It may seem a minor thing. Employees wanting to build their portfolios and not knowing how management feels about it may feel compelled to pick up documents or photos where they can and on the sly. To one firm, though, the best policy is an open one.

Robert P. Smith, AIA, became president of Culpepper McAuliffe & Meaders, Inc., Atlanta, in 2000 to manage the operations of the 36-person A/I firm. One aspect of that job was setting policy. And one policy the firm put down in writing a year ago covers "Personal Use of Project Drawings/Photographs."

"I wouldn't say that there was any specific problem that we had encountered in our firm," Smith explained, "but more of a general confusion among our younger staff about how they would go about obtaining copies of materials that were related to projects they have worked on."

Whether it was coming in on weekends to plot a drawing or picking up a loose photograph and putting it into a personal file, the lack of openness made the firm's management uncomfortable.

"Fundamentally, I just didn't want people feeling like they needed to sneak around to get this stuff, because we're more than happy to let them have access to it," Smith said. "Our feeling was that we wanted to make it a bit more explicit that 'Yes, it's okay for you to have this material. We want to cooperate with you. We certainly want to recognize that you made a contribution to these projects. We know that you want it for your portfolio, so here's an overt approach to letting this happen in a natural sort of way.'"

Good sources
Smith knew that the AIA and the American Society of Interior Designers had written parallel codes of ethics on this issue, so that is where he turned.

"I wanted them to see that I was coming from someplace other than my own head in writing this policy; that it was a widely accepted and publicly known philosophy of the profession that design firms should allow their people access to this information in a reasonable way," Smith said.

For instance, the AIA policy commentary requires permission of the employer before documents may be copied and states that "a member may impose reasonable conditions, such as the payment of copying costs." In turn, the Culpepper McAuliffe & Meaders, Inc. policy preamble stipulates these two points by stating: "With the specific prior approval from a principal and appropriate cost reimbursement to the firm, employees may . . . "

Smith, who is the 2002 chair of the AIA Practice Management Committee and president-elect of AIA Georgia, has provided the firm's policy as a sample, which AIA members can view on the MyAIA portal. Go to the PIA subfolder under the Portal Directory and find the sample policy in the PM Information Bulletins under the Practice Management subfolder. Or use the MyAIA Portal Search to find "Sample Policy on Personal Use of Documents."

Copyright 2002 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved.