538: Cultivating Talent & Fostering Collaboration with Gavin Henderson of Stanton Williams: Otter Voice Meeting Notes

538: Cultivating Talent & Fostering Collaboration with Gavin Henderson of Stanton Williams

Enoch Sears1h 6min

Speaker 1

00:00

What architects are trained to do? I think they're not trained enough to talk to people. Yeah, talk to people who aren't architects. Hello,

Rion Willard

00:08

and welcome to the Business of Architecture. I'm your host, Ryan Willard. Today I had the pleasure of speaking with Gavin Henderson, principal director Stanton Williams, and 90 person strong practice based in London where this podcast was recorded, which has gained international recognition for its thoughtful and innovative approach to sensitive sites and complex ambitious projects. Gavin's wide ranging experience spans all scales, building types and sectors, from housing to public realm, education and life sciences, and it often involves the insertion of cutting edge facilities and forward looking buildings within sensitive historic settings. Through these experiences, Gavin has cemented his belief and a deep understanding of the past. ie the processes that have physically shaped our cities is key to designing successful environments that foster innovation and allow people to come together to share their knowledge, cultures and ideas. Examples of his work include the Sterling prize winning Sainsbury's Laboratory in Cambridge, the desired Center for Research for Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, the key worker housing project for the University of Cambridge and the recently completed UCL East Marsh gate, education facilities a new 35,000 square metre academic building for a University College, designed to break down disciplinary silos and encourage collaboration between academics, students and the public. We speak a lot about this project today. This diverse portfolio reflects the collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of Stanton Williams working ethos, in contrast to traditional architectural practices that focus on clearly defined sectors, Stanton Williams have chosen not to specialize in any one area of expertise, allowing the different strands of their work to inform each other and facilitate the cross fertilization of ideas. Now, this is interesting because we talk about this quite a bit in the podcast, and what it means to not specialize, but also have a particular kind of specialization with a certain type of client, where if you look at the work of Sansone Williams, you can start to see that there is an expertise in dealing with particular types of multi headed complex clients. Beyond his budget work. Gavin is actively involved in the architectural community as a lecturer, critic and member of various panels and committees, including the Society of antiquaries of London for the Kouns Scott committee, the N L A expert panels, as well as chairing the RBA regional awards. So sit back, relax and enjoy. Gavin Henderson. This podcast is produced by Business of Architecture, a leading business consultancy for architects and design professionals. This episode is sponsored by Smart practice, business of architectures, flagship program to help you structure your firm for freedom, fulfillment, and financial profit. If you want access for our free training on how to do this, please visit smart practice method.com. Or if you want to speak directly to one of our advisors about how we might be able to help you please follow the link in the information. Kevin, Welcome to the Business of Architecture. How are you very well, thank

Unknown Speaker

03:23

you. It's good to see you today.

Rion Willard

03:25

Absolute pleasure. Give your patients of mine set up this morning here in your wonderful offices and their angel by the canal. You guys got a beautiful view. And you have been here as what's, what's your actual title here?

Unknown Speaker

03:39

I'm one of the principal directors,

Rion Willard

03:41

the one of the principal tracks and you've been here since 1994.

Speaker 1

03:44

That's right, it creeps up on you, I'm afraid. So I'm part of the furniture. We were 12 people when we started and we were 90 people now but still very much continuing the same. The same ethos

Rion Willard

03:56

amazing. And how would you describe the your kind of main responsibilities in the in the business? Well,

Speaker 1

04:02

we actually have seven directors. So six of us are leading projects. And we have one director who's more on the business development side. So we're very hands on on our projects. And then we each take different responsibilities on sort of wider practice issues as well. And then within that the full principle directors who have been slightly longer than the others, but we've all been in the practice for quite a while now. Take a sort of overview in terms of the creative direction of the practice. So we not only lead our own projects, but we have some involvement with all projects across the across the office.

Rion Willard

04:40

Amazing. And you've had quite an extraordinary career. You've been involved in projects like the Sainsbury laboratories, a lot of education projects, the Judge Business School and desired center. And one project that we're gonna be talking about a lot today is the marsh gate development for CCLs. Next up in that's right up in the Olympic Park, which is an amazing location. And Fantastic, fantastic building. And how long is that project been going for in the office? Um, well,

Speaker 1

05:12

we won Marsh gate isn't in a competition in 2016. Right. And it completed in about a year ago, assets is now occupied. The new a was ongoing for about six years and of course, right the way through COVID, which brought its own challenges for for everyone.

Rion Willard

05:32

And you will be involved in the whole master planning of the areas 35,000 square metre master plan for the site or

Speaker 1

05:42

the master plan, taking a lot longer actually. So so the master plan was in place when we started. So we were working within that master plan. And I think I mean, if just touch on that project, it is it is a quite remarkable project in terms of ambition. And I think that that's one characteristic of all those projects, you just spoke about that UCL east, which is what is being developed in the Olympic Park is the is the biggest single expansion of University College London in its 200 year history. So Marsh gate is a it's a 35,000 square metre building. So it's substantial, it's 4000 Students 700 staff base there. But when the whole project is built, it's going to be 180,000 square meters of space. But I think the really remarkable thing about it is not that scale, or the scale is impressive. It's the ambition to have develop a whole new type of academic building on campus. So Marsh gate is is really based on the realization that to answer the the challenges globally that we have today, the solutions are not found within the traditional disciplines, but really in the interaction between disciplines, the space between them. So everything is interdisciplinary, right? There's entirely new programs, were a huge challenge to actually try to design. How

