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Newmark Expert Among Professionals Urging Architects to Catch Up
Recently, Newmark Regional Workplace Manager Evelyn Lee led the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Young Architects Forum’s Practice Innovation Lab where participants shared ideas urging architects to reinvent their businesses. Suggested ideas included Design on Demand (an “Uber, but for architects); post-occupancy information service MOM+DAD (Monitoring, Operations, and Maintenance + Design, Analytics, and Data); and a network that pools small and mid-size firm resources to offer the services and equipment that large firms can afford.
An excerpt from the article is below.
“Evelyn Lee, AIA, often says that “the profession is three recessions away from extinction,” but her half-hearted quip seems, of late, more like an omen. Past experiences in program management and business consulting have made the regional workplace manager at Newmark Knight Frank’s San Francisco office realize how architects’ capabilities beyond drawing buildings were unfamiliar to many people—including architects themselves. From leading focus groups to reorganizing workplaces and planning future operational and maintenance budgets, architects often do the work of highly paid consultants “for free,” Lee says, and they overlook these services’ potential to unmoor their practices from tempestuous construction cycles.
As chair of the 2017 AIA Young Architects Forum (YAF), Lee took her leadership prerogative and turned the quinquennial YAF summit into the Practice Innovation Lab, a three-day event that culminated with 10 six-member groups pitching new business models Shark-Tank style.”
Read the full article, The Young and the Restless: Practice Innovation Lab Wants the Building Profession to Catch Up. Or read a PDF of the article.
Find out more about the best ideas shared at the Practice Innovation Lab in 5 Innovative Business Models for Young Architectural Practices.