Build It

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to the "Build It" blog.  I am a former Reprographics (aka blueprinting) salesperson turned Development & Construction Project Manager. 

I write about Development and Construction, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I hope you enjoy the content and please feel free to leave comments or email me using the link to the right.

Thanks for stopping by!

Jared Willis

What goes around, comes around

Recently, I had the burning need to find a certain document that was buried somewhere within the expansive paper archives of our building in Foster City.  The Chief Engineer had been looking for weeks, to no avail.  I decided that I should be able to go up to "The Library" and easily uncover what I needed, as if the Chief wasn't looking hard enough.  Spoiler alert: I was wrong.

The Problem

There was a mountain of disparate and disconnected documents, cabinets and binders full of paper, no true organization, various forms of media between paper, blueprints, sepias, plans, and digital documents.  It was a true "needle in a stack of needles" moment for me.

Needless to say, I never found the document I was looking for.  I gave up after about 45 minutes of pulling dusty plans off the top of shelves.   The whole experience brought me back to my days at BarkerBlue in a few ways: 1. I had visited this actual room while with BarkerBlue, and 2. I went there in order to try and convince the Owners at that time to pony up and scan all those rusting documents.  That call was also fruitless; poetically causing the frustration I was dealing with recently in trying to find this particular document.

I remember being frustrated at the time that the Owner did not see what a problem this outdated archive actually was.  How the inability to find documentation quickly (if at all) was a real business cost and risk to their operations.  I knew what a resource a scanned, tagged, and searchable archive of  30 years worth of documents could do for them, but they couldn't see it.

Fast forward 7 years, and I am now in the Owner position, wishing I had called that Salesperson 7 years ago to get to work scanning my archive.  This particular document, if not found, quite literally could have an implication of thousands of dollars.  Not to mention, I spent almost an hour looking for this thing, which has its own monetary impact to my projects and actual salary.

The Realization

Having a new perspective on this, I think I figured out the reason why my sales pitch fell on deaf ears that day.  As the Owner, looking at this monumental pile of stuff, the notion came to me that I had no idea where I would even start.  Deciding what was important, what was a duplicate that I wouldn't want to pay for, what was irrelevant.....a seemingly impossible task.  

It's a terrible excuse, but that's the realization I had.  I would probably turn my sales-self down just because I could not fathom starting the process.

The Takeaway

What would I tell myself of 7 years ago, knowing what I know now?  The Owner-me recognizes the problem, and understands the real life impact of lost documentation.  The Owner-me can probably justify the costs of the service.  I think the Sales-me should have done everything possible just to scan a few sets of drawings to start that snowball.

We actually did this in real life at BarkerBlue, successfully, with two pretty big tech companies in Silicon Valley.  We won those battles by showing them how we were already storing their current construction documents, and that it would be so easy to grow their archive by adding the old stuff.  We had momentum going into it, which mad the decision to add to the archive that much easier.

Staring at that pile of disjointed information was overwhelming.  Frustrating.  It seemed impossible to tame, but it would have been better if we had just taken a single step 7 years ago.

Death by a Thousand Cuts

In my estimating travels, I come across a lot of small jobs.  Wall demo here, relocate this there, etc.  Largely, these types of jobs are for tenants directly and not through property management.  What I find is that most tenants are surprised by the cost of what they want done, and I think it largely stems from not having a full understanding of what goes into their request.

For example, a seemingly simple wall demo requires (usually) the services of an electrician, demo company, drywaller, painter, flooring, acoustical tiling, and perhaps HVAC or fire alarm.  What you saw as a few hours of some dudes knocking down a wall just got more complicated and thereby more expensive.

This is what I've come to term "Death by a Thousand Cuts".  It's not that the whole job is big, but that it's made up of lots of little pieces and each of those pieces is someone's labor and materials.

Estimators Beware

I have also tried to take this into account as I look at new jobs.  I try to be very cognizant of the affects of one request and see what that request will truly generate.  Too often I have been caught not paying attention to all the connected items that are generated and not accounting for them, and they end up coming out of my budget.

I think one of the best parts of this job is trying to think through the entire project in your head beforehand to see where it could go wrong.  That thinking needs to continue through the creation of the project schedule as you lay out potential conflicts with deadlines and subcontractors.

The Upshot

If I was talking to anyone planning any kind of renovation (even residential), I would advise them to engage an Architect or Contractor up-front to talk about how their design decisions will affect their desired budget.  Use their knowledge and experience to help you think through those "unforseen conditions" which could have been handled or at least discovered at the beginning with some careful thinking and planning.

- Jared

Architect Barbie: Poorly designed

I am apparently a little behind on this, but last year, Mattel came out with a new Barbie doll in their series of "I Can Be..." Barbies showcasing different career paths for Barbie.  The specific doll in question here is Architect Barbie. 

Although a bit off topic from my normal posts, this one hits closer to home because of  my chosen field and the fact that I have a daughter who I would likely encourage into a career in the real estate realm.

While I recognize Mattel's need to have glamorous representations of everything for Barbie, this (and probably others in the career line) comes off, at least to me, as particularly unrealistic.  I think there's a fine line here between trying to make a career like Architecture attractive to young girls through exposure to Architect Barbie, and trivializing the experience or position by giving her a hot pink plan tube/yoga mat carrier.  Not to meniton that Barbie is apparently carrying the plans for her ubiquitious "Dream House" along with her, which most Architects could probably never afford.

Architecture, like most jobs, is not all cute pillows, international travel and acclaim.  Like most professions, it can be very hard to get to the top and not spend your days drawing bathroom stalls and stairs.

In fact, an 8-year old girl wrote to Dwell magazine earlier this year, criticizing Architect Barbie for not including any further information about Architecture itself to further young girls' curiosity about the career path:

"If you're going to send a girl an Architect Barbie, then you should send something about architecture with it so that she knows what that doll means.  Otherwise, she might use that Barbie for a different purpose like putting its clothes on a different Barbie doll and forgetting about it."

It's also been noted by some that Barbie's footwear is incredbily unrealistic for walking a jobsite, seeing that she comes equipped with an über-cute hardhat.

"It's as if these naysayers were saying that a rail-thin, perfectly coiffed blonde can't actually roll with the big boys—that she should put those blueprints down, go to a nail salon, relax with a Cosmo, and let the real men do the work."

It really seems to me that this sort of representation of a real career actually serves to put the pursuit of that career farther out of reach of girls like my own daughter.  I would hate to give her this kind of present that trivializes her career aspirations, whatever they may be.

- Jared Willis

 

Sound and Its Affect on the Built Environment

I came across a wonderful TED talk by Julian Treasure about the influence of poor sound design on our built environments and how it affects our health, our social interactions and our overall production and wealth.  

I find it very interesting that our focus on making healthier spaces via LEED and other programs is missing (apparently) a crucial piece of design for occupants' health and well-being.  The impacts Treasure demonstrates in his video are astonishing and he uses recorded sound to great effect in demonstrating the problems facing these built environments and the associated costs (both in loss of productivity and costs to remedy).

A great video and, as with all TED talks, very brief.  Please do take a minute to watch.

Update: the video is not appearing on the blog for me, so if you can't see it, here's the link:  http://www.ted.com/talks/julian_treasure_why_architects_need_to_use_their_ears.html

Jared Willis