January 2012
1 post
4 tags
2011: Boiled Down
Let’s take this opportunity to review Boiled Architecture’s journey, in its first few months of life.
BA was in gestation for roughly 9 months
August 2: BA hires its first employee
August 14: BA becomes an S Corporation
August 19: BA hires its second employee
September: BA lands its first project
September 30: BA hires its third employee
October 5: Founder Oscia Wilson’s...
December 2011
2 posts
7 tags
FutureTech conference observations
This week I attended the ENR FutureTech conference in San Francisco, and moderated a panel on Millennials in the construction industry. The subject was how to balance the knowledge from older generations with the technical alacrity of the young.
Things of note:
Panels are not the most effective format
I met James Vandezande, BIM boss at HOK and author of the blog “All Things BIM”...
November 2011
4 posts
8 tags
Architect as Agent of the Owner
Experts in the art of Negotiation disagree on how to employ agents. An agent is someone who negotiates on your behalf. You might hire an agent because you are bad at negotiating, or because you lack technical knowledge of the issue at hand (e.g. hiring an attorney to negotiate a point of law), or because you fear prejudice (e.g. you are an Asian woman negotiating a deal with an older American...
Anonymous asked: Hello! I happen to come across a comment you posted on Bob Borson's blog. You mentioned about nine months ago that you were going to become a licensed architect. I was wondering if it was difficult to obtain you license? Was it also difficult to find a job? I am a high school senior and I am super worried about stuff like this.
Are these real people?
Does anyone else suspect that almost every single Tumblr person who is following your blog is not a real person? I usually click on the profiles of new followers to see who they are. A shocking number of them are simply pornography sites.
The rest of them never seem to have any blog entries; just photo after photo of interesting stuff. Are these real blogs? Do people really spend their time...
7 tags
For-Profit vs. Social Enterprise
For-profit companies exist to maximize profits within certain boundaries. Examples of boundaries:
You are not allowed to murder a union-leader in the pursuit of profits, but you are allowed to serve non-organic food in your kitchen, which means having some farmer spray pesticides on his crops, which gives local residents cancer, which indirectly kills people.
You are not allowed to steal money...
October 2011
2 posts
3 tags
Playing with the big boys now
For the sake of all my brother and sister architects who work in sad companies where they don’t value your ideas, and where you don’t get the freedom to work in your slippers several days a week, I’ve been chronicling the process we’ve been going through to start up Boiled Architecture. Perhaps we’ll inspire a few entrepreneurs.
Here’s an update: There is a...
8 tags
Minimizing feedback loops in design
The Project Production Systems Laboratory (P2SL) out of the University of California at Berkeley recently hosted a talk on Design Management.
The speaker was Jamie Hammond, one of the founders of Adept Management. Jamie has studied the process of Design for fifteen years, from a very disciplined and academic point of view. From that research, he and some colleagues developed a system and...
September 2011
2 posts
2 tags
Boiled Architecture's new website
Huzzah! You know the saying about not eating at a restaurant whose chef is too skinny? Well now this architecture firm has a fancy pants website, thanks to Ryan Schultz (the brilliant mind behind Opening Design).
Check out Boiled Architecture’s new website.
7 tags
Macro-micro-macro-micro
Yesterday the Boiled Architecture team spent the day setting the course for our startup. We used some fun post-it exercises to talk about what we each want from this company. When everyone put their notes on the board, we found three themes emerged:
Personal satisfaction - We each seek a work environment that we enjoy, enough money to live comfortably, and autonomy and flexibility.
...
August 2011
8 posts
5 tags
How BIM changes management →
One of my favorite bloggers and architects, Randy Deutsch, just returned from the Symposium on Technology and Construction. He wrote this entry with some key take-aways that are easy to understand, even if you don’t “do” BIM yet.
7 tags
Stuff you should measure
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. If you want your firm to be the best it can be, figure out how to measure each of these things. Take the time to set up systems which will automatically measure these and create reports, whenever possible.
