visit.

(everyone applauds) - [Peyvand] Thank you.

- Fantastic presentations.

Thanks so much, and we'll look forward to seeing you again at our next presentation of the Architecture for Health Friday lecture series.

(upbeat music)