Rion Willard

07:11

did you guys end up getting involved in that project? And how were you selected to be the kind of main architect? Well,

Speaker 1

07:22

it was a limited competition, international competition of I think about six practices. So there would have been a PQ selection process to get onto that shortlist. And then it's it's what we call an architectural approach competition, we win a lot of our working competitions, and some of them are full design competitions, we tend to think the sort of slightly broader approach is a better way of selecting an architect because you're selecting the architect and their ability to think about the issues rather than a particular answer in a particular design. And of course, no one can really come up a competition stage with the answer to such a complex set of, of issues as market was. So there were written pieces involved with that, but also concept ideas. And in fact, it's one of the projects where the concept we had competition stage has really seen through the whole scheme, right to completion, actually, because it was a very strong idea about how you design a building, to foster collaboration, interaction, the things that are the heart of the brief, it's

Rion Willard

08:37

very interesting, you say you a lot of the work that you you win is through competitions. And also that's a very, for some practices. It's a quite a high risk strategy. Obviously, you guys have got the design pedigree and the chops to be able to deliver. But also it does take a lot of resource to be able to enter competitions. And so you want you want to an existing framework with UCL or the other campus prior to that.

Speaker 1

09:02

No, we know we went to a framework, we tend to compete for specific projects, but you're right, it is a is both very, competitions are a little bit like research. And they're they're a fantastic way to explore creativity. But they are very resource hungry, in terms of practice. So we try I think, to balance that with maybe less intensive ways of winning work as well as well. And it's also why I think the the full on design competitions where people spend huge resources to come up with a perfect solution without actually knowing what the question was in the first place, and not the right way to go. Because they're encouraging architects to spend more and more time and resource when really what you want to do is to develop the design in dialogue with your clients. It's a collaborative process. Yes. Yeah.

Rion Willard

10:02

With something like Marsh gate, what was the the competition process? Like for you guys? And how do you typically mitigate your your risk of investment in a competition entry? Or do you have ways of your internal competition entering, you know that? Well we're doing, we're going to be doing more competitions and some of these ideas actually can be reused or evolved into the next competition entry. So it's more of a kind of ongoing design research endeavor in the practice,

Speaker 1

10:31

I think that's how we we'd like to look at it is an ongoing piece of research and the thinking the thinking evolves and translates, we try not to just simply replicate the ideas from from one thing to another. I mean, one thing that we do within the practice, and we talked about it for a lot is, you know, do we have a competition team, that will be a more efficient way of doing the competitions. But actually, one of the things that I think is interesting about Mark gate is that it's, it's about breaking down silos. And that's what we try to do within the practice. So every time we think about that kind of efficiency, we think no, that's, that's not the right way to go, when we tried to do is to allow different people to move in and out of working on the competition, so that it's, you know, they bring that level of mental agility and thinking to the other projects within the within the studio. And that's important to us,

Rion Willard

11:29

that's quite interesting and quite difficult culture to set up in a practice, particularly when the kind of commercial demands are, that could easily pull you into just creating competition team or creating an education team. And you've got these kinds of silos of, of information, how do you prevent the team getting pulled into and sticking into one kind of project typology or someone just being involved in competition or to competition. And

Speaker 1

11:59

that is a constant tension to be honest. Because if when someone's good at something, the unit is obviously, the temptation is to just let them continue doing the same thing. But in fact, it's not good for their, their own development. And so we have to try and find the balance, we do have people who we have a lot of specialist knowledge within the practice, and we have people who invest time in developing that. But we try not to have to have the practice or those individuals defined or limited by that. That specialist knowledge. I mean, if I go back to March get united, that's about breaking down silos, it's about lateral thinking, it's about cross fertilization, of ideas. So that is what we're constantly trying to do within within the practice. So we don't have sector driven teams, we don't have a competition team. And we don't have teams that are constantly working with the same director, we we set up the team on a project by project basis. So people learn to work with different people and have you know, we all have slightly different conversations and ways of working. So it's developing things in the round. Do

Rion Willard

13:15

you ever assume that you do have kind of performance reviews with team members or kind of career growth conversations about what kind of projects they want to be moving on to so they have a kind of, they can they can start to say actually, you know what, I'd like to be working on this particular project typology or is it more? Kind of? No, we want you over here, how does how does it work?

Speaker 1

13:36

We obviously do have reviews with the staff. We also have mentoring setup within the studios so that people are able to talk to appear perhaps or just you know, another member of staff about the issues they have and where they're going with their careers. So we always ask people what they want to work on, and we try to build on their interests and strengths. Equally, obviously, what what is available within the practice or what's coming in through the supply of new projects doesn't always marry up with that. So there's yeah, there's always that balancing act.

Rion Willard

14:14

We took in going back to the marsh gate project once you had won the competition, didn't any idea who else you were competing with and what was that process? Like? Did you get to see the other competition entries? Or was it more a kind of select Invitational competition? And

Speaker 1

14:33

was it say there were about half a dozen entries? I can't remember who they they all were at this point. So and we rarely see the other entries actually. It's a bit disappointing, but I think clients feel that if you see another entry, you you might be, you know, somehow influenced by some something in that whereas they've clearly selected us for our way of thinking so. So that's not really the point. But I did see one or two images. And, you know, some people had gotten very much into this is the building, this is what it's going to look like. You know, we actually held back from that, and talk much more about how the building was going to be used, how it was going to support this collaboration and interaction. And you know, that obviously worked very well in this instance, because that was the key issue for the building. Did

Rion Willard

15:27

you ever find that you're entering competitions, and the client has kind of picked up some ideas from the other competition entries, and now is trying to influence the design that you're doing with ideas that they've had picked from other competition entries? Or do you find clients a bit wiser than that? I

Speaker 1

15:45

think they're a bit wiser to that. Sometimes we do multiple stage competitions, where there's a prototype process of have dialogue with with the client. And we're a little bit cautious about that, because you can sometimes see that the client is transferring ideas between teams in the process of the dialogue, which actually, I think is not helpful for anyone really. So. So that's a process we're more cautious about when

Rion Willard

16:17

working with large kind of educational institutions. What are some of the specific challenges that you encounter working with this type of client?

