- Welcome to the Architecture for Health Lecture series.

It's great to have you with us today and we've got a terrific program for you.

Two guests with us today from Perkins and Will.

First we have Ashley Diaz, principal with Perkins and Will, director of Healthcare Strategy.

She's based out of the Dallas office and she's one of ours.

She was at A&M, class '06 and '08, and she earned the health design certificate while she was here from the Center for Health Systems and Design, especially like that she combines strategy, operations, and facility design as her work and director of healthcare strategies.

And the combination is so important in today's work.

Notably, her clients have included six of the top 10 academic medical centers in the United States.

That's a mic drop comment if there ever was one.

And it's wonderful to have you with us, Ashley.

Joining her is Kinjal Shah Kinjal also comes from the A&M family class of '21, and she also earned the healthcare certificate from the Center for Health Systems and Design.

And she's in the Dallas office currently soon to be relocating to the Austin office.

Now Kinjal, when she left here in '21, was selected to be one of three members of the '21 '22 class of fellows at Perkins and Will.

And so she has just finished her fellowship year and her fellowship focused on women's health and birthing units.

But here today to tell us about Perkins and Will and how young professionals can get involved in meaningful activity early in their career, here's Ashley and Kinjal.

Please help me welcome them.

- Thank you.

- All right, well thank you for having us.

It's lovely to be back in Aggieland.

So let's start off with, so our presentation today, drinking from the fire hose is a great way to learn and Kinjal really represents that and we're, I think we're going to represent that through our presentation.

She has gulped up a lot of experience in learning and her first two years at Perkins and Will.

But a little bit about us first, to give a little context to who Perkins and Will is.

We are a very large architecture firm, but we like to present ourselves as you know, we're global, but we have lots of local studios and we're the biggest or the smallest big firm out there, is what we like to say.

And as Ray said, I sit in Dallas and Kinjal currently does, but is going to move to our Austin office.

We are founded in 1935, which just means we have a lot of experience under our belt and our practice areas, we have 14 practice areas.

Healthcare is, I'm pretty sure at the moment, our largest in terms of revenue staff and scale of the work.

But what's wonderful about Perkins and Will is that we have a diverse practice, right?

So all the other practice areas can inform our healthcare work and that's meaningful to our creativity, and over 2,400 staff.

Our core values, you know, partnership with our clients, action talent development, and advocacy for things that matter to the communities and the clients that we serve.

So, lots of great information on our website about how we are purpose driven.

So feel free to check that out.

I won't go on, though.

Alright, so our learning objectives today.

There's four that we listed, you know, talking about the macro micro of pre-design planning, understanding the complexities of architectural work.

And then we'll talk a little bit about the, what I call the big three in some of the project work that Kinjal has been a part of, that is inpatient surgery and emergency department design and the things to consider, and then also the complexities of new construction versus renovation work, which you've gotten a touch of all of this in your first two years.

There's a fifth learning component here objective that should have listed, but didn't.

And as Kinjal goes through her fellowship results and experience, she'll share quite a bit about labor and delivery design.

So, I don't think we need to spend time here other than we're proud to both be Aggies.

All right.

So Kinjal's journey so far, tell you a little bit about our E. Todd Wheeler Health fellowship that we started in 2019, I believe, right?

- Yes.

- Yeah, 2019.

So it's named after E. Todd Wheeler who was a, the original healthcare architect of Perkins and Will mid-century, last century type influence, right?

Made a big impact on healthcare design in the last century.

So he's the namesake of it and it really just gives new graduates who come into work at Perkins and Will an opportunity to explore something that they're passionate about in our research mindedness cause we are very research minded and then take that work too and apply it practically into the projects that they're a part of, so.

Briefly, if you are a, if this is of interest to you, the requirements and the award process and the scope and definition are here on the slide, and I assume these get distributed to you all afterwards so take a look.

But generally speaking, the application process starts in the fall and then we make selections in the springtime.

