AMERICAN BUILDERS QUARTERLY
Double Helix The
A fresh approach to Stanford Hospital’s construction will provide patients with an enhanced experience of comfort and care P. 44
Carnival Cruise Line welcomes two new ships to its fleet, leveraging initiatives like mock-up meetings and virtual reality to make it all possible P. 62
23andMe’s director of workplace experience, John Parsons, identifies the variants of employee needs to establish a supportive environment P. 10
If These Walls Could Talk...
Five leaders are rethinking typical approaches to the workplace by offering spaces infused with deliberate ideas and top-tier amenities. P. 8
Down To The Finish Line
Joe Grimaldi coaches his team to meet buildout deadlines at L’Oréal P. 106
Just What The Doctor Ordered Stanford Health Care goes under the knife to enhance its offerings for patients P. 44
It’s All In The Details Levi Strauss embraces the digital age through high-tech features and global connectedness P. 90
Stanford Health Ca re/Cass Davis, L’Oreal/Jeff Pinette, Levi Strauss/David Fenton
Gather ’Round Jenny Lum creates common spaces to mend the lack of communication between coworkers at Autodesk P. 18
A Cultural Translation
Gordon L’Estrange reflects Salesforce’s values through its Ohana Floor P. 76
AMERICAN BUILDERS QUARTERLY
The Great Wide Open
I’m lucky enough to spend my days writing, rewriting, editing, and collaborating in a space that has a multitude of rooms with long tables for spreading out cover concepts, whiteboards for brainstorming buzzwords, and huddle areas for impromptu jam sessions about pretty much anything. The walls are glass and the space is wide open, and naturally, our work and ideas reflect that same feeling of transparency and openness.
In this summer’s issue of American Builders Quarterly, we’ve featured a variety of leaders who are likewise providing environments that generate nothing but the best. They have eschewed the “cog in the wheel” mentality and taken a holistic approach to understanding their employees’ needs by creating energized atmospheres and ensuring workers have the right amenities to function at the prime level.
And why shouldn’t the workplace be somewhere that’s comfortable, accessible, and inspires us to be our best selves? The average person will spend 90,000 hours of their life at work.
If you’re going to spend a third of your time on earth at the office (whether that’s a desk, construction site, or somewhere in between), it’s important to make sure you’re in the right place. I agree with our cover star, John Parsons, when he says, “You’ve got to love what you’re doing for a living, whether it’s digging ditches or building rockets.” That’s why he’s implemented an entire program dedicated to boosting the morale of his staff at 23andMe that ranges from cultural holiday celebrations to perks for pets. (P. 10)
Of course, no two employees are alike, which is why Matt Harris of Envoy is using technology to create a “smart office” with a focus on flexibility, especially for remote members of the workforce. That doesn’t just mean providing them with a fancy headset, either—instead, they can virtually move throughout the office via an iPad-balancing robot! (P. 36)
But at the center of it all, the essential component in a well-functioning workplace is community. That’s why Cheryl Bergeson of Exelon focuses on creating open spaces that foster spontaneous collaboration. (P. 31)
As a relatively new member of my team, I’ve found that there’s no better way to get acclimated to this type of communal work environment than to coproduce an issue of ABQ that is dedicated to exactly that.
Melaina K. de la Cruz Editor
A New Wave of Workplaces
More and more companies are joining the trend of a workplace that goes above and beyond, with the intent to generate fresh ideas that amplify success. Five leaders share the strategies they take to provide flexible, tech-driven environments to keep their employees spirited and satisfied.
for a New Era of Work
The DNA of a Happy Employee
As director of workplace experience, John Parsons’s mission is to give 23andMe employees a positive experience both inside and outside the workplace
By Stephanie Zeilenga
Portraits by Cass Davis
PATTERNS
John Parsons Director of Workplace Experience 23andMe
23andMe
was founded more than a decade ago to create an accessible way
for
people to understand the human genome, and in recent years, has become a leading consumer genetics testing company.
Mirroring its approach of doing what’s right by its customers, the same is true in its approach with employees. 23andMe treats employees to a comprehensive suite of amenities designed to ensure a balance of comfort, happiness, and convenience, such as free organic, locally sourced food, dry cleaning, fitness programs, and even treats at the ready for visiting pets. Much of this is made possible by the Workplace Experience team (also known as “Facilities”), under the leadership of John Parsons.
Parsons’s Workplace Team (“WEx” for short) is tasked with handling everything needed to guarantee the company is offering employees a safe and enjoyable environment—think real estate, strategy and planning, employee services, building operations, health, safety, and security. The team’s work is driven by John’s steadfast philosophy to be “ready, willing, and
able,” which has marked his career trajectory since the very beginning.
Better described as a series of unexpected leaps than a straight upward march, Parsons’s career success is a study in boldly seizing opportunities, getting the job done and done well, and using seemingly random events to launch his career to a new level. Desiring to see the world and not so crazy about the idea of heading off to college, he got his start operating and maintaining shipboard electrical systems in the navy. His first civilian roles also included maintenance and electrician work, but he knew he wanted to trade in these gigs for an upward moving career where he could make a difference.
“You’ve got to love what you’re doing for a living, whether it’s digging ditches or building rockets,” he says. “I firmly believe that if you don’t jump out of bed eager to go
Richard Seagraves
23andMe’s Mountain View location is 70,000 square feet with a rooftop garden.
to work every day, you either need a new job or a new perspective on that job.”
When the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake struck northern California, Parsons had the chance to prove himself—a theme that would repeat again and again. Then an electrician for a computer company, he jumped in to help track damage and repairs on the campus. This effort combined with that of repair crews in the field allowed almost all of the buildings to reopen the next day so their intact sections could still be used. “I was able to use my military training to help the facilities site manager keep track of everything,” Parsons says. “He saw leadership potential in me and soon after put me on the startup crew for a new headquarters facility.”
From there, Parsons worked his way up to facilities management leadership roles, spending time at both start-ups and major companies—including Cisco Systems—until he joined 23andMe in
23andMe’s Mountain View location is the only triple-certified LEED building in California.
2015, enticed by the opportunity to be a part of a company that was making such a heavy impact on the world. This was the same year that 23andMe received FDA authorization to market the premier direct-to-consumer genetic test.
At the time, the new facilities department included only Parsons and a receptionist. Today, the Workplace Experience team consists of nine in-house professionals (and various contractors) who oversee 23andMe’s two facilities that house more than 600 employees. The team works closely together and although they are beginning to get more siloed in the tasks they handle, they still very much have a bootstrapping style, stepping in wherever needed. “We’ve grown together to the point of being like a family,” Parsons says.
Parsons and his team play an integral role in ensuring 23andMe sees continued success as it matures beyond the start-up stage into a leader of personalized health care.
Seagraves
Richard
“I firmly believe that if you don’t jump out of bed eager to go to work every day, you either need a new job or a new perspective on that job.”
The kitchen is always teeming with healthy snacks and beverages.
John Parsons stands in the company’s soon-to-be new headquarters in Sunnyvale, CA.
“Start-up folks at the beginning tend to be more self-sufficient and are used to working around processes that don’t exist yet—they have a shoot-from-the-hip mentality and get the job done at any cost,” Parsons explains. “As a company grows, the budget, process, and ‘how’ it gets done become more important. Often, this first generation of employees will move on to other start-ups, making way for a new generation of people who tend to have higher expectations of facilities, and so the company evolves from a self-serve to a more full-service environment.”
That “full-service environment” is exactly where Parsons’s concierge philosophy is reflected. “Concierge, in this sense, is a mind-set,” Parsons says. It’s about understanding and staying ahead of the problems, then developing thoughtful solutions. Under Parsons’s leadership, the Workplace Team is tasked with balancing employee requests with responsible financial stewardship. But unlike many corporate service delivery teams, which have a mandate to keep costs low with little to no flexibility, at 23andMe, the default isn’t “no” but rather, “Can we make this happen? How?”
In addition to the softer benefits like fitness programs, pet perks, and holiday events, the concierge effort also strives to enhance the actual working experience by purchasing easily movable furniture for flexible work arrangements, keeping the offices at a comfortable temperature, ensuring the beer fridge is stocked, and throwing in some fun, too. Offerings are even tailored to the particular location’s needs and specific culture. “Impact, empathy, and compassion play into all that we do,” Parsons notes.
In addition to handling the regular service offerings, Parsons and his team routinely come up with extra initiatives to make employees’ lives easier outside of the workplace. “At many bigger companies, it’s all about saving costs,” Parsons says. “Here, we can make a decision to care for our employees on a more personal level. We know people may not have time to go holiday shopping, for example. Once we planned a holiday fair and brought in local vendors. Every year we set up gift wrapping stations in our offices. Our Diwali celebration is a recent addition that includes lunchtime and end of day food and entertainment. It’s a huge hit with our employees. Chinese New Year and Halloween are also big events for Team WEx.” The employee response to all that Parsons and his team does has been overwhelmingly positive, with people regularly going out of their way to send kudos to the Workplace Team.
Parsons believes in the importance of being a constant source of support, no matter how large or small the needs may be. Guided by the mantra, “Manage Process, Lead People,” Parsons strives to inspire his team to do their best work. When employees were struggling with terrible air quality during the recent Northern California wildfires, he sent out a company-wide email letting employees know about an air filter he found for his home that did wonders for removing smoke particles from the air.
