- PNC is proud to support "Business Forward," where community leaders discuss the issues confronting business in Central Illinois.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Welcome to "Business Forward."

I'm your host, Matt George.

Joining me tonight, Tracy Coker.

Tracy is a Principal & Director of Interior Design at Dewberry.

Welcome.

- Hi, Matt.

- Well, we've known each other for a very long time.

- We have.

- We have some, a lot of different connections and people that we know, but mainly, one of my favorite agencies of all time, Children's Home.

- [Tracy] Yeah.

We've been on the board a long time, but Dewberry is rocking and rolling right now.

- We are, yeah.

- And so let's, I always like to start with you.

Tell me a little something about where you're from and let's go from there.

- Okay.

So born in El Paso, Texas.

My dad went to U of I in accounting, but he came in on ROTC, so he got placed in California and then El Paso, Texas at the Air Force base there.

He and my mom, and so I was born there.

I have two brothers.

We lived there until I was in junior high, and then we came back to Illinois, which is where both of my parents were from.

So my dad could take over my grandfather's business, which was funeral homes.

So we lived in a funeral home.

- [Matt] Oh, wow.

- All through junior high and high school.

And my dad retired as a funeral director.

But yeah, that was a family business.

- But you have accountants in your family, other accountants, and they knew my dad.

- [Tracy] Yes.

Yes.

- I mean, there's a whole nother story there.

- My husband's side, yes.

- [Matt] That's kind of fun too.

So you went to the University of Florida, you're a Florida Gator.

- Go Gators.

Yes.

Go Gators.

- Yes.

Yeah, I did.

- So one of the things that you did there, and I find this interesting with people who actually get a major, go into a major and actually stick with it.

- Yes.

- And then stick with the same company their whole career.

- [Tracy] Yes.

It's crazy.

- That is crazy.

- Yeah, it is.

I'm getting to be a little bit more of a rare, rare bird the longer you look, and it's very different now.

I think there's a lot more movement amongst professionals in the architecture industry, or maybe everywhere.

But yes, I made a decision at 18 years old that stuck with me.

And I made a great decision.

Somehow I did.

But I've been very, very blessed, very fortunate in the industry, in my profession, in my career.

And when I came to Peoria, as you said, I've worked for the same firm.

It was Phillips Swager Associates.

- [Matt] Oh, yeah.

- Forest Phillips and Gene Swager started the firm in the mid sixties.

Oh Gene, - A legend.

- A legend.

A legend in Peoria.

Amazing man.

- Philanthropic legend.

- Yes.

Yes.

Amazing.

They're family.

Yeah.

We miss him.

But he put a lot of foundation and roots down in Peoria in this community and amazing firm, and made it to about the 50 year anniversary before we were acquired by Dewberry in 2004.

So about 10 years ago we adopted just the Dewberry, it was PSA Dewberry.

We held onto that for a while to make a good transition and the legacy of that firm.

But yeah, it's been about 10 years that we're Dewberry.

- I remember that.

But you know, the brand, it's kind of like RSM as an example.

The brand is strong.

And so when people, doesn't matter whether it's you or anybody with Dewberry, when they hire someone at Dewberry, you're hiring also, not only talent, but you're hiring a brand.

- Yes.

Yeah.

Thank you, that's good to hear that that gets out there.

Dewberry's very well known, really on the east coast, in the southeast, started as a engineering, straight up engineering firm.

So Sid Dewberry, it's a family owned company.

Sid Dewberry grew up on a tobacco farm in Virginia and his dad built bridges, and he was really fascinated by that.

So he went on and got his civil engineering degree, found a partner in the DC area, Fairfax area.

Started the firm with two people, very similar to Gene Swager and Forest Phillips.

And it's still a family owned company.

It's on the second generation now.

Mr. Dewberry just passed away last year.

His wife passed away, and then he died two weeks later.

- [Matt] Oh, wow.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

But he, also, an amazing person, really cared when he spoke to you, really cared about what you had to say about things, about the business, about what you were doing.

So it's very inspiring, and I think for me at Dewberry, to go back to your point of working somewhere my entire career really with one firm, no one ever told me, "No."

No one ever told me, "No."

I was offered positions and I've held different positions in the firm along the way, but nobody ever told me, "No."

I was always encouraged.

I had great mentors.

I cannot stress enough to the young people coming into the firm now that finding a mentor in somebody who really inspires you and believes in you is everything.

So that's that 18 year old that made that decision.

I've been very lucky.

- Man, you said so much there that I wanted to kind of ask 10 different questions, but I'm gonna start with culture.

Because the culture piece is very important.

And really, if you think about it, it's really why maybe you're there the whole time.

I mean, I guess it could, I didn't know the story about never saying no, but if you think about wanting someone, I like the word "win."

They're wanting you to win.