Usually they're due by December or January, so if this is of interest, take take a look.

Okay, so.

Little bit about your fellowship process.

- So before like I reached my fellowship, like started as an E. Todd Wheeler, I was first confused should I go to healthcare or not?

So I graduated first from my architecture in 2017 with my bachelor's, then worked for two years to know like, okay I want to focus on healthcare.

That's when I came to A&M for my masters in architecture.

During that whole masters, I always had the thing like, what should be my next thing?

And that's when I came across the fellowship and joined the Dallas office in June '21.

During the next, - You want me to go?

- Yeah.

- Gotcha.

- So were re-imagining birthing unit design, a qualitative study to improve women's birthing unit experience in the hospital.

So this topic came up when me and Ashley were doing a charade for a master planning project and there were a lot of new projects coming up for women's expansion and renovation.

They wanted to do make their women's program unique, and that's when like I was like, this is the topic I want to explore.

Like it's a very like a closed topic to my, as a woman itself.

That how I can explore the physical environment being involved in the health outcomes of a woman.

So the research started with how, why is the maternal mortality increasing and every woman during her whole pregnancy journey goes to a lot of physical and mental changes.

And, as we all know, like the physical environment actually affects your mental state and what if there is a physical environment that can help them reduce their pain and it's the right amount of environment which makes them feel comfortable, safe, and it's a place of respite for them.

So the research aim was to start, was to focus on the patient-centeredness and how we can enhance the birthing unit design.

Every research needs a framework.

So the research started with the first question, why is the maternal mortality rate increasing in US and what are the causes of it?

And through that we reached like what are the design challenges that are coming across in the physical environment and how can we enhance this women's patient model that could make them a better place.

As we went ahead in the research, the research process included three parts during my whole, one year.

The first part was literature review and understanding what are the physiological and the physical factors that are needed for the women's needs.

And then, after that we also started thinking like what is the problem behind it?

The problem was that a lot of hospitals, the childbirth was considered as a biomedical intervention than a life event, which was, it's a used life event for a woman.

So it was very un-empathetic and it was not that, it was more of a robust like an industry kind of a feeling that a woman wasn't feeling safe.

Hence, the childbirth is a significant life event.

As we went ahead, we saw that we need to explore more at, from the experts.

So the seven expert interviews happened, who this experts were healthcare professionals and the architects who worked mostly on the health on women's project.

So they could give their insights and help me guide my case studies that I took during my research.

And through those whole information that I gathered and everything, I came up through like identification of design goals and guidelines.

And when the research process went ahead, if you can see like the design checklist that I came across, this was the result of the whole research that it had a design goals at the each design intervention.

And this design intervention was focusing on three factors: environmental, social and operational factors.

And each of this intervention would be used as a goal or an opportunity in new or renovation projects that our home would also be working on.

And at the end it would just be more valuable that how we can improve the women's health outcomes and create a better place.

- And we're actually gonna be using this design checklist very soon on a project.

We'll get into that more here in a minute.

- So when the fellowship, our documentation and everything ended, we documented this in a yearbook.

This yearbook is an internal document that is circulated in our COE and it was used as a source of information first, internally.

- Our COE is what we call our center of excellence at Perkins and Will for healthcare.

Our practice is probably about 600 people are in our center of excellence for healthcare that contribute to our healthcare work.

So they all got access to this great research, as did the rest of the firm.

- Yeah.

And we like all three of the fellows, like we were as like our curator carpenter says we were the most energetic batch and we submitted a proposal like how fellowship and research informed practice and applied research researchers important.

So we presented our research in EDRA last year, and that was, I think, the best part of my fellowship.

- Sharing the knowledge.

- And every research needs to make it more valuable.

It needs to be an open source.

And then like after one year or six months of a time, we, this research was published in a Perkins and Will research journal and it's a peer reviewed journal and available for everyone to access it.

And that's I think the highlight of our fellowship, I feel.