“That’s a little thing, but it’s the kind of personal touch I value because I care about everyone and feel a responsibility toward them—I’m happy to do anything I can to make their lives better.”
www.atce.com
Spaces That Tell A Story
Jenny Lum employs proprietary software to create sustainable environments for collaboration at Autodesk
By Melaina K. de la Cruz
Autodesk employees utilize the San Francisco collaboration zone in a variety of ways.
Courtesy of Gensler
Jenny Lum has a knack for creating the ideal environment for colleagues to perform their best work. And that stems not from an extensive architectural background, but from her keen understanding of people.
Having graduated from San Francisco State University with a psychology degree, Lum leveraged her people skills to start a career in project management at the consulting firm Jones Lang LaSalle.
It was during her 14 years there that she had the opportunity to explore design development, scheduling, and budgeting for projects with Salesforce, Microsoft, Nokia, and eventually Autodesk—the international, groundbreaking software company with which she would form a strong mutual interest after building the gallery space at their One Market Street location in San Francisco. Autodesk offered her a full-time position eight years ago, and she now serves as senior program manager of global projects for the company.
“The most fun part about Autodesk is working in the high-tech industry where we have the most innovative and robust design tools—that’s exactly where I want to be,” Lum says. The company is known for “making software for people to make anything” and offers a variety of products, from animation to manufacturing to architectural planning and beyond.
Lum’s favorite of Autodesk’s software programs is Autodesk Revit, which uses building information modeling (BIM) and serves as the foundational tool for architecture and project management. The software and technology support the collaborative design process for all stakeholders involved, from architects to engineers to contractors to project owners like herself. It serves not only as a communication tool, but as a visual guide to detect potential glitches, identify areas for improvement, and visually map out an entire project from conception to completion.
Autodesk’s San Francisco location gives a whole new meaning to the term “office park.”
“I can see the design progress in front of me before it’s even built; that’s just amazing to me,” Lum says of the software. “That will improve the future of construction and make it so much more efficient.” This workflow also allows for cost-savings, since the software often prevents expensive mistakes by solving conflicts before construction begins.
Using its own software gives Autodesk the opportunity to refine the technology, which maximizes positive user experience and allows for continuous change and improvement. As a company with a mission to “imagine,
design, and make a better world,” an open-minded outlook comes with the territory. Lum notes that Autodesk is currently going through a cultural transformation to become more of a customer company, which she is incorporating into the workplace design as well.
For Lum, the employees are her customers. “I’m providing the environment for them to excel and be better, love it, and be so proud of the company,” she explains, noting that this motivates her to utilize the intersection of sustainability and the local community in the workplace.
Jenny Lum Senior Program Manager, Global Projects
Autodesk
She carefully curates the work spaces to reflect the regional flavor, noting, “I want to use local products, and that really applies not only on green efforts, but also shows the local culture…I think it’s so important for employees when they are proud of their space. They can walk anywhere in the space and be able to tell a story, whether it’s about Autodesk or their local community.”
Naturally, the community is also where Lum turns when she is recruiting new talent to join Autodesk. “I want the local best and brightest,” she says, “because the local market is going to understand those cultures the best, and then can bring value to the design, and be very creative and innovative.” As the company continues to evolve, Autodesk seeks collaborative, courageous, customer-focused candidates who are willing to grow with them.
These influential behaviors are something that Lum passes along to Autodesk’s design firms, to ensure they are reflected in the buildings. “That’s part of how we are able to attract and retain employees as well, by providing that sense of belonging for them, that this is a part of their community that they’re building together.”
Collaboration, for instance, is something that was suffering due to a disconnect between Autodesk’s three San Francisco buildings. Several structural openings were constructed between the three buildings to bridge the connections, with centralized meeting rooms added to encourage interaction. Lum notes this was rare beforehand. “We have people that have been working for over 10 years, and they’ll see each other and go, ‘Wow, I can’t believe I haven’t seen you for three years in person!’ But they work in the same office,” she says. “I think creating those special moments and adding interesting gathering places strategically where people can interact are really important in our design.” May Chan
Autodesk’s Dublin location opened in January 2018 on the quays of River Liffey.
The conference room space in Dublin illustrates Autodesk’s lively design.
Courtesy of Henry J Lyons
“It’s so important for employees when they are proud of their space. They can walk
anywhere in the space and be able to tell a story.”
Autodesk’s technology center at Pier 9 in Portland is a hub for research and development.
As Autodesk continues to grow, Lum’s main priority is flexibility. The company is more than 30 years old, and as it expands and continues to build robust products, the needs of both the space and the employees evolve alongside it. She notes that a large part of her role is ensuring that the space is adaptable, which poses an interesting challenge in terms of satisfying a wide range of colleagues. While recent college graduates are content with a laptop and beanbag for their workspace, there are also “people like myself that are probably more ‘seasoned;’ I can’t roll out of a bean bag!” Lum jokes. But these quirky challenges and trends are part of her passion.
“I want to have them come and be proud of their space and smile every day.”
DPR Construction (DPR) is a forward-thinking worldwide general contractor and construction manager specializing in technically complex and sustainable projects for the healthcare, advanced technology/mission critical, life sciences, higher education, and commercial markets. Founded in 1990, DPR is a privately held, employee-owned company that has grown to a multibillion-dollar organization with offices around the world.
Lundberg Design is unusual. They incorporate a fabrication studio as a part of their design practice, where they build unique pieces for their architectural commissions. This reinforces the idea of craft in their work, but it also makes the work very personal to them and their clients.
NVIDIA’s Data-Driven Design
Jennifer Marko uses data collection to craft a workplace strategy that fits the unique culture at NVIDIA
By Rebecca Roberts
Employees take advantage of the California sunlight in NVIDIA’s Santa Clara headquarters.
Courtesy of G ensler
For Jennifer Marko, understanding her company’s culture is critical to providing an effective workplace strategy. Culture often emanates from the executive leadership, and according to Marko, “My design philosophy is to align the workplace design with the executive leadership’s vision and then to champion it throughout the global real estate portfolio.”
In her current position as senior director of global workplace planning and design at NVIDIA, this means fostering a workplace strategy that reflects NVIDIA’s transparent and team-oriented business philosophy, flat organizational structure, and culture of collaboration. It also means drafting a set of design guidelines that can be implemented on a global scale, capturing both the nuances of NVIDIA’s brand as well as infusing the subtle local flavor into each workplace while constantly remaining innovative. “Our design guidelines will fluctuate as times change, new products are created, and our businesses evolve thereby making them incredibly dynamic,” she continues, “but still aligned to the overall executive leadership’s vision.”
Marko spent half of her career working for architectural firms on the service provider side of the real estate industry and the other half working in an end-user capacity at Salesforce, Genentech, and AIG. This included several international experiences, which fueled her desire to continue working on a worldwide scale. Through these experiences, she developed an appreciation for merging the qualitative and quantitative aspects of workplace strategy to create effective and thoughtful environments.
When she joined NVIDIA in early 2018, Marko was able to write her own job description. “NVIDIA’s COO and the head of real estate created an opportunity for me to help build, shape, and formulate a robust plan-
ning and design team to provide a best-in-class service offering for NVIDIA’s stakeholders,” she says. “Since I love using data to inform how we should be planning space and outfitting the workplace, this position was a great way for me to bring together a creative and analytical approach to workplace strategy while aligning with the NVIDIA culture.”
At NVIDIA’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California, Marko and her team are in the midst of enhancing the workplace and testing ways to use data to drive design decisions. Using data coupled with conversations with the leaders and teams, a pilot is being launched for a mobility program to test the benefits and drawbacks of implementing unassigned seating. Analyzing the results of this pilot will then provide direction on how and to whom they will roll out the “NV Touchdown” program globally.
Marko explains that partnering with the IT team to capture conference room utilization data is imperative to designing effective support spaces. The understanding of peak meetings times and how often they occur provides data on how to create these types of spaces and is integrated in all new work environments. “There are many points of data that can be captured within a real estate portfolio,” she says, citing utilization of space, vacancy by site, and real estate costs as a percentage of revenue as examples. “These quantitative stats combined with qualitative information can provide a holistic view of the performance of the work environment. It’s critical to capture the data that aligns with the culture of your company that then supports the transformation of the workplace.”
One of the many discoveries unearthed by Marko’s team is that the relationship between different types
NVIDIA collaborated with Gensler to develop their 750,000-square foot Voyager campus.
Courtesy of Gensler
“It’s critical to capture the data that aligns with the culture of your company that then supports the transformation of the workplace.”
Jennifer Marko Senior
Director of Global Workplace Planning and
Design NVIDIA
of spaces affects how often those spaces are utilized. People tend to not use open collaborative spaces if they are within the desk areas where others are concentrating. “One of our planning methodologies is to use hard-walled meeting or phone rooms as buffer spaces between heads-down work areas and high activity zones,” says Marko. “Often desk areas are planned with collaboration tables within those spaces. This creates a conflict between the two different work activities and therefore an unpleasant and often unproductive employee experience.”
While Marko works to refine NVIDIA’s workplace design and planning strategy, she notes that the goal is to craft workplace guidelines, not prescriptive standards. Globally, she strives to create a consistent employee experience and timeless interiors that will have a common look and feel but not be exact replicas of one another.