Marketing:
Size of your market segment. In other words, if your firm targets high-end single-family residential work in Northern...
7 tags
Business development tips from an expert
Yesterday I attended a small session on business development for architects, hosted by Richard Pollack. Richard Pollack founded Pollack Architecture in 1985, and recently sold his ownership shares. Now he’s founded a consulting firm to help businesses in the building industry make more money.
Here are the things that stood out for me during his talk:
Common misunderstanding between...
6 tags
Incorporating in California
I was halfway through preparing this really impressive blog post about the collaborative mechanisms in our corporation by-laws. But instead, the preparation kept stretching on and on because the attorney (who is one of my partners) was really busy. It was holding up our ability to file for Women-Owned Small Business status with the federal government, which is holding up our ability to compete...
Breaking News: Small business owners need... →
7 tags
It's Not "Time of Life," It's Sexism
In addition to being an Architect, I attend one of the most prestigious business schools in the world. Among part-time MBA programs, UC Berkeley ranks 3rd according to both U.S. News [1] and Bloomberg Weekly [2].
Last night, I volunteered at a welcome dinner for the new admits. During the dinner speech, the executive director rattled off statistics about this year’s incoming class....
5 tags
Gain the benefit of the doubt
When you are a small company, you have a lot of things stacked against you. Your competition has a lot more money, more connections, and a long reputation to ride on.
Their marketing department gets to take potential clients out to fabulous restaurants followed by single-malt scotches, or take them golfing, or whatever it is they do. Your marketing budget allows you some business cards and...
5 tags
Moving Beyond the Minimum Viable Product
In my last post, I showed you the low-cost, fast way that I set out Boiled Architecture’s electronic shingle. It took a couple of weeks and a few hundred dollars.
In the agile startup world, this would have been called our Minimum Viable Product. It’s not pretty, but it’s functional and can begin making some money.
So we have a few people, a name, and a basic website. We...
July 2011
6 posts
11 tags
Hanging Up Your Electronic Shingle
The good news about founding a professional services firm is that you don’t need a lot of equipment. If you were founding a manufacturing company, you’d need a building with a bunch of expensive machines. If you were founding a shiny bauble shop, you’d need a storefront and storage space. But architects need little more than a good computer, some software, and a reliable print...
5 tags
The Quest for Time
I’m straddling: left leg in my the firm where I work, and right leg in the firm I’m trying to found. It’s a place many entrepreneurs know well.
If I could get laid off it would be perfect, but no such luck has come my way. Instead, I have to juggle both jobs until the revenues from my right leg turn black.
Even though my day job is a little slow these days, that...
We've named the firm: Boiled Architecture
Boiled Architecture
Hard-Boiled. No-nonsense, practical, hard-nosed.
Boiled. You take something you can’t use like dry pasta, put it through the boiling process, and it becomes something you can eat. You take a bunch of stuff like ideas, land, money, materials, etc. and put it through a process called architecture, and then you get a building.
It’s easy to hear and...
OpeningDesign.com: A builder cries out for better... →
openingdesign:
I recently attended an informal evening discussion group that occurs every month in San Francisco, on issues related to BIM. The person leading the discussion this time was Dace Campbell, of BNBuilders. As a general contractor, his agenda that night was to cry out to architects everywhere…
5 tags
Collecting Architects - Catch 22
[Founding new firm update #4]
Yesterday I reconnected with an architect I used to work with a few years ago. We both talked about how the atmosphere of collegiality in architecture firms is sadly lacking in most of the places we’ve worked.
Coming to work every day with a group of people you enjoy and respect, we both feel, is the most important thing. From that, quality work follows....
8 tags
The Pursuit of Partners - Part III
[Founding new firm update #3]
By working on Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) for the past two years, I’d made a number of professional contacts throughout the U.S. I called a few of them to ask for leads on finding partners who might be interested in founding a firm that specializes in “radical collaboration,” as I call it.