- Right.

And you all have access to our research journal as well, through our website.

So take a look, I mean I can't remember what volume we're in, but it's been decades of peer reviewed research from our firm.

So that's only, what she just spoke about is only about 10% of her time in her first year.

The fellowship allows about 200 to 300 hours of your working time to be dedicated to your research topic.

But you know, a working year is standardly about 2000 hours.

So with the rest of her time we'll talk about what she did.

So if you can see what she could accomplish in just that amount of time, imagine what she could do in her project experience.

She's been very busy.

So let's go through that a little bit.

And a couple of these projects we've worked together on, and a couple of these, she's worked with other members in our firm.

So pretty early you worked on a re-zoning project in California.

Concept design phase, similarly where the client's trying to understand the scope definition for their project, understand the funding that's required, and determine whether they approve that project to move forward.

Similarly, you worked on a bed tower concept plan in Texas for one of our major clients, but the two projects in the middle are the two that we worked on together and very different scopes and focus areas in terms of what phase they were in of work.

We'll go into them a little bit more here.

The top one is an expansion renovation project in Colorado, probably about 400,000 square feet of work in design, right?

And then the other one, this one right here in north Texas, it was a master planning engagement and you actually got some great client exposure there and they've come to really enjoy you, the client has.

And this is the project that she was speaking about, there was a women's health component to the master planning where they prioritized that service and that part of their hospital.

So a little bit of the catalyst to your interest and passion on the labor and delivery component.

So this is the Colorado project.

Interesting little nugget here.

This campus was originally designed by a lead designer who's an Aggie, not at our firm, but the campus originally.

And we're expanding onto it.

And the current team, I think we calculated this earlier, - Six.

- Six Aggies are on the design team right now between, our Colorado office and our Texas offices.

So pretty incredible six Aggies actively working on this project right now.

Just among the architecture team.

I haven't thought about the engineers.

So this was interesting.

As I mentioned the the three, the big three, I think you learned a lot here.

The big three inpatient ED and surgical services and new construction renovation all came into this project.

You can see this is the new bed tower concept.

Again, this is coming out of SD schematic design, moving into DED design development here soon.

Tower for the beds expanding in one direction, surgical services, expanding in another direction.

And then in a third direction, we had the emergency department expansion.

So we're going in lots of different directions.

And then of course there's a backfill renovation component to the work and how you tie that expansion into the existing.

So lots of complexities.

The biggest challenge I think here that we have grappled with and had to be most creative with is flows in healthcare designer are obviously very important, right?

The seven flows, but particularly patient flow, support flow, and then provider staff flow, right?

Big three but also supplies the whole seven, right?

Supplies, equipment, medications.

We had to grapple with all of that.

And when you first not to say it's ever easy to figure out the flows of a hospital, but certainly probably less challenging when you have a blank slate, a greenfield site, well that's not our condition here.

We're introducing new construction to existing facilities.

So now we've got to integrate our flows into existing flows and there can be conflicts, right?

Particularly as you move from one tower into the chassis of another tower.

So we had to really get creative about how to main clean, how to keep clean flows in this expansion in three different directions.

So lots of nitty gritty details there.

I'll move on to this one.

Completely different image, right?

But also completely type of image.

Also a different type of work.

So while we were in design on the other project, we're in master planning on this, which is a higher altitude of project, right?

A little more massing, a little bit more rough order of magnitude.

Understanding campus relationships, flows still matter, but taking a wider view and a higher view.

This project had high level stakeholders weighing in on what they thought the priorities of their organization was and how they could seek approval from the greater system on how to get the funding to achieve their goals.

And a major part of it is, indeed, prioritized early is the labor and delivery component.

So it's not done yet, but we, strive at Perkins and Will to create a really meaningful culture, not just for, you know, new grads who've come in who are early career members of our team, but for everyone.

Why don't you go through some of these pictures.