An important aspect of these design guidelines is to create an equal, nonhierarchical employee experience. This is accomplished via an open plan where employees at all levels in the company can work together and couple this open space with an array of enclosed support spaces. “We are focused on working together,
in a speed-of-light manner, which creates strong team alignment and transparency. The culture here is that everyone comes together, swarms, and helps you figure out the right solution to a problem,” explains Marko. “People sincerely want to help you succeed at NVIDIA and that in turn enables the company to succeed.”
This culture is one of the many reasons Marko is so motivated by her work at NVIDIA. “I grew up in Canada, and back then, our newspapers would always focus on World Affairs on the front pages, then as you’d delve deeper into the paper, you would read about the country and then your province and finally your town,” she says. “That’s the same philosophy I have for my professional life: do your best work to benefit your company first and foremost, which will ultimately support your own growth and success.”
Congratulations, Jennifer Marko, on this well-deserved recognition. One Workplace works with companies at the intersection of design and human behavior, bringing construction, technology, furniture, and services under one roof to create spaces that help companies reach their goals. We support powerful brands and empower stronger cultures from the inside out.
Shining a Light on Workplace Efficiency
Cheryl Bergeson’s thoughtfully designed work spaces keep employees connected and engaged at Exelon
By Rebecca Roberts
The values Cheryl Bergeson developed studying architecture and interior design set the stage for the workplace design she’s now applying at one of the largest energy providers in the US. While Exelon, a Fortune 100 company, serves ten million customers with electric power, natural gas, and nuclear products, Bergeson enhances the workplace experience for the $33.5 billion public utility’s 34,000 employees spread across 48 states.
“My passion is the built environment and the experiential aspects of where people work and live,” she says. “I’ve always leaned more toward interior environments—rather than the building envelope—because they speak more specifically to how people use space.”
Currently serving as Exelon’s real estate & facilities program manager, Bergeson takes a forward-looking approach to workplace design at the company, which stems from the years she spent working at Accenture (then Andersen Consulting). A leader in alternative work strategies, such as hoteling, consulting giant Accenture prides itself on its efficient use of real estate. It was there Bergeson first used workplace strategy to inform the design of efficient, effective work environments that fostered employee engagement and collaboration.
Since her arrival at Exelon in 2008, Bergeson has remained focused on how the right workplace design not only complements but also empowers employees. She engages end users to understand the work being performed and then matches their work styles to work settings that enhance mobility and collaboration through work space options and technology tools. The result? Bergeson’s team can transform the workplace into a performance enabler.
While Bergeson thrives on constant evolution and sees every new facility or renovation at Exelon as an opportunity to craft a higher-functioning space, she cites a realistic approach to change management. “You have to meet people where they are,” she says. “You have to talk to them. You have to do things for people—not to them.” Employee engagement occurs throughout a new project, she adds, starting with a survey of employee needs before the project launches and concluding with post-occupancy focus groups upon completion.
Cheryl Bergeson Real Estate & Facilities Program Manager Exelon
Courtesy of Exelon
Exelon tasks Bergeson with designing work spaces for various operating companies across the enterprise, so it is critical for her to understand the different types of work and the subsequent demands they entail. She envisions the workplace as a mechanism that encourages team members to connect. She also focuses on workplace trends revolving around communityoriented design, incorporating a mix of spaces suited to different tasks and work styles. These spaces include areas where small groups of employees can gather to talk, as well as quiet spots where individuals can concentrate by themselves.
Exelon refers to work space “building blocks” as neighborhoods; each neighborhood can include a variety of roles, such as analysts, salespeople, administrators, and more. Typically, a floor comprises three or four “neighborhoods” that connect via community spaces, such as cafés. Within each “neighborhood,” employees can choose work spaces that fit their needs. When Bergeson’s team noticed that large conference rooms were often being reserved for small meetings, creating a perceived shortage in supply, they introduced more
intimate collaborative spaces into the “neighborhoods.”
Now, groups of two can step into a Focus Room for a conversation, and larger groups of five or six people can reserve a Huddle Room for meetings.
An additional benefit of flexible, collaborative spaces is that employees can see and connect with each other more readily. “When you can see people meeting and talking, it creates an opportunity to invite someone new into the conversation,” she explains. “There is more spontaneity.”
This spontaneous dialogue not only drives innovation but also furthers Exelon’s goals of diversity and inclusion. “Inclusion doesn’t happen behind closed doors or when people are segregated,” Bergeson says. “It happens when people are connecting.”
Another trend in workplace strategy that Bergeson employs at Exelon is the use of design to underscore the brand identity and the corporate mission, and it goes far beyond logos and way-finding signage. For example, Exelon is committed to environmental stewardship. “By incorporating sustainable materials in design and placing things in the work environment
Exelon worked with Shive-Hattery to produce the renderings of the common space.
Courtesy of Shive-Hattery
“I’ve always leaned more toward interior environments because they speak more specifically to how people use space.”
like recycling centers, you reinforce this value,” she explains. “You touch it, you sit in it—it permeates everything you’re doing.” With such details, the interiors of Exelon’s offices implicitly remind employees that their work makes a positive impact.
In addition to sustainability, Exelon encourages its employees to remain focused on how their work provides the essential service of bringing energy to customers. For example, in one of Exelon’s Chicago offices, there’s a mural depicting an aerial view of the city lit up at night. This local touch helps employees visualize their direct impact on their community.
Looking ahead, Bergeson will continue to champion new ways for Exelon to use its work spaces more efficiently and effectively. However, she believes these are much more than just allocating square footage in a building. It’s about designing the workplace as an enabler of innovation and as a device that will drive Exelon’s business objectives forward. “My evolution has been about the enhancing the workplace experience,” Bergeson says, “and how the workplace strategy program can increase organizational performance and drive down costs.”
Bergeson
Workplace
Matt Harris demonstrates the workplace robot for remote employees to virtually access the office.
2.0
Through a savvy combination of engineering and design, Matt Harris iterates his way to work spaces that work
By Kathryn Kruse
Portraits by Cass Davis
Matt Harris, Envoy’s head of workplace technology, believes in a smart office. He works to build spaces that use technology to support the company’s 115 employees, adding, “We want offices that understand and know you, that understand your preferences.”
Envoy operates with a mission that “puts people first” through the integration of efficient tech tools in the workplace to streamline business practices. The company first made its name by reimagining front lobby systems, which replaced businesses’ paper log books with integrated, software-packed iPads now used in 10,000 workplaces. This success led to their design of efficient solutions for the piles of delivered packages that overwhelm many offices. Now Envoy is challenging workplace technology at large.
Harris is ground zero for this work, as he constantly explores how technology can improve the employee experience. “I am client number one for our engineering team,” he says. The philosophy behind Harris’s work is to “sweat the small stuff,” which emphasizes
the importance of factoring in every little detail, as these are what he claims matter the most. When you hone your focus this way, you’re able to identify the problems and do something about it. These “pain points” are places for improvements and Harris is looking for solutions that can scale while straddling engineering and product operations. Envoy intends to grow, and it needs results that will continue to fit as the company changes.
Streamlined technology will play a key role in these improvements. For instance, when Envoy’s kitchen runs out of bottled water, Harris explains that the current “solutions open to employees are either filling out a ticket or finding an office manager to solve the problem.” The former is a pain point—a laborious form
Matt Harris Head of Workplace Technology
Envoy
for a tiny concern—and the latter cannot scale. Harris and his team are excited to explore how software could be the answer to these types of common issues, such as a simple app where the employees can post photos.
Skill and comfort with iteration and integrations are central to Harris’s work method. Previously serving as one of Envoy’s engineering managers where he focused on back-end tech, Harris has had a natural progression in his career. He takes his engineering mind-set—be agile, be willing to hack solutions—to allow tech to support workplaces. “Workplace roles need a wide range of talents and skills,” he says. “I know what safe risks are and where to get my hands dirty.”
The answers are not always obvious; luckily, he has a diverse team of people operations, information technology, and engineers to help. “We are constantly looking at integrations,” Harris says. “It is hard to integrate with the physical things of an office and with a building that can’t change.” However, in June of 2018, an office relocation tested his skills. Envoy had planned a total overhaul of a new space: architects were hired, contractors bid. Then the company’s growth outpaced the plans and Harris had two weeks to oversee much of the transition. The result, he says, is even better than what was planned. “We have a great new home because everyone pitched in,” he explains. “We created this.”
The kitchen space features communal tables for lunch breaks, and a projection screen for impromptu meetings.
Matt Harris takes a hands-on approach in the IT closet.
Beyond the communal feeling of a DIY office move, Harris learned an important lesson: tunable spaces are better than inactive, beautiful spaces. For example, instead of deciding on walls for privacy or glass for openness, some of the 14 Zoomready meeting rooms have smart glass and change depending on needs. The shades and skylights are controlled by a Slack bot. Much like a smartphone, the office is learning and adhering to employee preference as individuals interact with it on a daily basis. It is important to accommodate many different types of workplaces. Just as he considers ways to stock the fridge and tune the windows, Harris thinks about how many desks should be assigned and how many should be “hot,” meaning that different employees utilize them as needed. He looks at what other types of work spaces people want. The design questions are far beyond open concept versus cubicle. One of the keys for businesses now, he says, is identifying the balance between providing a designated work space and providing options that support the employee’s choices.
“We have a great new home because everyone pitched in. We created this.”
Employees enjoy the rosé on tap and dog-friendly office.
