The discussion is swirling around in the AEC community about WFAnywhere and the hopeful application to our careers.
We’ve adapted to a change, rather well – and mostly without incident. Now it might’ve been a forced-adaptation, but now the industry knows what I’ve known for 12 years. You can actually work from nearly anywhere.
I’m writing this all down because I can’t say it all in 140 characters.
Design in the purest form, you just need something to write with and something to write on. Ask anyone who’s ever been to a job site and doodled details on a stack of drywall to answer a RFI before it was officially submitted for tracking in the record documents. 90% of the projects I’ve been involved with have ‘makers marks’ written in pencil on the studs.
How work gets done hasn’t looked all that different from the old design rooms to the current design rooms:
Whether its the JPL drawing room (left) or some modern iteration of a tech-based office (right) – the rules of interaction haven’t changed much.
Well, until recently.
In the ‘before times’ I was fully engulfed in the day job. As most everyone was. I was pulling hours that were frankly unhealthy, but working around the clock to keep things moving and get that dopamine hit of accomplishment.
I did things a little differently though.
Much to the chagrin of the 8-5 crowd, I’d actually started each morning over coffee answering communications that came in, attending meetings remotely (they were all on Zoom anyway). I slow-played the morning so that I could cut a 45-60 minute commute down to 20 minutes by making the drive at off-peak hours.
If something needed drawing, I remoted into the office computer. Either via the sanctioned connection tools or my own VNC version that connects all my gizmos.
Evenings were the reverse of the morning. I’d stay late to accomplish all the things that I couldn’t really get to during the day during meetings, quick Revit answers and all the other little things that happen in office life. Go home to catch some food while remoting back in or building all the tools for the next project.
Projects were taking place all over the globe – but there were grumblings because my butt wasn’t in my chair at 8AM. Then again – half the office was out on site visits or staying home because of sick kids, etc. So…
The day we all got sent home… That wasn’t really any different for me. I hung out a day longer than most to set up a ‘AMA Revit’ channel for the office, and a couple of folders to dump anything for mass distribution – but beyond that – the only thing that life was missing, were the people (and the frequency of ‘could you make ____ for me’ requests dropped).
I was accomplishing a lot of stuff, but as a task-rabbit for 3-4 projects. I wasn’t on high enough on the staff list for a deeper level of involvement in them, so it was all internal meetings & staff-level stuff.
From my perspective – hardly revolutionary.
Previous to this firm position, I was working from any place with a WiFi signal and a convenience outlet. Research and organize materials on the flights to, gathering data, starting drawings and renaming photos on the trip home. I would work whatever hours necessary to deliver the results, head to the office to drop off everything gathered + drawings for delivery.
If there was a team meeting – show up at whatever office that it was at (pre-Zoom)
Doing this? I’ve designed commercial and residential buildings for people that I’ve never met, on sites that I’ve never stepped foot on. The idea that everyone else had been forced to adapt to was one that I’d already been living.
Now? Same deal. I’m set up to operate and have access to all my tools and gizmos from any place with network access.
This is all anecdotal, so effects may vary.
Recently, more and more job postings are disappearing from the ‘Remote’ filter. That is unless I catch the tech-appropriation of the job title for ‘Architect’.
I’ve admitted openly that I’ve been going a little stir-crazy without an outlet for human communication and no one to mentor. So yes, being back in a firm environment does have its benefits – but I’m also coming at this from a position where I sometimes go for weeks without speaking to another human.
The perspective is a little different, when instead of battling zoom fatigue, you’re starved of actual client/co-worker/human interaction entirely. That’s substantially different and the rose-colored glasses are much thicker.
Are firms sliding toward accepting a remote work model? Again anecdotally – I’ve heard the answer is yes, but only with existing staff that’s in place already.
I can see that. An employee that made it thru the gauntlet of not getting laid off in the first place, thru to maintaining & gaining productivity for the last year, and have evolved a lifestyle around their household and kids.
So until the school situation settles itself out – the daily routine is subject to change. Firms would obviously want to work within that fluid framework to keep that team member.
But what about expanding staff? What then?
I could see the struggles that one might have with such an approach…
Have you ever been on a project team that if you miss a meeting or an email chain – you’re essentially screwed? If you’re the guy behind the guy – this has happened to me ALL the time.
You’re left off an email chain and the PIC (Principal in Charge) bounces from call to call all day long – forgets to pass along some piece of info to you. Then you end up on the jobsite the next day getting yelled at for not dealing with a design change that was made the day prior.
As a profession that’s mostly about communicating ideas – sometimes we suck at it. If you’re in the room sitting next to your team, there’s a better chance to eavesdrop on that call and avoid the kerfuffle. But that kind of thing can happen at any time for any reason. Sometimes its rare that your PIC is even in the same city, let alone the same room. That’s where Slack/Teams/etc. enters the picture.
I’ve also worked in tiny firms where I missed a deadline because I wasn’t told that I had a deliverable date to hit until I missed it by a couple days. So regardless of office size – these things happen.
Sharing information solves problems. Not having the information first-hand can also be problematic.
So what happens when a couple of staffers move to another state and start bringing on clients from a new region? Well I would think that the firm has to file for another business license in that state to cover all the legal side. Either that or decline the project. Then there’s the tax rates in that location that are different than the taxes & sales in the new state.
Is that inter-state commerce now? I have no idea how this works – but I imagine that there’s something to dealing with it. Again – likely a large-firm vs. small firm problem.
Archispeak covered this on a recent podcast. You move half a state away and suddenly you’re in a different coverage zone on a different doctor network or maybe the provider the firm uses isn’t there at all? What then? Allowance for covering this under a more local network?
One of the downsides of this is something that I’m living thru. I don’t have access to the $10k that it takes in fund to personally license all the software products that I would need to effectively provide a greater level of service.