- So the first image is like we, always have team discussions and those, like they give a voice to everyone.

And I think that's the major part about our collaboration, that everyone's voices are heard and not just, it's not always work.

We always try to collaborate beyond our work in form of our annual office meeting, which is always not like a traditional office setting, it's always something fun to do.

You are tagged along with different people and you get to know other team members in the office and like learn how to make the team building skills.

And last but not the least, like our annual holiday party, it's like the most highlighted event of our year.

And I think that is what is needed.

Like things beyond work, I feel.

- Absolutely, I mean we do a lot of hard work, right?

But we have to have fun with each other as well.

So we're proud of our culture.

We work hard and we play hard together too.

So what's next for, for Kinjal?

We've alluded to the labor and delivery service quite a bit in her fellowship studies in the master plan that we did that we were just speaking about.

Well that master plan has in fact approved that as a initial phase of work to go into architecture and we'll be kicking that project off on Monday.

So full circle, you're going to get to take that design checklist that you developed as a part of your fellowship study, and apply it as we move into design for the labor and delivery unit and women's unit at that campus, which is really neat.

It's also fun for me as a bit of a hybrid, right?

Working in pre-design work, doing strategy operations and facilities planning, which we did on that project.

Looking at their volumes, understanding their operational opportunities to improve on throughput, and just general flow of work, and then meet their facilities to those goals.

But then to move that into architecture and get to go to a new layer of detail and execute, right?

A lot of times in pre-design you're concepting a future, but you're not necessarily getting to deliver it.

So we're going to start delivering that on Monday.

So we'll report back soon on how that checklist did.

Any thoughts to?

- And I think even this project becomes more valuable to me in career itself.

Like I focused so much of my first year in researching about the how I can make this environment better and now I have the knowledge and how I can now use this knowledge in a project will make me feel very accomplished, I feel.

That something better is really happening in real world and I think this project will be amazing faith, I would say.

- Architecture is a purpose-driven sport and a team sport too.

So hopefully this has been helpful to hear about her experience and our experience together and we'd love to answer your questions.

- Thank you both.

That sounds like an awful lot of fun.

An awful lot of work, that was good work.

But wow, what a nice product to have at the end of the day.

Well done.

- Indeed, indeed.

- Questions from our audience here or online?

From the monitor in the back?

Yes, please come.

- Hi, I'm Hao Han.

I'm so grateful to see all the things you have accomplished, Kinjal, throughout such a short time in Perkins and Will, especially the research.

You have done a lot of things on the research at the same time were on these projects was on this beautiful project.

And I have a question about the checklists.

So I see the checklists have many different, three different aspect and many items.

I wonder how you generate these checklist, just based on your own knowledge of what you have studied or get feedback from someone from academia or practice or get something from the research literature.

- So most of them were from the research literature, like most of the design interventions which were there, like they were really used and quantified in their articles.

That's when I put them in my checklist.

And also some of them were from the expert interviews.

Like I had one of the, so I interviewed a doula and an architect.

She is a part-time doula and architect.

And she gave her insight like, yeah we say as per how to do it, but this is now how it needs to be done.

This is my experience saying that way architecturally also.

So it's also a combination of literature and applied knowledge I would say.

- Great.

- Thank you.

- Thanks.

Other questions from the floor?

Online?

I've got a question here.

I mean this is a room full of people who might want to be considered for the Perkins and Will Fellowship.

What would you say to them is the best way to put the right foot forward?

- Curiosity, enthusiasm, strong portfolio.

We have a high caliber design impact.

So I would say strong portfolio of your work.

Whether that is the graphics and the architectural design work that you've done through your education work or if it's also the quality of the research that you apply to your design work.

So high caliber portfolios, clear resumes, but marry that with when you get to know, not just our firm, but any firm that you may be exploring to be a part of.

Definitely have lots of questions and show a great deal of enthusiasm, cause it's gonna take a lot of energy.

Do you have any thoughts?