Harris takes this idea of a smart workplaces that understand your needs and offers solutions to the company’s remote staff as well. “Envoy cares and has figured out the distributed employee,” he says. This doesn’t mean that he simply equips at-home offices with better monitors, microphones, and digital whiteboards— the integration of at-home offices and the central office is a main focus. Harris wants to make sure that Envoy’s San Francisco headquarters feel like everyone’s workplace, even employees working remotely. He manages this with tech initiatives such as real-time portals through which distributed employees can hang out in the office.
Questions of smart offices are the focal point of Envoy as it thinks of its customers and Harris is excited for what’s yet to come. He says, “I am constantly looking for partners and people who are interested in the question, ‘What does it mean to have a workplace team?’ We want to invite everyone to come and talk and build.”
Section 02: Framework
Setting the stage and implementing the building blocks for what will soon be state-of-the-art facilities and designs from difference makers in the building industry
On the Cusp of 21st-Century
Care
The nearly completed Stanford Hospital meets California’s new stringent seismic code and raises the bar on patient care and comfort with innovative technology
by Peter Fabris | photos by Cass Davis
Healthcare technology is advancing so fast that designs of new facilities sometimes can’t keep up. A case in point is the new 824,000 square-foot Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, California. The original design was conceived about 10 years ago. In decades past, the passage of that length of time likely wouldn’t have caused major adjustments to be necessary. However, today, hospital equipment and design only takes a few years to become outdated. That’s why American Builders Quarterly checked in with construction leader Bert Hurlbut, to discover how Stanford Health Care has enhanced the hospital’s design since his initial conversation with the magazine in 2015.
Since then, the vice president of new Stanford Hospital construction has produced an even more state-of-theart hospital within Stanford University’s academic medical center. Upgraded versions of imaging equipment used in about 90,000 square feet of laboratory and operating room space prompted changes in electrical and HVAC infrastructure. That redesign is the primary reason the project’s timeline was extended about a year, according to Hurlbut, who adds that the hospital is expected to be fully operational in October 2019.
A primary driver of the renovation is California’s new stringent seismic code. In addition to meeting the code’s requirements, the project will also feature impressive amenities. A three-story atrium capped with a 120-foot-diameter glass dome will be the focal point of the building, Hurlbut says, describing it as a “knockout” design. All 368 patient rooms will be private, with large-screen TVs and accommodations for family members to stay overnight. Patients will also be able to spend time on thirdfloor healing gardens, with spectacular views of San Francisco Bay and the nearby Santa Cruz Mountains.
With its dramatic features, the new hospital will best reflect the innovative care at Stanford Health Care, which is renowned worldwide for organ transplantation, cancer diagnosis and treatment, cardiovascular medicine and surgery, and neuroscience. The project presents an instructive case study for designers and construction professionals, because of its modern seismic resiliency and its incorporation of technology for patient care and comfort.
Bert Hurlbut VP of New Stanford Hospital Construction
Stanford Health Care
The structure, encompassing a four-acre footprint, is anchored by about 200 base isolators—one for every support column—that allow it to move from side to side during an earthquake. The building can move as much as three feet in any direction when the earth shakes, Hurlbut says. Like shock absorbers in a car, the isolators absorb kinetic energy so that those inside do not notice the tremors.
“The whole building was built around a three-foot moat to allow it to move,” Hurlbut says. Moat covers consisting of steel pans, concrete fill, and pavers were installed over the depression around the structure for safety and aesthetic reasons. A pedestrian bridge connecting the new hospital to the neighboring existing hospital posed an engineering and construction challenge. Special tension-capable base isolators were required. “It took a lot of effort to get the bridge bearings in place,” Hurlbut notes. Complicating that task and the installation of other seismic features was a shortage of tradespeople experienced with new seismic standards for healthcare institutions, he adds.
Seismic requirements in the interior of the hospital included the bracing of mechanical infrastructure. “If you’ve got a straight run of ductwork or piping in the ceiling, you have to brace it every 40 feet,” Hurlbut says. Steel brackets fastened to the building structure fulfill that need—and they also had to be used in every instance where piping or ducts changed direction.
The hospital’s new imaging equipment requires more powerful magnets and draws more power than the machines on which the original design was based. During the redesign, the electrical load was to be increased from the original 125 amps to 200 amps, but as the technology continued to evolve, even that upgrade was deemed inadequate. The final design will actually provide 250-amp breakers for each room.
“We lucked out because we were able to use the same conduits,” says Hurlbut, adding that the conductors still had to be upgraded. Unfortunately, the higher power draw will produce additional heat, so the cooling system also had to be reconfigured. Even though
the redesigns added time to the schedule, which was compounded by the need for approval by state regulators, Hurlbut says, the upgrades were necessary because the world-class teaching hospital needs nothing less than cutting-edge imaging technology.
The design of the 750-square-foot operating rooms provides for greater flexibility as well. Each one can be converted from a conventional operating room to one for any specialty procedure that requires advanced cardio equipment or MRI machines.
The new hospital building’s basic form consists of four patient room towers at each corner that cantilever 29 feet over the third-floor gardens. Parts of the base three-story structure also cantilever 29 feet. “It creates a walking promenade around parts of the building so that you are not out under the weather,” Hurlbut says.
Each tower’s glass curtain wall construction includes a six-inch gap between the exterior glass and interior safety glass. Venetian blinds equipped with light sensors lie within the cavity. The blinds automatically adjust light levels, blocking sunlight during the brightest parts of the day so that glare doesn’t disturb patients and helping the hospital conserve energy. Blackout curtains are accessible to patients, should they want darkness for a daytime nap.
Plus, each patient room is outfitted with a sleep sofa, enabling relatives to spend the night while a patient recovers. “There are no more ‘visiting hours,’” Hurlbut says. “All hours are now visiting hours.”
This Silicon Valley hospital will also use information technology in novel ways to improve the patient experience. Each room will be equipped with tablet computers that patients can use to monitor their schedules such as when doctors will meet with them and when tests will be conducted. Patients will access educational information about their medications, recovery protocols, and fall prevention measures on the tablets—and they will even be able to order meals on these devices.
SHC patients will be encouraged to spend time in the lush rooftop healing gardens that surround the glass dome above the atrium, and wireless telemetry technology will allow staff to track patients’ monitoring devices as they relax in this area.
As it nears completion, excitement has been building in anticipation of the opening. Although it took a little longer to build than expected, patients and staff will no doubt feel that the wait was well worth it. Ultimately, Stanford Health Care will have a facility worthy of the organization’s dynamic legacy of care.
The blueprints outline features such as a rooftop healing garden and a walking promenade for optimal patient experience.
Real Estate as a Tool for Choice
Amy Beall spearheads an agile, adaptable workplace at Legg Mason, giving employees options for how they work
by Rebecca Roberts
Investment management firm Legg Mason Global Asset Management spent more than two years crafting a broad plan designed to help it become more collaborative, more agile, and more innovative. Known as WorkStrategy, it encompasses the company’s “WorkStyle,” “WorkForce,” and, of course, its “WorkPlace.”
Today, the plan is coming together as the company readies itself to launch a pilot program that embodies the WorkStrategy philosophy. The pilot is centered around the redesign of half a floor of Legg Mason’s headquarters in Baltimore’s Harbor East neighborhood. Bringing it to fruition required employees from real estate, information technology, human resources, and other relevant teams to work together on creative ideas to address 21st-century opportunities.
At the helm of the workplace design is Amy Beall, Legg Mason’s head of global real estate. Beall has spent
her entire career in real estate—she started out working on the landlord side of the business, first as an analyst and then as a development finance manager. When she joined Legg Mason’s corporate real estate team 11 years ago, she credited her prior experience with helping her look at real estate from both the owner and tenant perspectives.
Legg Mason historically made workplace design decisions similar to its peers in the financial services industry. Offices had assigned seats and individual work spaces were doled out based on rank and title. Currently, however, it is inverting the traditional approach to workplace strategy by focusing on “we” spaces over “me” spaces, decreasing real estate footprints and using real estate, management policy, and technology to provide employees with more options for how and when they work.
Employees will soon be able to take advantage of Legg Mason’s Innovative Tech and Coffee Bar. Workers will be able to come together in the “Collaboration Zone.”
Courtesy of Gensler
“We wanted to create an engaging and social environment that would make people want to be in the office.”
A major shift in workplace strategy in the Harbor East pilot is an emphasis on agile, adaptive spaces rather than individually assigned desks and offices. As Beall describes, “Real estate, like technology, is a tool, and it’s all about how you use tools. The people component is key, and we want to provide a space that’s conducive to having teams come together to collaborate and innovate.”
This environment includes spaces designed for different functions and work styles. There are library-like quiet spaces, such as focus rooms where an employee can buckle down and concentrate with minimal distractions. There are also individually-sized phone rooms, huddle rooms for small groups to meet, and techenabled innovation rooms for larger teams to collaborate. These rooms can accommodate groups of about 6
Amy Beall Head
of Global Real Estate Legg Mason
Global Asset Management
to 10 people and are equipped with technology-driven smartboards and whiteboards for brainstorming.
Acoustic privacy is a priority, so the innovation rooms have acoustic panels in vibrant colors. Plenty of natural light permeates the space through 14-foot floorto-ceiling exterior glass walls. A significant amount of the furniture in the Harbor East pilot is adjustable and can be reconfigured to suit needs that vary from day to day. In the innovation rooms, all the furniture is on wheels for easy mobility.