One of them is James Salmon, who runs...
June 2011
10 posts
5 tags
The Pursuit of Partners - Part II
[Founding new firm update #2]
After my first two tactics for finding a founding partner who would lead marketing strategy failed, I decided to reach out and target specific people.
There was one person in particular that I really coveted. He is an architect, but also a writer and speaker on subjects related to collaboration within the building industry. He has much more experience than I,...
5 tags
The Pursuit of Partners - Part I
[Founding new firm update #1]
Being a sole proprietor is crazy. You just cannot effectively do it all for any length of time. Knowing that, I envisioned founding with about five people:
Marketing and business development person - Help me set market strategy and pursue strategic alliances by using some fancy MBA knowledge
CEO & COO (Me) - Shapes and safeguards company’s vision...
5 tags
Big Announcement
It started with one question: If you had enough money to spend your days any way you liked, what would you do with your days?
Of course I would exercise and read more, spend more time with my friends, etc. But regarding architecture, which is what this blog is about, I would not leave it. I would practice it in a different way, in a different setting, and for fewer hours, but I would still...
6 tags
My Mom was right on this one
Some people don’t understand that design takes time. People who don’t work in creative professions think that art/design/creativity/inspiration just comes instantly to those with talent. Architects know that it takes time to produce even a decent design. Mulling it over, trying this and that, looking at precedent photos, talking about it with colleagues, drawing it from lots of...
I'm on twitter now
I’m on twitter now. Handle: oscia_wilson
OpeningDesign.com: International Reach with your... →
openingdesign:
“Teams can be co-located in a single room or dispersed across the globe, as the recent trend toward outsourcing has made clear. When networked electronically, even small firms can achieve international reach.” - Scott Simpson
There’s a great recent article in Design Intelligence, by Scott…
7 tags
I am an architect with a capital A
Eighteen years ago, I was agonizing between the choice to be an architect or a bus driver. On the one hand, bus driver seemed like a very relaxing job where you could be friendly and help little old ladies get places. I imagined I would have regulars that would greet me, and I would know everything about the city so I could direct tourists.
On the other hand, architecture was the combination...
4 tags
An Architect's Deliverable
If you want to have an excuse to roll your eyes, just ask a group of architects what their “deliverable” is. I recently watched this very scene at a seminar.
You’ve never seen indignation until you make the mistake of suggesting the deliverable is a set of documents. Now, I’ll agree that an architect’s deliverable isn’t a set of documents complete enough to...
OpeningDesign.com: Sometimes I like buildings... →
openingdesign:
There is one universal truth that you should probably know: There are no uninteresting people. Truly. Every single person has a fascinating life if you’re in the mood to hear it.
And buildings are like people. There is nothing about buildings that isn’t interesting if you’re in the mood.
In…
7 tags
When Documents are Too Complete
Errors and omissions in construction documents are expensive. Everybody involved in the building industry benefits when there are fewer E&O’s. Building Information Modeling (BIM) makes it easier to reduce E&O’s for several reasons. Among them:
Modeling the building in 3-d forces us to see clashes and strange conditions that we often miss when drawing in 2-d
The...
May 2011
4 posts
4 tags
Architect as Extrovert
Many new architecture firms get founded by a duo of architects with a complimentary skill set. They call one the “Practice Partner,” whose job it is to run the business and court new clients. The other is called the “Professional Partner,” whose job it is to actually do the architecture.
Presumably, the Practice Partner has people skills because she must deal with...
OpeningDesign.com: Launch Update →
openingdesign:
Ahh, the journey of an internet startup. Sadly, ours has not been nearly as dramatic and romantic as the folklore led us to believe it would be. The team has yet to pull a single all-nighter in a garage, for instance. (Although a couple nights we had a nice 2 hour nap.) None of the team has…
2 tags
What the Bay to Breakers has to teach us
This year is the 100th anniversary of the Bay to Breakers race in San Francisco, California. This is the largest footrace in the U.S., but it is so much more than that. The entire city participates in this festival. They don clever costumes (or sometimes just body paint), and walk along the route after the runners, drinking at 10 in the morning, and enjoying their fellow San...
Soon to ‘Soft Launch’ OpeningDesign.com... →
openingdesign:
The pre-launch frenzy is in full swing. A limited or beta version of OpeningDesign.com is set to be live in time for the AIA Convention, May 12th. As part of our mission to help create a more open and integrated building industry, OpeningDesign.com will be soft launching the first …
April 2011
4 posts
5 tags
Join a conversation about something you like
First of all, the KAConnect conference is going on right now. If you’re not following it on Twitter with the handle #KAconnect2011, then you’re just silly.
If you follow that twitter feed, read stuff by Seth Godin, Chris Guillebeau, Tim Ferriss, or have ever listened to advice about how to become a “thought leader,” then you’ve no doubt heard about the value of...
OpeningDesign.com: Transparency as a business... →
openingdesign:
“Transparency” is a word, like “collaboration,” that means different things to different people. It’s a continuum. Some people think using Facebook and Twitter is “transparency.” Pepsi likes to call themselves a transparent company because they push the envelope of traditional advertising by…
6 tags
Compensation Survey For 2011
Design Intelligence published their annual compensation survey last month, and wrote an article about it. The article’s main theme was that the prevailing belief that architects earn disproportionately low salaries is a myth.
Their survey shows that the average CEO/President of architecture firms (of all sizes) will earn $318,700 in 2011.
That’s a fairly high spread between the top...
4 tags
OpeningDesign.com: Improving Cost Estimating →
openingdesign:
I’m going to start with a short story:
One time, when I had only been working in the field a few years, I was visiting my sister on the weekend. I was complaining about the clients, and how they always ask for things that are totally outside their budget and then later complain about how…
March 2011
7 posts
5 tags
Let the kids be in charge of the building project? →
Here’s a new post on my other blog about an example of an organization pushing collaborative processes to their extreme—and succeeding.
3 tags
Substance should trump style
I prioritize clarity in my communications, above all else. That sometimes means I’m blunt. My sentences are straight-forward. I am not what you would call, “diplomatic.” Often this is helpful, but sometimes this is detrimental. I’ll accept that I need to work on my communication skills—frankly, many people need to work on their communication skills in one way...
6 tags
6 Simple Steps to Meaningful Collaboration →
One cool thing about my job: Sometimes I get paid to draw pictures. Check out my cartoon-format explanation of the six steps to Integrated Project Delivery (IPD).
6 tags
WatchCheck out the video I made for OpeningDesign.com’s blog:
openingdesign:
Considering using a multi-party IPD contract, but no time to do the research? This is the second in a series of videos explaining the options out there for template IPD contracts in simple, graphic format. This one explains the AGC’s ConsensusDOCS 300.
4 tags
When Not to Listen to People
One thing I’ve struggled with in life is deciding how much of other people’s advice to take, and how much to ignore.
See, I’m a practical person. So if I can avoid learning the hard way by watching other people learn the hard way, I will. That’s why my mentors are one of my most valued resources.
I made these important decisions by listening to other people’s...
4 tags
Architectural Lessons from Factories: Inventory...
Bottleneck: Let’s say you run a factory with three stations. Those three stations will never work at exactly the same pace. The slowest of those stations is the bottleneck. There will always be a bottleneck, by definition, but you want to keep the stations’ speeds going at about the same rate. If the bottleneck station starts getting much slower than the others, you take a look...
4 tags
Playing the hand you're dealt to make each project... →
Here’s a new post I did for the OpeningDesign blog, about a recent consultation. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll pick up some ideas for playing the hand you’re dealt.