And in turn, the business wins.

But that growth piece in taking you, and because very rarely to somebody to age 18, I mean, I remember at 25 or 30, I didn't even know what I was doing.

I was fundraising.

I was doing all this stuff.

But, you know, you still, but you had a path.

- Yeah.

- And I think that's important when you talk about young people coming outta college, whether it's Bradley, U of I, Eureka, doesn't matter.

But when they're coming out, 'cause a lot of times people say, "You don't have to know what you're going to do."

But there is something to it if you do know what you're gonna do.

- I think it's an interesting kind of experiment.

The schools of architecture, my opinion, we don't do a great job of making them workforce ready when they graduate.

It's an interesting thing, K through 12, the way that you're taught, there's one answer and one right answer to almost everything you do.

There is art and music, and those things are encouraged in K through 12.

And a lot of school districts are doing a great job with that.

But you get to design school, school of architecture, the way Florida was set up, as in, they break you down of all of those things.

And so architecture is a craft and it's art, but there's also a scientific method to what we do in architecture and design.

And you get a problem.

There's a statement.

You study it, you break it down, you have an iteration, it fails.

You iterate again, it fails.

I mean, it's really science.

And that's the design process really, is getting students who had no budget, no schedule, no real parameters in design school.

And then you put them into the work world and into a studio, collaborative studio with 10 other people that they need to work with.

And you have to encourage them to then be in some lanes, like, you have only so many hours to do this.

There's limits then back to what they do once they leave school.

They have to unlearn some of those things, and then you push them through the process.

Architects have to be licensed and it's a long process.

And we are really trying to work hard with our university partners about, you know, you've gotta do four years, then you have to have your masters, and then there's six examinations that you have to pass to become a licensed architect.

And so, yes, there are other paths within architecture, but it's rigorous and well.

- Let's talk about that for a second.

- [Tracy] Sure.

- Now I'm gonna go to a different thing, because I was gonna talk about something else, but safety is key.

So going through all of that is no different than being a doctor, that the buildings that are designed have to be safe.

- Yes.

Yeah.

Great point, Matt.

I mean, we are being coded to death.

I mean, every year the new codes come out.

- [Matt] I mean, well, I've worked with you on some codes.

- Yeah.

It's onerous.

So yes, health, life, safety in a building is critical.

Most people don't realize that at any one place that you are in a public building that we have studied and looked at how to get you out of that building in case of an emergency.

I mean, that's one tiny aspect of what we do, let alone the aesthetic, the beauty of architecture and the art of architecture.

I mean, your show is not long enough, Matt, for me to go into all the detail that I could tell you about that.

- Well, what's funny is, I'm gonna go back to my original thought was people think of architecture, they think of drawings.

They do.

I mean I do.

You think of rolling out the big pieces of paper.

You wonder how they get to there and you get your pencil out and you draw a building or whatever it may be.

But in knowing you and working with you on projects at Children's Home, I really learned a lot.

Another guy, Bernie Cook.

You learn a lot and you see how important certain things are are.

And you never, you know, if you don't know the business, you don't know it.

- Sure, you don't know what you don't know.

- You don't know what you don't know.

So I think that's pretty interesting.

So another thought that came to mind is it's gotta be hard to get people, young people.

So take my daughter who's in seventh grade, she doesn't know what an architect is.

So how do you get people to dream like you did at age 18 when she's 12 right now, to say you could be an architect.

- Yeah.

Well, I think it's that maybe overused, it takes a village kind of a thing.

I think I had people through middle school and high school telling me how good I was at art.

I could draw, and I was very artistic.

T Trying to turn that into something that I could live on.

I had a lot of conversations with my parents about that, you know, what are we paying for here?

Like, what are you gonna do with this?

I mean, it's great that you're artistic.

But it really was kind of a process to get me to that point.

I think counselors in school, and we do do a lot of outreach.

K through 12 is a market that we work in quite a bit.

We offer a lot of visits to the office.

There's an architectural tour that we've participated in with a couple schools in Peoria, just trying to get kids to recognize that this is, this is a profession.

And it's amazing how a lot of that comes through art teachers, art, graphic design capability.

But there's so much more to it.

There are many architects and interior designers who can't draw a stick figure.

But they're really good at what they do because there's so many aspects to the profession.

- And you have to know math.

- Yes.

You do have to know math.

And, and I would say for me, I remember sitting in my structures class, I think sophomore, junior year, and just my eyes glazed over.

I mean, it was not for me, which is really what drove me down more the creative side, kind of choosing interior design as the path that I wanted because I wanted less technical and more interior focused.

And that's all another conversation we could go into about how that melds together in our philosophies.

- Well, I'm gonna give you an idea.

- [Tracy] Okay.

- So John Morris here at the museum, maybe Dewberry can sponsor an architectural exhibit.