Reflection, or “green” rooms, provide spaces where employees can step away from work for a few moments to recharge. At Harbor East, the reflection rooms overlook the water as well as a green roof, an extension of the indoor work environment which has an exclusive patio for rest and relaxation. The pilot also includes
Courtesy of Legg Mason
a self-service coffee bar with cold brew and nitro on tap. The drinks are complimentary, and employees can make themselves an espresso or latte whenever they desire. “We wanted to create an engaging and social environment that would make people want to be in the office,” explains Beall.
Technology and real estate work hand in hand in the pilot. To accommodate the flexibility of Legg Mason’s “workplace of the future” concept, employees are switching from desktop computers to laptops or tablets. A crucial amenity included in the pilot is the technology bar—a place where employees can bring their devices to IT staff whenever they have a question or problem.
As part of the pilot kick-off, Beall’s team previewed it to Legg Mason employees. A town hall meeting introduced the new space using virtual reality tours to not only prime their expectations, but mainly to share the rationale behind the new workplace strategy. At the core of the project, the Harbor East pilot is helping employees rethink how they work by offering them choice: because they use portable devices, they can work in any of the Harbor East pilot spaces, from home, from a client’s office, or elsewhere.
While WorkStrategy was not conceived as a cost-cutting measure, the adaptability of the space and the ability of employees to work remotely means that Legg Mason can shrink its footprint and reduce costs on a square footage basis. These changes were already implemented in Legg Mason’s Miami office, which opened in November 2018. The changes succeeded in reducing its footprint by over 2,500 square feet by designating more collaborative spaces and fewer individual offices.
The redesigned Harbor East space will be put to use starting in February 2019.
Ultimately, Beall sees real estate as a means to enhance the daily experience of the Legg Mason team. “Real estate is a tactical way that we can improve the lives of employees and how they work by giving them a choice and servicing them better.”
BUCH CONGRATULATES AMY BEALL ON HER MANY ACCOMPLISHMENTS AT LEGG MASON
Creating inspired workspaces that enhance your culture, engage your people, and embrace the future.
Turning Customers into Data Thrivers
NetApp’s Ralph Renne works to innovate the cloud services firm’s facilities through consolidation and creative renovations
by Clint Worthington
Inside the immersive cloud theater, visitors see targeted videos from global customers that depict how data can help their business thrive.
When NetApp was founded 25 years ago as a traditional data company, the world’s conception of data was different, says Ralph Renne, director of workplace resources and security. However, the cloud storage and services firm has experienced phenomenal growth over the last several years, which has necessitated a return to the company’s original mission: “To help customers be data-driven.” Through transformation and consolidation initiatives, as well as the renovation of NetApp’s Sunnyvale headquarters, Renne has played a fundamental role in continuing that mission.
Renne’s career has always been focused on the real estate/construction/facilities management sector; prior to joining NetApp, Renne served as the director of facilities for Exar Corporation, as well as a project
coordinator for the Experimental Facilities Department at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. This experience has come in handy in his current role at NetApp, which heavily involves managing the company’s 2.4 million square foot real estate portfolio in the Americas, focusing on real estate, construction, operations, and maintenance management workplace services and amenities.
In recent years, much of Renne’s work has focused on NetApp’s headquarters site in Sunnyvale, California. To keep up with NetApp’s continuous growth, Renne has paradoxically spearheaded initiatives to shrink their headquarters from 1.3 million square feet to 700,000. According to Renne, the initiative “bring[s] employees closer together to improve collaboration,” allowing for more frequent intersections for working together and improving the overall employee
As customers and partners enter the DVC, they are greeted by massive, ever-changing images of a data visionary world projected on a 360 degree chamber.
Customers and partners conquer the world of data, having fun in a VR game while exploring which solutions will best turn their challenges into data-driven opportunities.
experience. This streamlining philosophy is central to Renne’s approach to facilities management—rather than endlessly expanding facilities outward, the workplace resources team instead transforms and reinvests in existing space whenever possible to make the workplace more efficient.
This level of efficiency extends to the way Renne works with his real estate and facilities teams. While this increased work might usually involve raising the team’s headcount, Renne instead found ways to “work more effectively with…architects, engineers, and contractors, better leveraging their capabilities.” Vital to this approach is Renne’s love of collaboration and communication: “Collaboration is absolutely critical and is the formula for success,” he notes. While his team is geographically dispersed, Renne works to leverage his team to participate in projects remotely whenever possible.
Along with NetApp’s marketing team, Renne and his staff worked to reimagine the customer experience in NetApp’s Executive Briefing Center (EBC) and crafted the facility’s new Data Visionary Center (DVC), which opened in the spring of 2018. The DVC, according to Renne, is “unique and quite likely the industry’s only hybrid cloud immersion experience,” where customers get to meet data visionaries and co-create unique designs. NetApp’s goal is to turn these customers’ companies into “Data Thrivers,” organizations that embrace data-driven digital transformation and thus develop new revenue streams faster than competitors. The Sunnyvale expansion is already completed and has proven successful, and Renne is heavily involved in plans to replicate the DVC in other offices. This includes a two-phase expansion of NetApp’s EBC in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, which should be completed in the summer of 2019, as well as
“We are a customer-first company and this new Data Visionary Center is a great example of how we invest in customer experience.”
preliminary designs to upgrade their Amsterdam EBC by spring of 2020. When these upgrades are completed, Renne says, they will be qualified to be DVCs.
In designing the look of these DVCs, and their integration with technology, Renne looked to an unlikely source: Disneyworld. “The Epcot center is a geodesic structure that was designed to intrigue, creating curiosity from a distance to attract and invite you to explore the park,” says Renne. His team applied the same principles to their DVC, developing a similar geodesic structure made of 16 curved panels, 12 feet high, and adorned with flexible video panels Renne calls their “cloud theater”—one of the largest curved LED projection screen structures in the world.
When customers walk into the DVC, they are greeted with custom personalized messaging, highlighting industry-specific information like medical breakthroughs, and scientific discoveries that highlight NetApp’s central mission of world-changing data for customers. “We are a customer-first company,” Renne says, “and this new modern [DVC] is a great example of how we invest in customer experience.”
Through these myriad changes, transformations, and improvements, Renne is confident that NetApp will continue to be a vital resource for companies to gain a better understanding of their data and become Data Thrivers in their own right. “NetApp has undergone a successful business transformation, and now we want to help our customers successfully transform, too.”
Knight Consulting congratulates Ralph Renne on this well-deserved recognition of his efforts at NetApp. We value our 14 year relationship with this firm. We share their commitment to delivering the best solutions possible and look forward to working with them on cutting edge projects in the future.
Rent a Chair, Own an Idea
Dwain Christensen explains how software company SAP branched out to found HanaHaus, an innovative workplace open to the public that champions innovation and collaboration
by Rebecca Roberts
As the director of workplace strategies and global facilities management at SAP, Dwain Christensen sees his colleagues as his customers. His primary focus is how to build a working environment that promotes efficiency and the exchange of ideas. This has led to several workplace initiatives at SAP, including a “Workplace of the Future” design strategy. According to Christensen, “Workplace of the Future is a modern, inclusive, and flexible work environment that is built on a foundation of trust and collaboration and established with flexibility for when, where, and how people work.”
While Workplace of the Future has the potential to benefit many members of the SAP team, SAP’s workplace initiatives don’t stop at their own offices. Despite SAP’s established track record as a software and technology company, the firm has taken a leap into creating workplaces that are open to the public. In 2015, SAP opened the first location of HanaHaus in Palo Alto, California. Part coffee shop and not quite a traditional coworking space, HanaHaus is a work space designed to foster collaboration and community. Now, in 2019, SAP is opening HanaHaus’s second location. At a site in Newport Beach, the first floor will resemble the HanaHaus of Palo Alto, and the second floor will house office space for SAP employees, where the company will benefit from the entrepreneurial and forward-thinking atmosphere championed by HanaHaus.
Christensen explains that the Workplace of the Future initiative allows people to work in the ways that they personally find most productive. The “when” component accounts for flexible hours, and the “where” component encompasses different kinds of spaces. Employees can work indoors or outdoors, at desks or sitting in bean bags. In terms of “how” people work, Workplace of the Future offers a
“The perspective is being smarter about working. There’s more collaboration, and the speed to market is much quicker than the traditional way of working.”
variety of environments, from quiet areas for headsdown concentration to collaborative areas meant to spark conversations.
Some amenities offered by Workplace of the Future are distinctly low-tech. These include writable surfaces on the walls, which Christensen points out not only serves a practical purpose of recording ideas, but also frees employees from the mental limits of a 10 x 12-inch board. Design-thinking rooms have furniture that does not confine SAP employees to one physical position, and instead encourages standing up, moving around the room, using the entirety of the wall area for ideation, and fully inhabiting the space.
Workplace of the Future was not implemented from a cost-saving perspective. Instead, its main goal is
qualitative in nature. “The perspective is being smarter about working. There’s more collaboration, and the speed to market is much quicker than the traditional way of working.” Christensen says.
This emphasis on collaboration and working smarter was what led SAP to form HanaHaus. Like SAP’s Workplace of the Future, HanaHaus has a variety of workspaces that serve different needs. The front is a coffee shop open to the public. Behind the coffee shop are workspaces that do not require a membership to use. Anyone can rent a seat, semi-private group spaces, quiet rooms, or conference rooms by the hour. Christensen notes that “HanaHaus is not coworking. It is a place where like-minded ideation happens with folks who want to have a place to rent a chair. SAP’s founder, Hasso Plattner, has allowed this vision to bring people together and give SAP a good ear to what is happening.” HanaHaus also has an event space geared toward creating community. The space is available for everything from lectures to musical performances—anything that brings people together.