- I think also like for me when I was interviewing for fellowship, the one thing that always used to ask why do you want to do healthcare?

- Yeah.

- That was the question that was always asked to me.

Like the purpose to do that and this fellowship needs to be stronger.

- Certainly for the fellowship.

But honestly, I would underscore that too if you're gonna go into healthcare architecture, healthcare design, generally speaking, I think most of us that are in this part of architecture have some sort of sympathy or a calling or an empathy to it.

And so knowing that and being able to share it with your potential future employers will certainly show that enthusiasm.

- Question coming from the floor.

- Howdy.

- Howdy.

- Ashley and Kinjal, welcome back to the Aggieland and I'm Zhipend Lu and I'm the associate director for the Center for Health System Design.

And when Ray introduced this to me, I think some, something is missing on the list.

One thing's really important, Ashley is the founder of SHEA, - Aw.

_ Student Health Environment Association.

And I think Kinjal was the one of the officer as well, right?

- Yes.

- So that's the tremendous, you know, effort to put this student organization in the world.

That's the first in the world.

- Indeed.

- I think based on my limited knowledge and I think that leadership skill you two have is that may have impact in your work as well.

Well can you, you know, talk a little bit about that.

- I can say like, a lot of times like Ashley and my other mentors, like they put me on the spot like you have to speak.

And that's, I think the leadership helped me groom to speak.

And I think that's the first step on the leadership thing, that when you can speak your thoughts and your ideas, you feel confident about how you feel and that's when you can, and I still haven't like got a chance to be a leader on a project, but I think one thing that I have that I like to take be best at what I'm doing.

So if I'm given a task, I would make sure I champion that and try to fulfill it.

And that's I think the leadership skill that I have.

But I know Ashley is a larger leader than me.

- Oh, you're not giving yourself enough credit.

I think you're a great leader in our practice.

I think people look up to your grit, and your curiosity, and your hard work, and your super smart and there's different ways to lead and at different levels.

You always have the leadership opportunity.

So you're definitely leading and your time will come on a project when you've got enough experience under your belt.

And notice I let her talk first, right?

Give her the chance, gimme time to think.

- Yeah.

- But I think there's opportunity to be a leader at every tier in an organization and anywhere you're at on a project and she's a great symbol of that.

- That great said, that's well said.

And then my other question is that how's that you know, the curriculum at Texas A&M help you to choose the path you are doing at Perkins and Will now?

- So I think I would get back to my, so in the first year I went to Healthcare Design Conference.

That was the, like we were sent there and I met the fellows, the current fellows, I did not know about fellowship at that time.

And they told me how it is and I came back and I remember speaking about that to Cook that, how much I liked that opportunity.

So, but he asked me question like, are you interested in doing research or not in your first year of your life?

And I wasn't sure about that and that's when the first course happened, like the design and research course, which I think still Professor Shumar might be teaching.

And that was the course that made me know the fellowship is my calling right now.

I want to start my career with that.

And the curriculum had that perfect blend, I feel like, to know what architecture, graphics and detailing should be and how you can apply that research to your designs.

And that's what helped me and the fellowship I feel.

- Yeah, I echo all of that.

I feel really lucky to have gone through one, what was the College of Architecture, now The School of Architecture, but also, the Center for Health Systems and Designs certificate program.

You gain a language when you move into your career.

You have the ability to speak about healthcare design in ways that maybe folks who haven't gone through a program like this are not necessarily handicapped, but you're just ahead.

You just have the language, you have the principles, the framework to understanding to what's meaningful in the work that we do.

So it's a real privilege to be a part of this program.

- Thank you so much.

That's really good answers.

Hopefully, you know, the current student is that remote or on the other side of the screen can learn from you as well.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- Good questions.

Thanks.

Kinjal, think back to your schooling.

What part of the curriculum have you found of greatest value in preparing you to step into this special role?

An appreciation of research and appreciation of healthcare, that industry.

