Architekwiki
  • Home
  • WIKI
  • Start Here
  • Resources
  • Other
    • Reading List
    • Ochre >
      • Ochre
      • Ochre KB
      • Ochre FAQs
      • Ochre Help
    • Details
    • The 3 Aspects
    • About
    • Subscription FAQs
    • Terms of Use
  • Subscribe
  • Home
  • WIKI
  • Start Here
  • Resources
  • Other
    • Reading List
    • Ochre >
      • Ochre
      • Ochre KB
      • Ochre FAQs
      • Ochre Help
    • Details
    • The 3 Aspects
    • About
    • Subscription FAQs
    • Terms of Use
  • Subscribe

Architekwiki

A Resource For Architects
Click here to get good stuff in your inbox

Categories

All
Business Development
Business Management
Design
Detail
Miscellaneous
Project Management
Resources

Archives

January 2023
November 2022
October 2022
July 2022
June 2022
May 2022
April 2022
October 2021
September 2021
August 2021
June 2021
May 2021
February 2021
January 2021
December 2020
November 2020
October 2020
September 2020
August 2020
July 2020
June 2020
April 2020
March 2020
February 2020
January 2020
December 2019
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
June 2019
May 2019
April 2019
March 2019
February 2019
January 2019
December 2018
November 2018
October 2018
September 2018
August 2018
July 2018
June 2018
May 2018
April 2018
March 2018
February 2018
January 2018
December 2017
November 2017
October 2017
September 2017
August 2017
July 2017
June 2017
May 2017
April 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
July 2016
June 2016
May 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015
July 2015
June 2015
May 2015
April 2015
March 2015
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
August 2014
July 2014
June 2014
May 2014
April 2014
March 2014
February 2014
January 2014
December 2013
November 2013
October 2013
September 2013
August 2013
July 2013
June 2013
May 2013
April 2013
March 2013
February 2013
January 2013
December 2012
November 2012
October 2012

October  IS  A Good Time To Think About Xmas!

10/20/2013

 
Christmas Tree
Xmas Gifts

Another task, besides Budgeting, that is timely for the end of October is planning your gift-giving to clients.

The decisions are: 
  • Who gets a gift?
  • How much will we spend?
  • What will the gifts be?
  • Who gets what?
  • How will they be delivered?

So here is our process.

First
, determine how much we billed each client. Those we billed over $5,000 in the first 10 months of the year get a gift. Others get a card.

Second, we budget 0.002 times the amount billed for the gift(s).

Third, we look at the number of gifts and their values and picked one or two items that seem to work. My list of past choices is below.

Fourth, bearing in mind that some authority (IRS, probably) says gifts shouldn't exceed $30, we let that inform the decision of who gets what. Often we give a client organization multiple versions of the gift, which are directed to different people that are involved in the project. Sometimes, we direct a gift to "Office Staff", too.

Fifth, we have drifted toward online gift purchasing that includes wrapping and delivery. Of course that adds cost. So it is a balancing act. 

Feel free to modify this procedure in any way you want. I don't have a clue how anyone else does this.

Gift Examples:
  • Alcoholic beverages (you have to know your client!)
  • Cheese, fudge or combination from the monks at Gethsemini 
  • Poinsettias
  • Candy from an upscale chocolatier 
  • Tin or tray of seasonal cookies 
  • A Big Bertha golf club (from my wife and I, delivered to the home, see limit issue above) 

One last suggestion: keep each year's list where you can find it. Not remembering what you did last year creates some unnecessary anxiety.

If this activity puts you in the mood to think about your own Xmas List, check out these ideas. 

If It's October, Is It Time To Start Working On The Budget?

10/19/2013

 
Piggy Bank
Budgeting

I always felt that late October was a good time to start budgeting for the next year. I have to admit that preparing a budget was interesting because you learned where the money went last year and got a chance to correct the trends. That's the expense side of the budget.