Although SAP’s primary business is software and technology, HanaHaus fits well within the company’s mission of creating products that help businesses harness innovation and run more efficiently. While many of these products are created with SAP’s clients in mind, SAP does not hesitate to focus inward and apply these same benefits to its own work. By locating their own office space on the second floor of HanaHaus’s new Newport Beach location, SAP is positioning its employees at the forefront of the innovation happening below. “Our people will be designing and thinking about what’s next for SAP, like in-house entrepreneurs, and will have the ability to interact with the folks at HanaHaus downstairs. It will be a dynamic, busy location with many different facets of the business happening in the same space.”
All Hands On Deck
Carnival Cruise Line’s Petu Kummala relies on a steady stream of meetings to accomplish the cruise line’s goal of building bigger, better luxury vessels
by Clint Worthington
On a Carnival Cruise ship, you could be treated to thermal suites in a world-class spa, solve a CLUE-inspired murder mystery onboard, see a show with an elaborate set in the Liquid Lounge, and enjoy a drink while listening to live music. The allinclusive vacation experience of a cruise is meant to take your mind off the mundanity of reality off-ship, providing an escape that’s miles away from the pressures of daily obligations. However, curating a venture like this requires someone to do a great deal of heavy-lifting to bring it to life. At Carnival, that person is Petu Kummala, the company’s director of interior design and architecture.
For Kummala, there are few things more important to the creation of a cruise ship than having a steady stream of meetings.
“The pace of building the ships is very fast, and there is constant development during the building process,” he says, “in order to keep things moving and deadlines met, that plays a key role.”
The designer, who started his career in Finland in cruise interior design in the 1990s, brings decades of experience to his current role at Carnival, one of the largest cruise line brands in the world. The company has 26 vessels (21 of which Kummala has worked on) and carried approximately 22 percent of all cruise industry passengers in 2018. Given the company’s high standing, and the complexities that go into cruise ship design, the planning and organization of these projects is a fundamental concern for Kummala.
Courtesy of Bluarch
The Carnival Mardi Gras, setting sail in 2020, will feature six “zones” of uniquely themed experiences.
There are two different processes that go into the creation of a new cruise ship, says Kummala: a “prototype vessel,” where a new class of ship is being built completely from scratch, and a “sister ship,” in which the hull and basic layout remain largely the same as a previous prototype vessel. The former process is much longer and involves more phases of development. “We’re starting from a blank sheet of paper,” says Kummala. “When creating completely new [ships] like this, we are coming up with designs and solutions that sometimes have never been done before.” From there, Kummala’s team must work with structural engineers and designers to find ways to make those designs possible. “That is always a very interesting and rewarding process,” he notes.
To make the process as smooth as possible, however, continuity of communication is incredibly important to Kummala, which is where the “steady stream of meetings” comes in. Carnival’s ships are crafted with very strict, set deadlines, he says. “The ships are finished on time, so we really have no room for contemplating and changing things as we wish.” To that end, meetings are held frequently on issues like building and design challenges, cost-complexity negotiations, coordination of systems and functions, clarifications with contractors and the shipyard, and more.
For Kummala, some of the biggest, most important meetings are the mock-up meetings, where small versions of the ship’s rooms are built so they can be evaluated for building quality and complexity. “Nowadays, we have very good quality renderings that already give a good impression of the design,” he admits, “but [the mockups] still play a big role in the overall process, especially in finding solutions on how to solve construction challenges.”
Central to Kummala’s concerns when designing and building a ship is to ensure its adherence to the qualities that make it a Carnival Cruise liner. While the company’s vessels offer similar details to other ships in their same segment (luxury, exploration, etc.), Kummala’s team coordinates closely with the operations and housekeeping side of the company to optimize the daily life of the ship’s 24/7 operational processes. “There is
“When creating completely new ships like this, we are coming up with designs and solutions that have never been done before.”
no point in designing something that looks beautiful when new but can be ruined in a very short time because it can’t be cleaned, can be easily damaged, or is otherwise unsustainable in a cruise ship environment,” he notes. Carnival’s onboard and operational teams provide vital expertise in this area; his design team constantly communicates with them to find a balance between operational preferences and the practicalities of long-term maintenance.
“A job like this is certainly not a one-man job,” Kummala adds. “I’m fortunate to have really great people to work with, from the design side but also from the project side; our entire new-build team is top-notch—no doubt about that. It takes many of us to ensure we get things right.”
One of the ways in which Kummala makes certain that his ideas come to fruition is by the use of augmented reality software from Sim.Co.VR, which allows for streamlined communication during construction, and also can be used to provide immersive experiences for passengers while onboard. “It is a pleasure to work with Petu given his professionalism and innovative vision,” says Massimo Colautti, the CEO and owner of Sim.Co.VR. “Our long-time, winning collaboration that combines Petu’s peculiar design with Sim.Co.VR’s unique services and rendering makes the dream of a cruise ship come true.”
Director of Interior Design & Architecture
Petu Kummala
Carnival Cruise Line
maintaining a fun aspect to serious meetings is important to him and his process.
The two newest additions to the Carnival fleet, Carnival Horizon and Carnival Panorama, have been a real test of Kummala’s approach to cruise ship design. Carnival Horizon was launched earlier this year, with her sister ship, Carnival Panorama, set for launch in late 2019. Kummala is particularly proud of these creations: of Carnival Horizon, he says, “She’s a beautiful lady, and we have heard great things from our guests!” Carnival Panorama, meanwhile, will sport several new features, including an indoor trampoline park with a challenge area done in partnership with Sky Zone, which features a blacklight for nighttime glow parties.
However, Kummala’s latest challenge has been the design of the XL Project, a new class of ships that is currently in the prototype vessel phase. The first ship on the roster, Mardi Gras, will be setting sail in 2020, which takes its namesake from the first of Carnival’s liners which made waves for the popularity of cruises, back in 1972. “We started from scratch with a complete design process, creating the overall layouts, designs and concepts for the complete vessel,” he explains of the project. From there, his team is still working with the structural engineers to overcome the challenges the XL’s 180,000-ton design (the biggest in the fleet) will present.
While he can’t disclose many more details about the project apart from its name and size, Kummala is excited to show customers the end result. “I can’t wait!” he says, also revealing that one of the major new innovations will be an on-board roller-coaster, which is a first for the industry.
Through his work on the Carnival Cruise Line’s fleet, Kummala’s primary concern is to approach his designs from the perspective of the visitor. “One philosophy I embrace is to have designs that give guests something to discover even during the last day of their vacation,” he says. “When you create something they love and remember, they keep coming back.”
Naval Interior is an ever-expanding entity, founded in the heart of the Mediterranean with the ability to take on large projects globally in the cruise ship building sector, delivering outstanding interiors with a turnkey service. They have over 60 successfully delivered projects as proof of their high-quality standards and professionalism.
Kummala notes that
Elizabeth Cazau
Angela Broxterman VP of Real Estate Midwest Health
David Eulitt
A Healthy Outlook
There was a time not so long ago that Midwest Health primarily built, managed, and maintained senior living communities. As the company expands into restaurant, retail, entertainment, and even golf courses, Angela Broxterman is at the center of making sure the company’s diversifying portfolio lives up to the company’s high standards—and that it doesn’t forget about senior living.
by Paul Snyder
Five years ago, Angela Broxterman stepped into her role at Midwest Health Inc. with the intent to help develop new properties and manage projects within the existing portfolio of 50 senior-living facilities. Things have since changed a little. The Topeka, Kansasbased company now owns approximately 60 senior-living facilities (including independent living, assisted living, rehabilitative care, skilled nursing, and memory care) and the company is expanding into completely new industries.
“We have retail property, commercial office space, residential space, industrial manufacturing space, restaurants—we’ve really expanded in terms of what we own and manage,” Broxterman notes. “It’s been an invigorating challenge to go from focusing on senior living to managing a diverse portfolio spanning half a dozen different industries. My team is simultaneously managing several new buildouts as well as maintaining and renovating locations we already own.”
It’s a challenge, Broxterman says, but one that she enjoys. Steeped in a background of real estate management—which includes everything from collecting rent to making sure facility systems are working and upgrades are done on time and budget—the expanding scope of Midwest Health’s work ensures that she flexes all the muscles she’s developed during her career.
“There’s never a dull moment,” she says. “We have an excellent team of partners, and we have a great group that we’ve formed in-house to do things like estimating and budgeting projects, tenant buildouts, facility work orders, and apartment turns. When you’re working on so many different fronts, you have to surround yourself with the people that can help find solutions.”
Broxterman spoke with American Builders Quarterly about a range of recent projects that Midwest Health is working on, illustrating the ever-expanding business model of the company.
David Eulitt
Senior Living
The Ranch House
Garden City, Kansas
Estimated cost: $18 million
Components: 60 skilled-nursing units and 40 assisted-living units
Future plans for independent-living and villa units
Opened: November 2018
Arrowhead
Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri
Estimated cost: $32 million
Components: 80 skilled-nursing units, 90 assisted-living units, and 16 memory-care units
Future plans for 75-80 independent-living and villa units
Opening: Spring 2019 (as of press time)
“A lot of our previous work in senior care consisted of standalone assisted-living facilities,” Broxterman says. “These new communities like Arrowhead and the Ranch are unique because they’re full campuses with varying degrees of care available in one location. Our residents and their families really like the additional levels of care being under one roof because it eliminates the need for cumbersome moves as care needs change.”