Speaker 1

16:31

I'm not sure I'd say it's a challenge. But the characteristic and it was practice, we try not to specialize. But one of the things that characterize a lot of our projects is they're very complex sites very often within complex briefs. And they're quite complex client organization, right. So there's a People talk a lot about CO design now nowadays, but in fact, a lot of this is his has been and always is very much a collaborative process with multiple stakeholders. So something like UCL March gate, you know, we had a central academic group we were dealing with working with, but we were having meetings with at least a dozen other academic groups, all with six or seven different personalities within them. And they were engaging much more deeply within all the faculties and specialisms within the within UCL. So there is this, this great network of collaboration and interaction, if you like, just to act that goes into a building of that sort. And I think one of the interesting things about it was, because everything is a unique course. And we were asking academics, you know, what kinds of things might you be teaching and researching in seven years time? And what kinds of spaces might you need for that, and that's a huge ask for academics who are naturally focused on next year, next term. And it's a huge ask for the design team. And that's before you get to the fact that by the time you've built the building, it may be different academics and different programs that go into into the building. So it's really kind of future gazing. And then trying to obviously, all the academics wanted a unique space to suit their unique program. And it's actually sort of stepping back from that. And understanding that a lot of the spaces need to be actually quite standard, more flexible, more adaptable to suit multiple programs, because it's not just the programs that are there on day one, it's up five years later, 10 years later, the building still has to work. So you're not you're not tailoring a suit for those initial that initial user. Right. Yeah, I think is interesting. As architects, we, a lot of us were trained to think you're you're designing this very bespoke thing. Actually. It's more like designing a baggy jumper. It's something that's got to fit lots of people. Yeah. And it's got the kind of Age of proofing future proofed long term flexible, adaptable buildings.

Rion Willard

19:13

Well, this becomes interesting, because it actually puts the architects in a very interesting position to be able to one facilitate dialogue in a multi headed institution like that between departments that might not have been talking to each other very well, previously, or is it the first time that you're kind of bringing them together? And also, there's a strong kind of business agenda or vision agenda for the institution of like, okay, well, what's, where are you actually going? And the architect has a very important part in that conversation to be able to help create the future and prompt those sorts of those sorts of questions. How do you as a as the architectural team, kind of look at the complexity of the client? And, you know, orchestrate these different conversations in this in the vision of the project.

Speaker 1

20:06

I mean, you're right, it's a really, really important part of what we do, I think it's an underestimated part of, of architecture, you know, architects come out thinking of college thinking, they're going to design things, they're going to present them to class and class can say fantastic. And, and that's it. And, and actually, we find the skills that are really important are obviously the design skills. They're also the communication, persuasion, sometimes that certainly engagement skills, understanding the politics of a particular organization, and the dynamics of how a group work. I mean, we were talking earlier about importance of being face to face, they do say that only 20% of communication is is verbal, you know, so you actually need to be able to read the room, and quite a big room with quite a lot of people in it. And to sort of pull out the differences and the strands and come to some kind of consensus. So that's, that's a really important skill. And it's, it's also a really enjoyable part of the process. It's, it's a, it's a journey you're going on with the client. And the exciting thing is that you're not actually sure you can predetermine the end of that journey. It's a joint exploration to find something that that hopefully is unexpected, and is better than, you know what anyone anticipated. Beginning,

Rion Willard

21:35

so it's unfortunate, like Marsh cannon that was in the office for the best part of 10 years or so. Until it was until it was completed the six years or six, seven years. So it what what kind of turnover do you have with your own team working on a single project? Is it is it a case of it is a solid team that's pretty much working on it from start to finish? Or do lots of people kind of, you know, jump in at parts where there's a lot of production work that's needed? How does the actual team ebb and flow? And how do you kind of choreograph that? Well,

Speaker 1

22:12

we have, we try to maintain continuity as much as possible. So there's a core team. And I think we're very good at that. I mean, both within the practice people stay from for a long time, people tend to be happy working on the projects for a long time. And when something like Marsh gate and our other projects, they're quite remarkable things. So people are keen to keen to stay on them. Obviously, the team then flat fluxes and grows, when there's production information to be developed. But we tried to get the key people to see our way through it. And you know, that collaboration is at a senior level and all the way through the different levels of experience within the practice. So we often work with more than one director on a project. So there's a sort of creative discussion at that level. So I was working very closely with Alan Stanton and Richard Wardle directors. And then we have senior associates who take leadership roles within different aspects of the project. And in fact, the project was, we were appointed, both for Chevron Corp and for fitout, as sort of two slightly different but parallel teams, which was interesting, discipline, way of working. And then, you know, we have key individuals working within those teams and more junior,

Rion Willard

23:47

and its biggest kind of size, what was the team size we're looking at?