What, think back to your curriculum, what special things that Ashley alluded to helped you feel at home in this new world?

- Oh, so you asking like in Perkins and Will?

- No, in your time in the system or in the center process.

- From the time here at A&M.

- Okay.

- What things did you explore and study and research that prepared you, especially for this opportunity at Perkins and Will?

- When I was in my second year, there was COVID also and there was innovation in incubator, which was happening like it's kind of a school of innovation here in A&M and I was part of, even with Professor Ray for animal veterinary trailer healthcare telemedicine.

And that's when it was like a short four month kind of a research, but it wasn't like a, it was like a small research help that you would do for the PhD students to the scholars.

And that I think was something that made me choose the fellowship, I feel.

It was a very, I remember first project that I was working was with Professor Schumer, like, and she was working on how senior living are feeling loneliness in the current time, like at the COVID situation at that time.

And we had to collect all the research articles, read about them, gather information and collect it.

I think that organization of how you should go through a research process was something that made me prepared for the fellowship.

Because to be honest, during fellowship I had a lot of project to work and I had, there was no one to, like, no one is going to teach you how to do research.

It is your mind that needs to be also be prepared to how to do the research.

And I think the curriculum helped me to be part of it and do it as perfectly as I could.

- That's a great answer.

- Mhm.

- Ashley, talk a little bit about the Perking and Will culture.

Research has found its way to the tip of almost every architect's tongue these days.

How is research part of the Perkins and Will culture and work ethic and work product?

How, where does it fit?

- Well, I would say we are empirical in our collection of it.

Either through fellowship programs, we have an innovation incubator program.

We also have seven research labs.

We have directors of those research labs.

So there's, an academic side to our research perspective, but there's also an applied application spirit to what we do besides being interested and invested in research.

I would say culturally we have an entrepreneurial spirit, right?

Where you can take the resources of this research that we've done either through project research or academic research and go with your ideas, right?

Oftentimes at Perkins and Will, if you say, I have an idea, I want to try something, it is going to be rare that someone says, no, we don't do that, we're explorers, right?

And what's the point of research if you don't take it and explore with it and push it further.

So I think that duality of collecting, understanding, measuring and then taking it to explore, making more hypotheses in your curiosity, in our entrepreneurial spirit to go try things is what's unique about Perkins and Will is that duality.

- Nice.

Other questions from those who are present?

Any questions online?

There's a hand in the back of the room.

- I have a question for both of them.

Ashley first.

- Jorge, can you come forward so that we can get the voice recorded clearly.

- You gotta take an uber.

- Take an Uber to the mic.

- Ashley and Kinjal, it's great to have you back and it was a very, you got a very big honor at Perkins and Will and I would like you to say a little more, Ashley, about when we first got together and worked on the Surge Hospital, I think it was in the fall of 2004 and then trace it through the Master's program and then Blue Cottage and, - Oh Wow.

- You were also with HKS.

- Yes, I was with HKS.

- So I think, these are very pertinent things for our group and thank you.

- Right no, I can expand on that without giving you my whole career story.

That project that that George just mentioned, which the Surge hospital project we worked on that in 2004 we worked with the director of Homeland Security.

- Dr. Carlton.

- PK Carlton and it was right after around the time of Hurricane Katrina, so you know, more of these really strong weather events that were starting to happen and we needed to understand how to serve large populations that needed medical help of some sort, right?

So my classmate Alexis and I picked a location, everyone picked a location in the class and we picked the convention center in DC as a place to establish a surge hospital.

And it was a meaningful project, right?

Cause there's purpose to every project.

And that one certainly had a lot of purpose and we were able to take those ideas actually to New Orleans.

We flew a plane with Dr. Carlton over to New Orleans and shared our ideas with LSU Health Sciences and then they started to deploy them around the time of Hurricane Katrina and Rita.

And we made an impact.

And I think that really is, that is the point, is that this type of work you can really make a measurable impact and meaningful impact.