Although Midwest Health works with various contractors and subcontractors on the projects, the organization directly oversees each project and puts its own resources into them. For example, Midwest Health procures all the equipment for these projects and also does the interior finishes.
“With so many different pieces, it requires a lot of coordination,” Broxterman says. “You have to work well with others and be flexible.”
Renovation
The Crosby Building Topeka, Kansas
Estimated cost: $1.6 million
Components: Renovation of two floors and the rooftop of a major downtown building that also houses US Bank and Evergy (formerly Westar Energy)
Renovation will be done for the Greater Topeka Partnership who will move in December 2018 (as of press time)
“Building a strong sense of teamwork and partnership is important in everything we do—but especially on projects like the Crosby building renovation where there are a lot of moving parts,” Broxterman says. “My team and I develop relationships with all of our partners and hold them accountable to meet deadlines and quality standards. We treat our partners like extensions of our team, and we get terrific results.”
“We work with a lot of local Topeka companies,” she adds. “It’s important to have people you can trust who are invested in the success of your city—from the architect being able to start the project correctly to knowing that the general contractor will cover all your bases.”
David Eulitt
Recreation
Canyon Farms Golf Club
Estimated cost: $14 million
Components: 18-hole golf course, country club, fitness center, and lounge
Future plans for senior-living campus, retail, and hotel
Opened: October 2018
“This project started out as just a golf course, but it quickly developed into a world-class clubhouse with two restaurants, a fitness center, and event space,” Broxterman notes.
Although there is no timeline for future components of Canyon Farms, she says the golf course and country club likely will serve as a building block for another live-work-play project that will feature retail, hospitality, and senior living.
“It will be a true evolution from what it is right now,” she says.
The Golf Pro Shop is tucked inside the Canyon Farms Golf Club in Lenexa, KS.
Members can relax in the Turn Clubhouse and grab a drink in the Silo restaurant.
“There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t learn something new.”
Retail
Wheatfield Village Topeka, Kansas
Estimated cost: $43 million
Components: Theater, hotel, PT’s Coffee, SPIN! Pizza, and an open farmer’s market area
Future plans for apartments to fully develop a livework-play concept
Opening: Summer 2019 (as of press time)
“I’ve worked on both the tenant and landlord sides of the real estate business,” Broxterman notes. “I’ve worked on the facility maintenance side and the management side. Still, when you start a job and your focus is on senior living and not even five years later you’re looking at a project with multiple retail spaces, a hotel, and more, it takes a lot of discipline. You have to be nimble and open to new ideas.”
At the time of writing, a snowstorm had just dumped six inches of snow on the Wheatfield site, where exposed steel beams sat, temporarily delaying construction. In addition to continuing to manage 60 senior-living facilities already under Midwest’s umbrella, these are the kinds of wrinkles that Broxterman negotiates daily.
“There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t learn something new,” she says. “But I love it. There are always work orders to be handled and issues to deal with. All the while, the team is trying to figure out what the next step or task is. I love it.”
Schwerdt Design Group congratulates Angela Broxterman with Midwest Health for her accomplishments facilitating teamwork between the real estate team and professionals like SDG. By providing architectural and interior design services, SDG shares Midwest Health’s goal to make life rewarding for everyone. Learn more at www.sdgarch.com.
Section 03: Spaces
Exploring new and renovated facilities across the industry, from buildings to work spaces, along with the people and companies behind these projects
Sky-high Family Values
Gordon L’Estrange combines his passions for community engagement and interior design to create energetic spaces that express Salesforce culture on a global scale
by
Tricia Despres | portraits by Winni Wintermeyer
Seated in Salesforce’s San Francisco headquarters, senior director of real estate for the company’s west coast projects, Gordon L’Estrange, admits that his mind feels miles away—2,147 miles, to be exact.
“I can’t stop thinking about Chicago,” L’Estrange admits about Salesforce’s new Windy City headquarters, which is set for completion in 2023. “It’s going to be located in such a prominent spot within the city, just south of the Merchandise Mart. It will be yet another example of how our real estate drives the culture of our company as a whole.”
Indeed, the Chicago office will soon join the world’s leading customer relationship-management platform company as a prime new location alongside existing towers in San Francisco, New York, London, and Indianapolis, with another on the way in Atlanta. Today, Salesforce has over 30,000 employees globally. Not bad for a company that began in a small San Francisco apartment.
Growing up in Dublin, Ireland, L’Estrange recalls how he made a name for himself in architecture through his passion for art. “I just always had an artistic bent, especially when it came to history,” he says. “It’s one of the reasons I loved Dublin so much. The architecture is more varied there due to the older buildings.”
After moving to San Francisco in 1997, L’Estrange entered into the commercial interior world, eventually evolving his career into a hybrid of architecture, construction management, and interior design. Then in 2016, over a cup of coffee, he was offered a life-changing position at Salesforce.
“The opportunity at Salesforce allows my team and me to help share our culture every day,” L’Estrange
says, “[as well as] align our employees around the world and create a memorable environment for everyone who walks through our doors.” He adds that Salesforce views the spaces within each of its buildings as an expression of the company’s culture.
In order to realize this vision, L’Estrange often serves as a translator of sorts, ensuring that everyone involved in the creation of a space is essentially speaking the same language. “We have to be the bridge between the construction team and translate it to the design team, for example. This helps us to not only implement these projects but ensure that they form the culture we are aspiring to,” he says. “My team, in particular, shares this extreme attention to detail that allows us to speak with the same voice.”
One of the most memorable environments within all of Salesforce’s spaces is the Ohana Floor. Meaning ‘family’ in Hawaiian, the space is often referred to as the “world’s greatest living room,” occupied by employees and their families, customers, partners, and nonprofit groups that often take advantage of the space located on the top floor of each Salesforce Tower globally.
L’Estrange Senior Director of Real Estate Salesforce
Gordon
“We create spaces that essentially energize teams to move around and allow us to plan for flexible work spaces.”
“Architecture is such a physical idea, but it actually can represent cultural values when done correctly,” says L’Estrange. “Our Ohana Floors are the perfect example of this; they’re inspired by our value of equality and are open to all of our ‘Ohana’—employees, customers, partners, and members of the community. The Ohana floor is truly a catch-all space that is always active, including on nights and weekends.”
L’Estrange notes that the global Real Estate and Workplace Services team is also responsible for designing “spaces that are energetic and alive.” This includes clear sightlines, open-flow floor plans, plenty of access to sunlight and views, and inspiration from nature. “In our offices, no one needs to be at their desk trying to have a group meeting,” L’Estrange says. “We create spaces that essentially energize teams to move around and allow us to plan for flexible work spaces.”
“We have enjoyed working with Gordon on many successful projects,” says Michael Paganini, president of Paganini Electric Corporation, who has collaborated with L’Estrange’s team on Salesforce’s design. “The ongoing success at Salesforce Tower has been attributable to his leadership and a phenomenal project team.”
PRECISION & DEDICATION
L’Estrange recognizes that no matter how much work goes into creating a space, there must always be room for transformation. “A space is never truly finished,” L’Estrange says. “It will always evolve based on the different ways in which people decide to use it as we continue to grow. We never want to be burdened to have to renovate a floor based on that growth. We always want to have an inherent flexibility when it comes to these work spaces.”
Part of L’Estrange’s day is spent wandering through the spaces he helped build to ensure that they are functioning correctly, from a design standpoint. “I always look at teams conducting meetings in our social lounges rather than traditional conference rooms,” he notes, because this indicates that the space is being utilized the way he and his team strive for. “We want them to have energy,” he adds. “That’s where they, and we, are going to succeed.”
One Workplace, a Salesforce workplace design partner for the last ten years, congratulates Gordon L’Estrange, senior director of real estate at Salesforce on his outstanding achievements. As project leader for the Salesforce Tower, Gordon orchestrated that iconic and successful effort with his internal team and all project partners. One Workplace works with organizations like Salesforce to design and implement inspired workplace solutions. We create spaces that teach, heal, inspire, and perform. Visit oneworkplace.com to learn more about why organizations like Salesforce, UC Berkeley, Ancestry.com, Symantec, and UCSF choose One Workplace to help create a great workplace for their teams.
New Ways of Working
According to Saquib Butt, principal project manager at Boston Scientific, workplace strategy is increasingly on the minds of executives and is becoming a regular conversation. “Now people are looking at ABW (activity-based working) implementation [where they] can choose where to work based on their activities,” he says. That’s the future of new “ways of working,” where there is less reliance on paper, storage, and individual offices. Instead there is an influx of choices for adjustable open spaces, more amenities, co-working, and cross-functional collaboration.
Today, many companies are revising their policies and tools to support these flexible approaches to workplace productivity. However, these updates have not resulted in new corporate cultures that encourage higher productivity, diversity, and innovation—yet. That’s where Butt’s data-driven strategy comes into play.