Speaker 1

23:52

I'm gonna say that I think we might have had 12 people on the sort of what was the showing poor and a similar number on the fitout? Right.

Rion Willard

24:02

So it's 20 to 24. Total? Which is quite amazing when you think about it, because that's the size of a practice. Yes, in itself. Yeah.

Speaker 1

24:11

So when. So as I think I said, you know, when I started, this was practice of 12 people, you know, one of the reasons, you know, we wanted to grow larger than that is not because we want to be big or particular size, but you have to be a certain size to be able to deliver projects of that scale vision, and we're constantly looking for new and different challenges. And part of that is actually the scale of those challenges. grows. And so the practice of about 90, which is what we are, you know, we can we can have a couple of projects have that kind of scale, but we try to break it up with not just different types of projects. So the education projects culture Well, we're doing a lot of life science work, you have more commercial projects as well, but also much smaller projects. So in Origins, we still have some of our first projects as a practice, we're in exhibition design. And we still do exhibition designs on the selected exhibitions, because they're, they're faster, they don't have the sort of 10 year turnover, people learn from them quickly, they're there. But they're addressing all the same set of issues, which is sort of how people experience space, people's movement through space, lighting, choreographing that whole sequence. So there, they remain important to that practice, I think our smallest projects might be worth only 10s of 1000s. And our largest project, I think, at the moment is 500 million pounds. So that's a, there's a great, that's a great deal of scale.

Rion Willard

25:56

And so I guess as well, because you know, the size of the practice, you're, you know, you're actively involved in, in helping people's careers evolve. So you'd take people on from part one and see them through to becoming architects and, and actually leading projects and, and and beyond. How do you ensure that people are kind of getting the right experience on projects? And how do you how do you maintain being able to educate and mentor as as well without kind of being, you know, how do you keep that balance in a practice?

Speaker 1

26:35

I mean, it is always a challenge, isn't it, because it does depend on the projects and the opportunities. So we have to work with, with those, you know, we do have regular discussions with everyone about how they're how they're progressing. I think the key the key thing is partly the way our our practice works. You, we are the senior staff, the directors are all very hands on. So we will work directly with everyone, you know, the year out students through all the staff. And we we work in what we call design sessions. So these are not like senior staff critiquing what the team is doing. These are hands on everyone sitting around a table working on the project together. We work a lot with with physical models, you can see some of them around us. And we do that because they're, you know, they really are the best way of engaging everyone in the design process. So we'll be cutting up it's a car together, scribbling on paper together and, you know, ideally that, you know, the best idea from whoever it is within the team is the idea that kind of gets taken forward. So I, you know, our view, and I think the feedback we've had is that, that itself is a is a learning process. That is that's, that's actually quite unusual, and perhaps difficult in practices to achieve. So it's a creative workshop kind of environment that we tried to create.

Rion Willard

28:16

In terms of finance, in the in the, in the business, what is the culture like of talking about money, and profit? And how do you you know, certainly as the businesses, you've said, when you joined, it was 12 people, now you're 90, a lot of things change, and a lot of systems and things that work to 12 people no longer work, even when you're at 25 people, yeah, and certainly around the management of, of money. And also, you know, there has to be some kind of balance where, you know, the project needs to hit its profit margins, and, you know, that was just being responsible business person. But there's also the tension of that and the desire to want to design and mentor and educate and all the things that we love doing as architects, how does how does the Stanton Williams as a practice, balance the, the tension between finance and creativity and or is there one?

Speaker 1

29:17

I think, obviously, there, there is one because I think left to our own devices, we would go on being creative. And you know, because I think you can always work on something and continue to develop it further. But that's, you know, that's not useful probably for our clients, either. Their, their, their, the financial discipline is an important one and probably actually simply working in the absence of that, if that was possible would be it's a good discipline to have to work to your right you know, when you go from 12 to 90 or beyond. You know, where you're trying to replicate the things that worked easily at 12 and work quite fluidly. 12 is quite a good creative team in itself. Yeah, I think they say six to 12 is sort of ideal size. So beyond that, you have to start putting more systems in place to try to replicate the strengths of that small team and communication of that small team. As you get bigger, you can obviously have people dealing with some of the specialisms though. So I remember, quite recently, I was talking to a well known architect who had a practice, actually, I think it's nine people, and she was complaining about how bigoted got, it was just as we'd reached 90. And we were just talking about how this how this worked for us, but of course, and what surprised here was that I spent a lot more time on design than she did. Because if you're in a practice of nine, you're having to do the finance, you're having to look for the next work, you're you're having to look after it once careers. Whereas you know, we have as we've grown, been able to have people looking after HR thinking more closely about the financial side,

Rion Willard

31:17

I think people forget that actually, you know, sometimes large practices are often think seen as less creative. And actually, a large practice has a lot more resource to be able to support desired. And, and allow people to go very deep, and be unfettered by all the other things that you might be needing to think about if you're running a small, a small or small business, in terms of how you guys have maintained your your culture and design culture, as well and haven't kind of veered off into becoming overly, you know, commercialized in the sense of, you know, the design quality has been maintained. And it's a very cool, very strong identity that standard Williams has in the architectural world, how have you kind of held on to that, with the challenges of growing into a larger practice, it's not an easy, it's not an easy thing to do.

