MEMBER TO MEMBER
The 10:20:30 Rule
The management strategy for design professionals
Over the years, management gurus have proffered advice about how best to streamline operations, improve quality, build morale, and increase profits. What began with advice as simple as “time is money” grew into expensive consulting industries led by MBAs and best-selling authors. While many of their management theories—reengineering, TQM, ISO2000, Value Stream Mapping, Six Sigma—helped manufacturing and Fortune 500 companies, most design firms dismissed them as too difficult and time-consuming to implement. Even “softer” management theories such as William Deming’s Fourteen Points of Management and Steven Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People seemed to lack relevancy to design professionals. Read architect and management consultant Michael Strogoff’s alternative strategy: the 10-20-30 Rule.

BIMStorm Settles Over Alexandria, Va.
Designers and clients get together in person and over the Web to take on the city’s future
The BIMStorm Alexandria (Va.) conference in September allowed designers, clients, and others involved in the building process to contribute designs and information via a Web-based system that accepts data from many different software types and integrates it all in a building modeling format. These data were applied to real sites targeted for redevelopment by the City of Alexandria and local developers. A primary development issue in Alexandria will be the closure of military facilities, and the city is hoping the BIMStorm event will give them strategies for attracting new federal government agencies to take over these sites.

Paying Sustainability Forward
San Luis Obispo firm implements far-reaching changes
When RRM Design Group decided to seek LEED®-EB (“existing buildings”) for their newly purchased headquarters building in San Luis Obispo, Calif., the design firm committed not just to lessening the building’s ecological footprint, but also to evaluating the impact of their daily decisions from purchasing bottled water to using a fax machine. The facility was awarded LEED Gold in April 2008.