And that was one of the original projects that inspired me to this career.

So I'm thankful to you for that.

- Well, and I'm thankful you because I remember the day when Dr. Carlton walked into the studio, you blew his sock socks off because you had that big photograph of Washington with the convention center and I believe you had 6,000 beds in there.

- Right.

- And so in one image he bit and then he also flew us to Baton Rouge.

- Was Baton Rouge, not New Orleans.

You're right.

- And I think everybody took the controls except me.

I said, I have enough trouble driving that car.

I don't want to start with.

- Yes, you were, you were trusting enough to let me fly you a little bit.

Yes that was a great trip.

- Well, and then what did you do for a final study here?

I can't remember.

- A heart hospital.

- Yeah.

- I did a heart hospital.

- And then you went to which firm?

- I, right after grad or after graduate school, I went to HKS for six years.

Then I spent some time with Blue Cottage, which is a pre-design consultancy that is now a part of canon design.

And then I found my way to Perkins and Will.

- And by the way, Perkins and Will has the, I think second largest group of Aggie health graduates.

- I believe that.

- And is a tremendous resource to the, those of you who you may be going to work for Paige or someone else, but you need to network.

And I hope you get emails from some of the students.

- I hope so too.

- Yeah and Kinjal, we heard a little bit.

Anything you want to add to what you said?

- Just apply for the fellowship for next year.

- That's right, please do.

- I mean there, there's so many opportunities out there and I need to go back and sit down and get tired, and - Is that your mom call?

- Yeah.

- I got a text from my mother.

- Thanks George.

- Other questions, comments?

If not, I have one more for the firm.

- Sure.

- In recent years we've kind of broadened the aperture here.

Certainly healthcare design is still a major focus, but we've broadened it to include more of the design for health sorts of things in the spirit of safety, wellbeing, health, all that.

Where is Perkins and Will in embracing the design for health thinking in their work.

And we've often talked as a group that you can't identify a building that doesn't impact the health of the people in it.

- Right.

- And so our our feeling here is that designing for the health of those building users is really important.

- Is Perkins and Will moving in that direction?

Have they embraced that?

- Well, I'd like to think that we're vanguards of that pioneers.

We have a framework we call the Living Design Framework.

And under that framework, it's not just sustainability, it's not just resiliency, it's not just wellbeing design, it's not just equity and justice, it's all of those things.

That is what living design is.

And we've been big proponents of that framework and giving language to that framework.

So it, we apply it to all of our project types, not just our healthcare projects, all of our project types.

So I would say the best way to describe it is our living design framework that we are passionate about.

- That's terrific.

That's terrific.

Additional questions?

- Well, it's been lovely to be here, right?

- No other questions from the audience?

Okay, what's the project, to close it out?

What's the project each of you is working on right now that is the most exciting?

- I think the coarter are the one who has the most exciting one right now for me.

I'm working on some pediatric projects that I find very fulfilling right now.

Handful of them.

And the Colorado project is definitely one I'm passionate about.

Cause it's gonna make a very meaningful impact to that community.

So I, and I'm lucky to be across the whole continuum, early pre-design work advisory type services into design.

I've a actually have a small jewel of a project in Grand Junction right now.

It's a little learning center.

So not technically healthcare.

It's a little, you know, daycare, early learning center.

Only 7,000 square feet.

So the scale of the work that we do could be little jewels of projects like that to large, super large, 400,000 square foot, millions of square foot projects.

So I feel really lucky to see a diversity of projects, but it's in construction right now, right?

So the further you get on along in your career, I feel like you start to see more and more of the architectural world cause you'll have a project at this point, and then you'll have another project that's in construction and you'll have one that's just starting.

And as time moves on, and you'll start to feel this too soon, you just, you're just gulping in the wonderfulness of architecture.

- Any other closing questions or comments for our guests?

Any?

Then, a final thank you to our guests.

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