Imagine that translating to AWS fees for a giant server load across several states for sharing documents, or trying to figure out who pays the cloud fees associated with sharing live models or entire databases – can be bothersome.
The last firm that I was at, had adoption problems with BIM360 because across 1500 employees, there were a limited number of licenses for the Revit Cloud.
Things aren’t cheap and everything is seemingly behind a paywall of some sort. If that cost is part of the “users” problem and not the “use-ees” problem – the license passes to the guy running the workstation.
In most places I’ve worked at, you can’t get two offices to work off the same template and use the same fonts. Herding cats into an online work environment where means and methods agreements are disjointed can be a significant issue. One office used CAD, one used Revit… its a problem.
In most on-boarding situations, your employee is provided with a workstation or laptop to use while working for that firm. It would be pretty cool though to self-license and split those operating costs with 3 other firms as part of overhead, rather than one firm taking all that on the chin.
Would the firm still get tax credit? Or would the entire consultant fee become the expense? I’m not an accountant.
Now, let me say this up front and out loud. I am a giant proponent of working from anywhere as a business model.
In a firm environment – I was already working around the ‘commute problem’ and pulling double duty. In-office was replete with desk meetings, conference room meetings, fighting with the copier, TPS reports, and the W.E.N.U.S wasn’t updated enough (watch Friends). Even though communication was improved, it was also entirely dependent on actually being in the same room. Which was a rare occurrence.
The second half of the day was spent either running emails or remoting into the office computer. There I have the ability to focus entirely on tasks and productivity was/is increased.
Now if you’ve got a cat who loves to lay on your keyboard while your two kids are engaged in an epic Nerf gun battle for the soul of the universe & to defeat Thanos, that’s a slightly different environment.
Regardless of the additional hurdles above – I’m finding it hard to understand why the AEC field is reluctant to pursue growing staff with the best applicants, regardless of physical location.
A lot of other professions have figured it out – why not us?
What if you could grow your firm without regional constraints? In larger firms – outsourcing, staff sharing across offices in other states, and even farming portions of the project off to Revit farms or Rendering Service firms happens ALL. THE. TIME.
Why not partake of that on a smaller scale? Engage in looser relationships than the stringent employer/employee relationship? Guilds perhaps? Consulting agreements with partners with allowances for a benefits package rather than the collective health insurance plans and employee/employer agreements? (I know – rates would increase without the buying power of large insurance groups, but that can be overcome).
On a smaller scale, if you’ve got an amazing design project in a state you aren’t licensed in – a partner firm fills the role as the “Architect of Record” (AOR) for that project.
OR Interior design services get parsed out if you have no expertise… this one is how I’ve managed to get a peek into a lot of giant firms and their dismal modeling practices. The firm was hired into a role of Interior Designer-OR or AOR. Like the Mall of America project.
Anyone, with a project located anywhere, would have a resource in the area to perform on-site services.
This may just democratize the access to design services and increase the client based beyond the 1% of the buildings that we touch now.
You need someone to scan a property in Michigan? without the flight costs, housing costs, paying a team to stick around for a week, while incurring per diems and room charges? Well, call up the 2-4 people you have in the network to do that work, and send it off to the staffer in Philly & her roommate who’s building out existing conditions models for the rest of your team.
Whether we’re all under lockdown or not – a business model that happens without the constraints placed on it by “butts in chairs” may be a more viable path toward the success and longevity of this career.
Tech is going to continue to advance. Greater efficiencies are being found in the delivery process and new tools are coming online every day that make collaboration easier to achieve.
At the very least – think of all the money that can be saved on real estate and office rental in giant cities. Even Saks is turning its retail spaces into WeWork offices to limit the brick-and-mortar footprint.
There are benefits across the board such as lower operating expenses, happier staff, greater reach and influence on the built environment… These are all gains that can be made, while still maintaining access to a staff who believe in a common goal.
Despite the hurdles – if my name is on the door – I’d be more prone to prioritize quality of services for the clients, greater profit-sharing for the partners and employees, over the right office address in a pristine location because someone can sit there.
It’s tough to market based on green principles and contribute to the pollution with heating an empty office and a staff stuck in traffic for 2 hours a day, right?
I’m a champion the possibility of this, largely because I’ve seen it work and I’m currently making it work.
I’m also in it, and the success of this delivery system has a direct impact on my family’s well-being.
I’ve done work for my former firm, and I’ve got a couple of additional resources for remote work as a sole practitioner. Under this model, I’ve been doing existing conditions of projects literally from coast to coast. If this continues, I’ll be using some of those earnings to re-invest in scanning services so that I might provide service to other firms.
I wish to expand that footprint for a couple of reasons that are turning out to be common amongst my peers.
I’m a pragmatic guy & I want to own a house. Set down roots somewhere, closer to family. The possibility of that on a single-income at giant firm salary levels vastly negates that possibility. At ‘base levels’ of the current positions being advertised – I wouldn’t even qualify for the free toaster let alone the full amount of a mortgage, and couldn’t cover the payments.
To accomplish this particular goal, I need to relocate in order to have a better chance at fulfilling this aspiration.
Additionally, I’m a proponent of this type of approach because frankly, without it – I may be forced out of the profession entirely. You’re probably sick of reading about it – but its one of those life-altering kind of things that causes sleep deprivation and stress. I don’t wish this kind of stuff on anyone.
I’m sitting, waiting and wishing – that the architecture gods may see the benefits of participating in a hiring practice that doesn’t require employment contingent on warming a chair. I wish to partake of some of the things in life that others achieve with less struggle than I seem to encounter. I believe that this all can be achieved while still maintaining access to the collective creative intelligence of the profession.
Let’s try it out shall we?
Thanks for reading,
JM
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