Speaker 1

32:18

I think it is the rigor of the design process, the design sessions that we have. And the focus on things like model making, which some architects have heard, we don't need to do that anymore. We've got computers, but actually we're building the physical environment. And it's still, you know, the closest thing that you can get to understanding that in advance is by building prototyping, making, we talk a lot through about thinking through making, you know, the hands on your hand thinks when you make a model or, or do a sketch, so so we try quite hard to hold on to those core ways of working alongside obviously, we're using Revit, we're using BIM, we have 3d environments, and all of that, but they don't one doesn't replace the other. So we work very hard to maintain those kinds of core ways of working within the practice, that the, I think the hands on involvement of the directors is very important to me, we will never unit it's not like a pyramidal practice where you've got one person at the top, and then a visit across everything. You know, we started off as a dialogue, if you like, between Alan and Paul. And that's continued as we've grown to the current group of seven directors. So there's not a there's not a sort of pinch point of everything going back to one person who occasionally looks at something on your project and says yes, on that. And it's very much about an individual director working on the project with the client and maintaining the level of focus that you would get in a smaller practice, but within the larger group, and then that's coming together as directors in the practice to make sure that you know, our culture and ethos is shared across all the projects

Rion Willard

34:18

are all the directors actively involved in design work and projects as you have directors who have a specialism saying finance? Or how does the director team work and how they and what does it take to be a director? What are the what are the kind of core competencies that for you, you think are important for a director or partner to have?

Speaker 1

34:39

So we do have one director, Robert Byrd, who looks after the finance and management of the practice. And that's, that's really important, I think, because the rest of us with the best will in the world can sometimes get distracted into design, which is the core of what we do of course, yeah, but It's very good to have someone who is has the oversight. And in response to your previous question, question also has a rigorous set of data about project profitability, which we just shared with the, with the teams, and across the practice to make sure that we are heading in the right direction. In that respect. The other the six of us, the other directors are all hands on in terms of projects, and also take on other aspects like an oversight of marketing, or I also meet with Robert every week to discuss the project that practice finances. So there is it's not entirely anyone's individual responsibility to do something, but we share that has it been?

Rion Willard

35:50

Was it always that way? Or in the best practice was smaller with the directors like having to be more involved in the finance and perhaps the management of the practice? So? And how did how did the director or the leadership team kind of establish themselves and allow, you know, the role is to be split the business roles be able to be divided up amongst all of you?

Speaker 1

36:19

I think when we were about 14 Price, about 41 of our architectural directors, Peter Murray is not not with the practice anymore. He's now now retired, but he, he was an architect, and he decided to specialize more in the in the business direction. And that was a fantastic thing for the for the practice, because he had to absolutely grasp the architectural side of things. But he wanted to do all of the unit financial business side of things. And that proved to be a really important thing at that point for the practice and that scale for the practice. So when he retired, Robert really took out he'd already joined the practice in a management role, and he was promoted to a director to take on that side of things. And it's taken things from strength to strength through and

Rion Willard

37:16

is there an overarching kind of managing director, one person or like a hierarchy of everyone? Who have everyone answers to? Or is it much more?

Speaker 1

37:24

No, we have a we have a board of directors and you know, it's a collegial collaborative group.

Rion Willard

37:33

how are decisions made? Typically,

Speaker 1

37:36

and we reach consensus? In theory, we could have a vote. But I don't think we've ever had to have a vote. So yes, we have regular regular board meetings on different subjects.

Rion Willard

37:53

And looking forward to the future, the practice, how do you identify future leaders to be kind of taking over the next kind of generation of succession factors, because this is an interesting conversation for many larger practices and to be thinking about, and it's no quick process. Now.

Speaker 1

38:13

It's a really interesting one, I find it interesting you keep on reading, but some practices, you know, they've, they've had, they've had all these in depth discussions, and they've, they've suddenly discovered that the answers are succession as being an E, OT, employee ownership trust. And now they've done succession or it doesn't really work like that. It's something you have to start thinking about from, well, perhaps not day one of the practice, but day two, when when when the practice is up and running, and obviously has a future. Really, from right from the start, you have to start thinking about how you nurture people, how you support people, and how you bring them on to be the future leaders. So that's very much how we've we've approached things. And since since I've been in the practice, it's been a partnership, then a limited company, and now is it's a hybrid OT, in that it's majority owned by an EMT, but it's also partly owned by the directors, which we think is, I suppose, you know, coming back to this idea of the creative tension within the practice, you know, all practices have to be really collaborative, we think, yeah. And so we tried very hard to foster the collaborative side of the practice and we see the yoti as representing and supporting that, but also you need to have clear leadership and direction but to so so we thought this kind of hybrid model in a way, reflected that. That's

Rion Willard

39:53

interesting. So when did the you move into the E ot model and what was the kind of impetus behind I

Speaker 1

40:02

think it's about five years ago. And it is partly to do with succession. It's allowing people to develop their roles, but also empower her the founders to, you know, develop their roles in a in a different way sort of focus on more specific things and allow others to take on, you know, some of the more full on roles of being a director of the practice, Paul's still fully involved in a leading projects, but it gives them the freedom to think about the future, knowing that there's, there's a group of directors who are fully experienced and been with the practice for a long time to take things forward. And of course, we have to look at how you then bring up other people within the practice. Junior to us so. So you're looking at, obviously design creativity, but also the ability to communicate, as I said before, which comes down to when we need work. If we don't win work, we're not here as a practice. So. So that's a key aspect of, you know, what you're what you're looking for the ability to engage with clients and future clients. And to have that kind of level of conversation with them. What

Rion Willard

41:26

it's interesting question actually to look at when and what does it take to be a director or partner of a firm and many conversations I've had with with founders of businesses that Lofton here, it's not for everybody. It's not it's not doesn't necessarily to be the pinnacle of everybody's career to become the director, though, a lot of people that is a main main focus point for you, what are the sort of key things that you would be looking for, from a new director or new leader in the practice? And if you're identifying people, what what sorts of things do you often think, actually, we need to train them? Here's the skill sets that missing that we often see.

Speaker 1

42:09

I think it's the it is that ability to communicate on a level that winds work coming back to what what architects are trained to do, I think they're not trained enough to talk to people. Yeah, talk to people who aren't architects, that's the, you know, cut out brilliant at talking to architects, you know, in a very particular architectural language, as I'm sure you're, you know, familiar with, and which no one else understands. And also with the view that if they, which was certainly my view that when I came out of college, that if you design stuff, that's good enough, people are going to come to your your door and ask you to do more of it. And of course, that's, that's not really the case, you have to work a lot harder than that. And the whole question about engaging with clients and is a is a key aspect of look for people to move to move to the director level, which the project

Rion Willard

43:20

in terms of winning work, and it was you said already one, one major strategy of the practices to be doing competitions? What are the some of the other strategies? And what are some of the strategies that you'd be looking for potential directors to be involved in? Or even current directors, what sorts of what sorts of things that the directors have to do to make sure that works coming in outside of competitions?

Speaker 1

43:43

Well, I think it's, well, because because there's a practice or put it through back to where we started, we do we do a lot of very specific projects. So very often, they're for clients who are only going to do one project. And that's really, really important to them. And hopefully, we don't really, really well. But obviously, that's there's no repeating right in that. So it's, I think, what we've we've wised up to that to a certain extent that we do a lot of those kinds of projects, and we really enjoy them, but also actually, and partly because we invest so much in our relationships with those clients, it's actually quite a sad thing when you finish a project. That's over. Yeah. So I think these days, we, we, we spend a lot more time thinking about our ongoing relationships with with clients and, and enjoying the process of working with them on repeating projects. And, and that's a key part of, of what we do to maintain that dialogue and that relationship and, you know, look for adaptation, just

Rion Willard

44:58

kind of naturally existing She's looking for repeat work? Yes. And do you ever kind of sit down as a director team? And there's a sector that you haven't done work in, like, let's say, sports stadium, for example, that's often one that practices want to do that's difficult to get into? Do do you ever identify those sorts of opportunities and say, it's like a, it's an active plan of care, we want to get we want to do those sorts of projects. How do we get there? Who do we need to meet? How do we? Is there a kind of marketing team or a sales team almost? or anything like that, that?

Speaker 1

45:38

We do? I'm just trying to think I mean, I suppose what what characterizes our projects is I think we're really looking for, I suppose ambitious clients, because that's clients who recognize that they need to go beyond the norm. Yeah. Because actually, what we, if we are specialists, we become specialists in actually dealing with these quite difficult complex projects. Yeah. I mean, I think we, I think that all clients should think they need to go beyond the norm, because no organization can really, you know, sit on its laurels, everything, you everything has to be changed and shall be questioned. But it's surprising how many projects still get procured with the idea of, you know, one, one typical question on the selection. submission is demonstrate five similar projects that you've done in the past five years. What our view is, is, if you've done five similar projects, you're not going to bring really much yeah, yes, it's a bit like asking someone to serve up yesterday's cold dinner. What we're trying to do is to bring and bring knowledge, bring experience, but also from diverse different kinds of projects. And through that, the lateral thinking that that allows, actually bring something fresh to the table that allows the architecture to move on and the organization to actually develop something that is directed to their future evolution. And a lot of our project, our clients recognize that so. So we, that's where we tend to, where are those kinds of plants coming from so a lot of our work most of our works in the UK at the moment, but we're, we look for projects, we will do ambitious projects, wherever they are. And the moment we've got a couple of projects in France, in the past, we've worked in Germany, Italy, we're looking at opportunities in the United States at the moment, particularly within the university sector units, where we might be able to transfer some of the thinking from something like UCL Marsh gate, but to projects with a different kind of ambition, but a similar level of ambition. So that's, that's very much the focus of what we do. In terms of different sectors. We do discuss them, because obviously, the industry is divided into into into sectors. And, and one of the things that we do is we try to make sure within each of the areas that we're working in, we've always got at least one project on the go, because you need to keep the thinking alive all the time. And you need to have, you know, an example of something you've you've done recently in that particular area, because quite rightly, people aren't aren't going to they're not going to employ you if you don't have the knowledge. So this is that balance between not being stale and kind of not being current. That's what that's what we're trying to do. Who

Rion Willard

49:01

whose responsibility is it with the fees to make sure that when you're negotiating the fees, the fees are set responsibly. So you're not kind of putting yourself and the midst of practice into a difficult situation. How do you guys, what does that conversation look like and how is it? How is it managed?