The income side of the budgeting process is like herding cats. Your plan and the actual outcome are unrelated. And worse - dangerous. We all plan to do better every year, which it fine. No problems with that. The danger is acting like it will happen when you budget the expenses. If you miss your income projections, but meet your expense projections, you just may have stepped closer to financial disaster. 

So what do I recommend? Well, since I am out of my depth here, nothing. 

But I can tell you what I do. I assume that income will be down in the coming year. Then I look at how I can squeeze any fat out of the expense side of things. If income isn't down next year, I am profitable. If income is down after all, I am as prepared as I can be.

Two articles that will give you a grasp of the big picture economics that are going on in a design firm are:
Architectural Economics
How Much Are You Worth An Hour?

Unique Methods Revisited

10/14/2013

 
Unique Methods ToolUnique Methods Tool
Not everyone is 'wired' to look for ways to improve a process. Some people like tackling a task differently every time it comes around. But even the act of designing is a candidate in spite of every design problem being unique. Recognizing your unique method of designing can make it a smoother process. Here's an example of what I mean.

I like to start a design problem with context, understanding the present situation, taking note of the surroundings. Context tells me what "kind" of solution the problem "wants". From there I often look at constraints next, zoning, codes, approvals needed. I want to know
where the danger zones are, where I might waste time looking for solutions that will never be "clean". You can see that my overall approach is about elimination. I am much more comfortable knowing up front where the boundaries are. Infinite possibilities is not reality. There are always boatloads of solutions that won't work well. I like to get rid of them up front.

Next is a quick peek at schedule and budget followed by a rough estimate of size and needs. Then I like to mull the whole thing over while I dig into the size and needs issue in more detail. 

I had few projects early in my career where there were serious misfits that took way to long to understand. One was a suburban library that wanted to be one-story because it just wasn't big enough to justify two stories. The site was a truncated wedge shape. The building wanted to be in the narrow end of the wedge and the parking in the wider end. About twenty schemes later I realized I had two problems where I thought there was just one. I had been working on the 10 lbs. in a 5 lb. bag problem without realizing it. Not only did the shape of the site make things difficult, the SIZE of the site was just large enough to accommodate building, parking and setbacks. Things started to fall together once I realized the real limitations.

There is no point in trying to hurry the process while I am working on space an needs (or watching someone else work on it). The whole thing needs to simmer for a while. Something critical to the process happens here. If you rush it, you don't really make any progress. The bigger the challenge, the longer it takes. This probably looks like procrastination, or a learned disfunction from college days. I prefer to think of it as time needed to marinate.

My method of design works much better when I can follow these steps at my own pace. 

Take a look at this article to see some other benefits of Unique Methods and a tool that I use. 

How Can An Architect Use Social Media - Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, G+?

10/10/2013

 
Picture
What does marketing mean for an architect?
The classic answer is : "Marketing is what you do to make the phone ring." 
The short answer is "name recognition".
The long answer is "recognition as an expert in a type of building or service".

How does Social Media fit in?
First let's be clear that we are talking about Marketing, not Sales.
Social Media is not a Sales tool. Unfortunately, you are more likely to reach 'influencers' with Social Media - not the decision-maker (who is not likely to make a decision based on a tweet). So we are definitely talking about the short and long answers describing marketing, and mostly the long answer - building recognition as an expert.

With Social Media your content can be pushed out to a wider audience than you might reach with email or waiting for an organic searches to find your website or blog. But your credibility is tied to publishing. 
The timeline or stream of Social Media means that posts must be made regularly, measured in hours rather than days to be effective. 

The interesting thing about Social Media is that your ’reach’ goes beyond your immediate audience (Followers, Likes, Connections, Circles). By reach I mean all the people who ultimately are exposed to your information. If you send an email to 100 people, they all get the email. That is the strength of email. A few may forward it to others. So your audience was 100, but your reach was maybe 105. Interestingly the people who received the forwarded email are more likely to pay attention to it because the act of forwarding it acts like a recommendation. The reach with Social Media can be many times greater than email and enjoys the same ’recommendation’ aspect.