So kids, every kid in Peoria public schools goes through it.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- [Matt] Maybe they'll hook somebody.

- I've talked to John about this a couple of times.

Like, how can we help?

And there's also another great gathering that happens in Peoria every year that all the firms in town are involved in called Career Spark.

And it's strictly for middle school kids.

And we have, tables set up, and let 'em build some models.

And we let 'em look, it's pretty cool.

- [Matt] That is cool.

- Yeah, yeah.

- I'm always thinking about industries and getting young people to dream again.

I mean that's part of it.

So when you look at your business, and look here, not only at '23, Dewberry had a great '22, very busy, huge, huge projects, but now you're into '23.

I'm guessing it's not slowing down, but when you look at a one, two, three year outlook, what are gonna be some of these challenges as you and your team as you move forward?

- Yeah, great question.

I think there's a lot of similarities in what we're looking for and other businesses.

Retaining and recruiting staff is huge.

The talent war, as they like to call it, I mean, it's really, it's really paramount that we understand what we're doing there, because we can't move forward and have good solutions for our clients and offer all the consultation that they need if we don't have talent.

So it's really dog eat dog.

It's really gotten competitive.

And I think the other challenge is the post pandemic.

How are we, now that we know people can work from anywhere, and this is corporate, this is any business, you can work from anywhere, right?

We've shown that.

How do you entice them back to a place of business that makes an experience for them that's worth it for them to get in their car, drive to an office and participate.

For us, it was extra challenging because we're so collaborative.

It was a huge, huge challenge.

Some of our large city offices within Dewberry, New York City, Boston, just our large city offices are still doing a hybrid approach in the office.

And it's really challenging.

- Well you said earlier, you get 10 people in a room, you work on a project.

I mean, that's teamwork 101.

Can't have three of them sitting there with kids in the background at home doing.

I mean, it's an all in approach.

- Yeah.

It's tough.

And we are using those tools and we have to embrace them.

I mean, any business is up against that now.

If you don't embrace a technology in a new way of offering experiences to your staff, then you're not gonna have 'em, right?

Somebody's gonna do it.

And then you'll be on the losing side.

So we are, Dewberry was, thankfully, technology platform wise, we were ready when the pandemic hit.

We all just went to Teams.

So we were very lucky that we could use those tools.

But there is a lot of technology within architecture that is allowing us to still work using those tools.

I mean, we have VR headsets, we have meetings with our clients where we're literally walking them through the models that we're producing.

I mean, it's really fascinating.

We have to go from analog to digital very quickly.

We have to make that jump and we're doing it, but it takes investment and it takes time.

And we'll be there.

You know, we're getting there, we're doing it.

But these are things that you could not have foreseen, three years ago, the speed at which that is happening now.

- And it's good and bad, because there's people like me who, I'm resistant to even, you know, I've never even put together a PowerPoint, right?

Someone's always helped me with it.

- Right.

Yeah.

- Or I had my daughters do it.

And now I'm at a stage, well, I have to put together a PowerPoint, I don't know how to put together a PowerPoint.

And here my son is 10 years old and he's sitting there, and next thing you know, he has a PowerPoint.

- They know no world without it.

- [Matt] That's crazy.

- I mean we are really working to keep up with, as you keep saying that the generations coming into the workforce, they don't know a world without any of this.

We have groups within Dewberry that this is all they're doing.

You know, our virtual reality, AI, all of these things that are coming at us, we have a really good grasp of that.

And we know what we need to do.

You have to meet them where they are.

Interestingly, some of the rendering and visualization software that we're really using now, it's all gaming.

The gaming industry is driving the look and feel of what we put in front of our clients now.

It's fascinating.

- [Matt] It is fascinating.

- And tied into that is eSports within high schools and college now.

I mean, this is a major now in college, eSports.

So architects are designing the spaces for these experiences.

It's very new, but it's moving so fast, that last week, like it's over already.

So again, the speed at which these things are happening is kind of mind blowing.

- And some of these people think, "Oh, they're just playing video games."

No, actually, NASA's hiring 'em.

And that's what's happening.

- Whole new world.

Right.

- [Matt] It's a whole new world.

- Right.

- So let's talk about, you hear all the time, "going green," and I don't even know if that term's used anymore, but these initiatives that are out there, what does that mean for your business?

- So there's a couple there.

There's the 2030 initiative, which most large firms have signed onto.

It's basically a net zero footprint, right?

Leave no footprint.

Designing buildings, constructing them, because a lot of this bears on the contractors and how they remove construction debris from the site and how all of it, it's a lot about engineering of the building, but also our owners need to understand how you operate that building once we are done.

In net zero, you can't go turning dials and changing things and still have it meet that.

So it's very technically savvy, these buildings, net zero.