Speaker 1

49:20

It's very laborious. We, we have the senior architects are working on the project who will put together a resourcing plan, right? And, and try to analyze that in relation to what the project needs, but also in relation to other projects we've done in the past, but because a lot of our projects are quite unique and unusual. It's it's very rarely Oh yes, that's the same as this and we can have a similar level of fee and resourcing so they do that. We do a certain amount of sort have research and sending out about similar fees were on other projects elsewhere, where that information is available. And then Robert is who's on the financial is the director responsible for our finances, oversees the whole process. And we make sure that at least two directors have signed off the fee, right so that no one has got so confused gastic that they are ambitious. And because ultimately, we need to do the job properly. I think that's, you know, we want to give a very good level of service to our clients. And so having to a fee that's too low and resourcing that's too low is is, is not to not to anyone's benefit

Rion Willard

50:50

when it sits so precarious in architecture. And that often you can find yourself in a situation where you're making a commitment about a project or commitment, it's so important to the to the rest of the next year and a half, two years, six years of the project, at a point where you have the least amount of information on what it is that you're actually going to be doing. Do you ever do when you typically negotiating fees? Is it four phases of work first, and then you kind of visit renegotiation periods? When you go back to the client? Or is it much more like, you know, here's the fee, is the fee for the whole project all the way through? How do you how do you kind of mitigate your own risk of making commitment too early on, and then halfway through going? Actually, the scope has expanded the client is way more problematic than they ever thought they were going to be? We've gone round and round in circles here. How how do you mitigate that? That risk?

Speaker 1

51:47

I mean, it's interesting, actually used to be the case that we would put in a fee for the whole project, right. And there was reasonable certainty that the whole project would run from beginning to end reasonably uninterrupted way. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore. In the current economic climate, and probably the past five or six years, I thought we're much more instructed on stage by stage basis. And I would say that that's, it has some advantages. Except that, you know, we're always going to want to continue with the project. And the opportunities to really renegotiate a fee are, are limited. It's got a lot of challenges. Because in terms of a practice, you know, if you know that the project is, you know, what the fee is, and you know, it's going to continue for the next four years, you can manage your practice much more easily than you can if you've got a team of 12 plus people on a project, and you know, they're doing this design stage, but you actually don't know yet whether they're doing the next design stage. And so whether you're going to need those 12 people and the fee for that project is going to come in. So I think, you know, that although in theory, there might be some benefit to stage by stage, in practice, it makes actually running the finances. And now, I think more difficult because you don't have the long term.

Rion Willard

53:19

Yeah, so it's much easier to have a longer when you're committed for a long term. Because yes, I mean, we've definitely seen that with, you know, just some small, small practice, there's a big shift that happens when you've got maybe, you know, a handful of clients that are going to be with you for more than a year. And you know, that they're locked in and it's committed, and there's what there's money coming in each month like business, everyone's kind of breathe a little bit and start to plan and, and develop your your resources. So interesting. So this senior architects are quite involved in actually putting together a resource in place for the fees, How involved are they then as the project moves along, as you're working on it, in making sure that that the profit margin that you set at the beginning has been honored? Do they have the kind of financial information to do

Speaker 1

54:08

so the projects are set up with a director or sometimes two directors leading them, but we usually have a senior associate who is in a project leader role, and they and they take on? So obviously, it depends on the complexity of the project and size of the project, but they take on a role but part of which is making sure that it's the resourcing and fees aligned with the expectations and so they have all of that, that knowledge and then I think that's the team we try to to keep the project team aware of how the project is doing. But without worrying too much with too much this it's a balance as to whether your alarm people with the detail or not I'm not Yeah, well, you also don't want people to, you know, we do have projects that are quite profitable. And we have projects that actually don't make a profit. And we don't want the people who are on the projects, which aren't making a profit, to feel somehow this is their fault. This is very often it's, you know, the project's very important. It's just a really difficult project to get to stand up.

Rion Willard

55:23

And, well, it's interesting, but there's a level of responsibility when being transparent. And in general, you know, transparency around finances in practice, I think is very important. And but, you know, as you get larger, there is a responsibility in the person who's listening to the information, and understanding what's happening on the practice. And, you know, to suddenly tell everyone that the project is unprofitable can be very demoralizing, yes. And yes, and upsetting and kind of cause fear and uncertainty within didn't need to be absolutely,

Speaker 1

55:56

and it's the same on the practice level, it's getting the balance, right between, you know, letting people know how, how the practice is doing, and hopefully encouraging everyone to to work efficiently and be profitable, because ultimately, that will feed back financially to everyone. Equally, when things are difficult, I think it's important to share some of that, not to the point where you demoralize or worry people, because actually, you have to have quite a deep understanding of financial issues in order to really know where the problems are or not. So it's always finding the right level of information to share.

Rion Willard

56:42

Do you ever experience issues with your clients having their own financial problems, and then perhaps withholding payments or being slow to pay on things or those kinds of both sides, those sorts of things sitting on larger projects can be very, you know, disorientating or debilitating for for practice, when when the client starts to get into trouble, certainly, you know, since over COVID, and the last few years have been quite precarious, in many senses, or clients have been hesitant as well to move forward for projects. Have you seen any of that? And how do you manage it?

Speaker 1

57:21

It's difficult to manage that. I mean, we're, we're fortunate we, our clients are very good at paying. We and we monitor it very carefully. Yes. You know, if you issue an invoice, and it's not paid for a period of the period, when it's best to be paid by that you need to keep an eye on that. So we will look at that every week as to how that works. So we've been fortunate that we haven't historically had a problem with late payment or this kind of thing, but it does, it does happen. So sometimes, because clients are having financial difficulties, as you say, and sometimes because we work with big institutions, sometimes the the the mechanisms of the bureaucracy. So there's some gritted the machine and and if something goes wrong, and the payments don't happen as they're supposed to happen. In general, we've been reasonably What do you

Rion Willard

58:26

when you're liaising with the client? And particularly perhaps a client you haven't worked with before? How do you do your due diligence on them to make sure that they've basically that they are what they say they are, and they've got the they've got a healthy finance to be able to engage with the project that that has their ambition?