Here’s how reach works with the four main Social Media services. In each case we assume your audience and everyone else's is 100. And remember that it is much easier to share the information with Social Media than it is to forward an email.

Read More

Gmail TASKS Revisited

10/8/2013

 
Picture
One of the first articles that I wrote was about Google's TASKS feature in Gmail. I was probably segueing away from using it at the time. Now I am back.

TASKS is part of the Gmail system whether you use a simple gmail account or a Google Apps account. Like Outlook and Apple Mail, TASKS gives you a place to list TO-DOs. You can start as many Task lists as you want so you can keep things in categories, or, perhaps, organized by project. This is how I think of things and how I use TASKS. I have projects for actual projects, but also Strategic Projects that I am working on for Architekwiki. A project might also be a set of reminders about invoicing or other 'overhead' activity. 

What makes TASKS unique from anything I have ever used is its ability to connect an email conversation to a task. You simply select 'Add to Tasks' from the 'More' drop-down menu while you are reading the email or have it selected. The task name defaults to the Subject of the email, which I usually add to or replace with something more descriptive of what needs to be done. When you review your task list, you can click on 'related email' to recall the email. So the task listing is both a reminder that follow up is needed as well as the background reference itself. Clicking on "related email" brings up the original email along with all others in the thread/conversation no matter how old or where they are archived.

The unique "related email" feature doesn't come at the expense of all the standard features you need in a TO-DO system. TASKS has due dates, notes, sub-tasks (by indenting), sorting, printing, emailing the list, clearing and viewing completed tasks, etc.

Another advantage is that you can rely on TASKS to track critical emails without the effort of managing special "stars" or colored "flags" in your inbox. I have used the tactic of moving critical tasks to the top of the list (simply drag) and in some cases created a 'Critical' task list into which I move those tasks (also easy, two clicks). 

The mobile apps for TASKS gives you access to your tasks no matter where you are, even though this is basically a browser-based tool. If you find that a lot of your TO-DOs and follow-up comes from email exchanges, this is a perfect way to simplify your system for tracking what needs to be done.

Report On Continuing Education Day

10/7/2013

 
Picture
I recently spent a day attending a mishmash of seminars in order to fill up on Continuing Education Units. So here's what I learned.

Continuing Education is just like regular education - effort-in equals benefits-out. If we are counting on continuing education to provide the public with better architects, let's hope architects are already good enough. If the states truly think that continuing education is a necessity, then they should get off their duffs and provide it. The system in place is just a busy-work joke. 

Ok, rant over. The presentations were on Automatic Entrances, Limestone, Air Barriers, FRT Wood, and Bioclimatic Facades.

Automatic Entrances
Pedestrian oriented automatic entrances come in two types - swinging and sliding and each of these come in either full energy or low energy. And then there are ICU doors, which are the same as the others except inside hospitals (because no one else uses them?). So you ’get’ the difference between swinging and sliding doors. The sliders take up lots more space, but would generally be preferred except for that limitation. The swinging variety need many more safety features so you don't get hit by the door or it closes on your fingers. If you can tolerate the slow speed of the low energy variety. The low energy doors are too weak to hurt anyone. The nuances make it a good idea to involve a manufacturer's rep in the design/specification process. (A theme, generally.)


Read More
    Resources

    Start Here

    YouTube Channel

    Join The Mailing List

    Terms of Use
    Your use of Architekwiki is implicit agreement with the 
    ​
    Terms of Use.
    Thank You for your donation

    x
    Get Good Stuff in Your Inbox
    Picture
    Subscribe

    RSS Feed


    Archives

    January 2023
    November 2022
    October 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012

    Categories

    All
    Business Development
    Business Management
    Design
    Detail
    Miscellaneous
    Project Management
    Resources

Picture

Picture
VISIT ARCHITEKWIKI'S RESOURCES
​
START HERE
ABOUT
SIGN UP
TERMS OF USE
Architekwiki | Architect's Resource | Greater Cincinnati 
© 2012-2022   Architekwiki​