So that's one aspect.

The other one is, you know, everyone knows about LeED.

You see the plaques on the walls and buildings that you walk into.

We are all on board with that.

We have many LeED accredited buildings.

But net zero is really the next step.

And we've done a couple of them now, but it is challenging to make those work.

I think the other thing that we do is we have minimum sustainability standards within Dewberry.

You as a client wouldn't even know that we're doing these things, but they're built into what we're designing for you to give you some of that sustainable aspect to the buildings and spaces that we design.

But the really fascinating thing to me are the materials that are coming through the construction industry.

You can literally 3D print a building and they are printing materials that we're gonna use in buildings that weren't even around five years ago.

- [Matt] I have to visualize that.

- Yeah, it's really fascinating.

I mean, there's a huge technology shift in the materials for buildings.

And that's what I think is really interesting is printing a material and fabricating material that has the strengths, the energy coefficients, all of those things that need to go into a design.

A lot of interior design aspects for what we're designing and materials.

They're all fabricated now.

It's fascinating.

It's really fascinating.

They're making materials out of orange peels and organic material.

And so you talk about sustainable and green, those are the things that are driving the products that we're using in the buildings.

It's really interesting.

- Something popped in my head just now.

Dewberry can have their best of class initiatives and you can do all of these different things, but when you hand off the project, you don't really control the contractor.

I mean, you can guide 'em.

- So the drawings and the specifications for a building, those are there to make sure the owner gets what they paid for.

So that's part of what we do is make sure that the building is actually being built to the specifications and drawings of the billing.

That's why those are important.

But there is a relationship that exists between an architect of record, an architecture firm, and a contractor in which, there are things that happen during construction, like maybe this material isn't available, what can we use instead?

I mean, that has been amplified, big time.

- [Matt] Especially now.

- With supply chain.

That has happened a lot.

So it's put a lot of pressure on, I would say smaller contracting firms are really struggling because they can't absorb those costs that are changing at one point during the pandemic, that supply chain, it's getting better, but prices are changing daily.

Daily, sometimes by the hour.

So a smaller contractor's not gonna be able to absorb that.

And some of our owners were open to assisting with some of the cost changes, and some of them weren't.

Technically they don't have to do that.

- Isn't that crazy?

- [Tracy] It's crazy.

- So with the new OSF headquarters, the building itself is cool, but the interior design work in there.

It just is so clean.

Like, I love it.

- It's beautiful.

It's a beautiful, beautiful building.

- [Matt] It's beautiful.

- The sisters, their vision for that building was so fun for us, to come up with the guiding principles, which those guiding principles, which is another way of saying the goals of the project.

But they were very community focused and focused on the employees and the ministry partners.

of OSF.

And one of the really interesting things that I think about that space is it is a mix of a modern building, but because it's a historic renovation, we sometimes had maybe a piece this big of some molding or part of a column of a capital that that's all that was left.

So we had to recreate those and remold those.

- [Matt] That's so cool.

- There's artisan, you talk about artisan work inside that building is amazing.

But there also was a real connection to nature and environment for the sisters.

They really strongly wanted that.

And one of the things that's happening in interior design right now is this maker movement.

This is about handcrafted and handmade versus highly produced materials.

And one of the cool things that we did at OSF was on every floor, as you land on an elevator floor, come off the elevator is a unique space, kind of curated for that floor, different colors, kind of a different feel.

And we wanted to put these long kind of bar top tables, high top tables for people to work at.

So we worked with a fabricator, they found a tree, a white oak tree that was felled during a storm somewhere in Illinois.

I don't remember exactly where it was from.

And we made every single table for six floors out of that same tree.

- [Matt] Oh my God.

- And it's a live edge.

So you know that it leaves the bark and kind of that rough edge.

- I love that.

- Of the table.

And they are beautiful.

They're beautiful.

So kind of that juxtaposition of, yes, modern workplace, highly technology embedded building, but then you've gotta a live oak tree that we made all the tables out of.

So very handcrafted and connected to nature.

- That's gotta be the fun part for you.

Because you could sit there, and even when I've walked projects with you, and some buildings are just not the nicest buildings, and you walk through and you just have a different visual than the average person.

Probably been there and done that, part of it, but I think that's cool.

I'm gonna actually go up there and see some of those things.

- Go look at it.

Got to go look at 'em.

- [Matt] That is pretty neat.

So, well, here's the deal.

I only got through about 10% of my questions for you, but I really loved the discussion.

And I think one thing that I wanna take out of this is young people in school need to look at this profession.

Because it's pretty cool.

So, Tracy Coker, thank you for coming on.

Dewberry, we appreciate it.

This wraps another show.

I'm Matt George, and this is Business Forward.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music slows) - Thank you for tuning into Business Forward, brought to you by PNC.