Speaker 1

58:45

We I'm trying to think because most of most of our clients when we work for someone like, UCL, we hope that they are, it's a well respected brand. Yeah. And I think that probably is, is the case of most of our clients. If we were approached by someone, we we don't know. There's not much information about them, we we try to find other people who might have worked with them and do a little bit of diligence in that respect, and look and see what's available on company house. Terms of accounts and things like this. So we do we do do research, and we want to know what the clients are doing to in terms of other issues, like sustainability and, and the ambition for their projects. So we'll, we'll look to see what kind of schemes they're developing, partly just to see is there is there a join up between the kind of thing that they're doing and the kind of thing that we are good at doing because if there is And, you know, we have to be able to give value to them. And there has to be that kind of join up a vision or it's not it's not going to work out. So

Rion Willard

01:00:09

brilliant. So what's in store for the rest of 2024? Well,

Speaker 1

01:00:16

we've got a lot of quite interesting work on the go within the practice. I mean, we were talking earlier about long term projects. And actually the same same week that we won the UCL project. We also won the project for the Museum of London. So, which is the largest project, the practice? So that was 2016, set the site up in Clerkenwell, it's the Smithfield fulfills, yes, yeah. Yeah. So we wanted in 2016, and the first phase opens in 2026.

Rion Willard

01:00:53

And they it's a collaboration with with there's quite a design team,

Speaker 1

01:00:57

ya know, it's an interesting project, it's very large project. So we're working with Asif comm. And we're also working with Julian Herrick on the conservation side. So it's very much a collaboration. And it's, it's a remarkable scheme. It's what it's one of Europe's largest cultural projects at the moment. And you're talking about ambitious clients is a project like this, it's not about we've got this number of artifacts, these number of visitors, as sort of functional brief, it's very much about reimagining what the 21st century Museum is, how its engaged with its with the surrounding city, which of course, particularly relevant for the Museum of London. Yeah. Is it a 24 hour Museum? How can it be a museum, that's the future as well as the past, you know, making it more of a public forum, engaging different audiences? So these are the kinds of questions that actually we find actually go across quite a few of the projects. So UCL is not that different, you know, how does the university engage with the surrounding context, reach out to the surrounding community, the building allows the community into it, it's got the public uses within it, a lot of these kinds of themes across our projects. So So I was diverging from Fitbit. I think that that is sort of an interesting example of, of the way a cultural project, a university project, can tackle similar sort of sorts of things. So that's very exciting. That's ongoing. We're working on a number of quite large Life Science schemes. And again, they are surely they're not about going to put a box in a science park somewhere. They're much more complex than so we've been doing a very advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing, building, the kind of thing that would be a box in a park, usually, we're putting it in the middle of Stevenage, and a high rise building. So it's accessible by public transport. It's got public realm associated with it. It's despite the fact that these are clean rooms, and they're the most isolated environments, you could imagine if they've got shops and retail below them. So he's kind of reimagining what that kind of facility could, could be. And we're doing other projects. In that kind of area of work in Cambridge, where again, it's, it's not out of town, it's in town. It's accessible by public transport. It's got active public frontage is it's a kind of mixed use. Building. And I think, you know, we were talking about specialisms earlier. You could say most a lot of the projects are a hybrid. In fact, that's that's one of the reasons why not being too specialist. Yeah, so important. But I

Rion Willard

01:04:02

think it's interesting that you start to make the distinction, actually, if there was a specialism, it's dealing with complexity and actually dealing with complex clients, which a lot of people, I'm sure a lot of clients can actually see themselves in those kinds of organizations. Yeah,

Speaker 1

01:04:17

no, I think that's it and the complexity of something like UCL Moscow, this big mix, yeah. This big mix is kind of what it's all about. I mean, I think, you know, I think about, you know, we're in London, you know, why do people live here? It's, its proximity, its density, its diversity. And that all feeds into the creativity of the culture. And when we're designing UCL, you know, we're trying to, in fact, do that in a microcosm within the building. I suppose from in practice, you're trying to also do that diverse minds, diverse people. feeding into creativity. But increasingly, the projects also do have an element of that diversity. We've moved well beyond zoning of cities into different functional components. Yeah. Yeah, I think now fortunately, you know, if you look at the debate about innovation districts and things, in a way, it's like reinventing the traditional city again, it's not actually that new, it's Can you live, work, have all these different things happening creatively juxtaposed. And the projects are very much like that. Which I think is a hugely exciting aspect of what we're doing. Brilliant,

Rion Willard

01:05:44

perfect place to conclude the conversation, Ghana. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise in a bit about your career and, and what you guys are up to ask Dan Williams.

Unknown Speaker

01:05:55

Thank you very much. Pleasure.

Rion Willard

01:05:57

And that's a wrap. And one more thing. If you haven't already, please do head on over to iTunes or Spotify. And leave us a review. We'd love to read your name out here on the show. And we'd love to get your feedback. And we'd love to hear what it is you'd like to see more of and what you love about the show already. This episode is sponsored by Smart practice, business of architectures flagship program to help you structure your firm for freedom, fulfillment, and financial profit. If you want access for our free training on how to do this, please visit smart practice method.com Or if you want to speak directly to one of our advisors about how we might be able to help you please follow the link in the information. The views expressed on this show by my guests do not represent those of the host and I make no representation, promise guarantee, pledge warranty, contract, bond or commitment except to help you the unstoppable

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