Saquib Butt collects spatial utilization data to optimize work spaces for employee collaboration and keep operating expenses low at Boston Scientific
by Rebecca Roberts
Analyzing employees’ work styles and the amount of time they spend in different types of spaces is at the forefront of Butt’s approach at Boston Scientific, an international corporation that designs and manufactures medical devices. He also draws on his background as an electrical engineer for a tactical understanding of project management and execution. Currently, Butt is putting his philosophy and experience to work on a global scale, overseeing the expansion of one of Boston Scientific’s manufacturing sites in Spencer, Indiana, and tweaking the company’s workplace strategy to fit the needs of international facilities.
The existing facility in Indiana is a high-volume, 175,000-square foot factory that Boston Scientific has utilized for over 15 years. The building houses both industrial and office space, and Butt is in the midst of
changing this. He plans to build a new office building interconnected with the existing structure, moving administrative tasks to the new building and freeing up more space for production. That way, there is square footage at the ready for business expansion—either in the form of expanding existing operations or accommodating future mergers and acquisitions.
The new office construction provides an opportunity for Boston Scientific to implement the design ideas and amenities that are part of the company’s evolving workplace strategy. This system centers around making the workplace somewhere that fuels employee energy, wellness, and motivation. One step in accomplishing this is providing access to natural light by pushing open office space to the perimeter of the building. Boston Scientific is also taking advantage of lighting controls and light harvesting to decrease energy usage and costs.
Amenities, such as state-of-the-art cafés, are a big part of the new workplace strategy, and each are tailored to the demographics of each site. In the Indiana facility and elsewhere in the United States, multipurpose wellness rooms are quiet areas for employees to step away from work and relax, read, or meditate. Lounging seats are provided, and lighting can be dimmed to create a soothing atmosphere. While Boston Scientific is supplying these relaxation spaces in its facilities across the globe, the specific spatial designation varies depending on cultural context. For example, facilities in Malaysia have a prayer area whereas Indiana’s facility has a wellness room. Also, the Boston Scientific HQ campus has a daycare for employees to meet their family needs while at work.
Encouraging collaboration is another major component of Boston Scientific’s workplace plan, and this is accomplished through designing spaces that
The new office will be adjacent to the existing factory in Spencer, IN. The building will utilize light harvesting to decrease energy usage.
With a focus on employee collaboration, the new office building’s work space designs feature areas for different-sized groups to meet.
“I see the workplace designed in such a way that it’s not just a space where you go and sit for eight hours. You go there to get energy, to feel close to the brand, and to have face-time with other employees.”
The “town square” spaces offer free coffee, purified water, and healthychoice vending options along with bar seating to foster interaction.
promote employee interactions and provide room for different-sized groups to meet. Every floor has two or three “town square” areas with kitchen amenities (free coffee, purified water, and healthy choice vending options) and bar seating that, according to Butt, fosters an opportunity for “impromptu discussions and cross-pollination of ideas” across teams. In terms of meeting spaces, there are open, agile lounging spaces, huddle rooms for up to four people, larger team rooms for six to eight people, and conference rooms for groups of 10 to 15.
To determine the best square footage allotment for each type of space, Butt and his team worked with designers at Unispace, Gensler, and Margulies Perruzzi Architects (MPA) to collect data that tracked the usage of differently sized rooms and created an algorithm for future design. MPA’s focus on utilizing 3-D technology to tailor workplace strategies for companies whose work space is driven by productive design played an
Saquib Butt Principal Project ManagerGlobal Facilities/ EHS and Real Estate Boston Scientific
integral role in the development of Boston Scientific’s interior architecture.
Butt’s team set up sensors to monitor rooms in for two weeks to gather the hard data. He notes that they took into account a qualitative assessment, as well. “We sent a survey to employees based on department asking about the nature of the work they perform and how they rate their individual spaces as well as common spaces and amenities,” he explains. Spatial utilization varied by each department’s function, and there were also differences according to location. Boston Scientific employees in Asia Pacific tended to work in the office, whereas employees in the United States and Europe were more likely to spend some of their time working remotely.
Branding is yet another aspect of Boston Scientific’s new workplace strategy. Public-facing areas such as the main lobby utilize the brand’s blue color as well as LCD screens featuring products in the pipeline
Boston Scientific’s Strategy: The Cadence of Design Construction
Saquib Butt knows that it’s imperative to have a workplace strategy in place prior to design in order to construct an office building that meets end-user requirements.
The “planning” phase is comprised of developing a team, assigning stakeholders, and laying out a formal communication process to achieve a rhythm among the key players. This is also where the statement of requirement is established, and risks are identified along with the mitigation strategy.
This is followed by the “design” phase, where schematics are created to identify how the space will be used by each department, then incorporated into the final design to promote employee productivity and collaboration.
The last phase is when the MEP engineering team defines the engine of the building to bring it to life. Peer design reviews are conducted, and the project budget is developed for each stage to ensure initial requirements are within the cost range.
Planning Design Execution Close Out
“We survey employees about the nature of their work and how they rate individual as well as common spaces and amenities.”
and recent news. In employee-only areas branding is subtler but may feature installations with patient stories that underscore Boston Scientific’s mission of advancing science for life.
For Butt, this all plays into the ideology that the workplace serves a function higher than merely completing one’s job. “I see the workplace designed in such a way that it’s not just a space where you go and sit for eight hours. You go there to get energy, to feel close to the brand and the corporation, and to have face-time with other employees.”
Congratulations to Saquib Butt for your recognition in American Builders Quarterly; we are proud of our relationship with you and with Boston Scientific. Margulies Perruzzi creates impactful design infused with innovative and practical knowledge of how people work, in order to best support clients’ business objectives and mission. Learn more at mparchitectsboston.com.
Many times when people describe Columbia, they use the word “predictable.” This isn’t surprising. For more than 90 years, Columbia has always Listened to each client, Planned ahead for the unknown, and Built quality projects clients proudly stand behind.
www.columbiacc.com proudly supporting Saquib Butt and Boston Scientific
Cal Delta Plumbing, Inc. has been in business since 1984 celebrating 35 years servicing Northern California and North Western Nevada.
Specializing in Commercial Plumbing, New and Remodel Construction.
Cal Delta Plumbing also offering Design Built and 24/7 Commercial Plumbing Service Division.
Cal Delta Plumbing , Inc.
Bruce Kluckhohn
Building Winning Spaces
Mark Anger’s love for architecture and hockey come together to ensure a positive experience for both the players and fans of the Minnesota Wild
by Kathryn Kruse
Playing “pond hockey” as a Minnesotan kid, Mark Anger developed an affinity for the speed and challenge of skates and pucks flying across the frozen surface. Now the facilities development project manager for the NHL’s Minnesota Wild, he combines that love of the game with years of architectural experience. The results are facilities enjoyed by the team and fans alike.
Anger has honed his skills over the years and describes his architectural process as being inspired by teamwork, care, passion, and the excellence demanded when creating a strong and useful space.
After nearly two decades with Ellerbe Becket Architects, the firm where Anger began his career, he had the opportunity to travel to Buffalo, New York, to be the firm’s onsite architect for the construction of Buffalo Sabres arena. Based on the success of the Sabres project, Anger was tapped to travel to Sunrise, Florida, for the development of the new Florida Panthers arena. In 1998, with two arenas under his belt, he left Ellerbe
Becket and returned home to the Land of 10,000 Lakes to be part of the development team for the Minnesota Wild’s Xcel Energy Center. A lifelong fan of the game and a native Minnesotan, Anger says this project amounted to a dream job. His main focus for this was to oversee the architects and contractors on the project, but he took on the added responsibility of designing the locker rooms, suites, press box, and scoreboard.
In addition to the Xcel Energy Center, Anger also designed the Wild’s new practice facilities in downtown St. Paul, known as TRIA Rink. The building, formerly a mid-century department store, has transformed over time into a mixed-use facility now occupied by a two-story Walgreens, a brewpub, restaurants, office space, and now the Minnesota Wild. The hockey rink itself, located on the top level, also serves as practice space to local college teams, men’s leagues, youth teams, and other skating events. Anger is excited about the impact the space has on the community—rink time is also provided to the urban youth club known as the Dinomights.
Mark Anger
Bruce Kluckhohn
“With the everchanging technology, we need to evolve, as well as find ways to increase revenue and provide a more secure building for our fans.”
Once the facilities have been completed, “It’s my job to keep them fresh and new,” says Anger. “With the everchanging technology, we need to evolve things to keep up with those changes as well as find ways to increase revenue and provide a more secure building for our fans.” For example, he recently oversaw a $1 million seat replacement and a $6.4 million scoreboard and LED fascia board update in the Xcel Energy Center.
Anger has a number of new projects in the lineup. He has been in talks with the Wild’s Iowa affiliate team about a new practice facility. Back home at the Xcel Energy Center, he is working on rebranding the arena’s main gates as well as a new all-inclusive ice-level club space.
For Anger this means designing, finding partners, overseeing projects, and making sure spaces remain versatile. He loves hockey because, as he says, “The game is fast, exciting, and constantly moving.” Stepping back, this is a fitting way to describe the work Anger does for both his construction and hockey teams—his architectural dream job.
Anger worked with RJM Construction to oversee the feat of putting in an ice rink on the fifth level. “We had a great working relationship with them,” he says, crediting RJM as an invaluable part of the development of the space. The rink itself has an ammonia ice system which has the quickest recovery time, an important feature in a facility like TRIA rink.
With sweeping views of the city through energysaving electrochromic glass (which adjusts its tint based on the sun’s rays), six public locker rooms, and seating for 1,000, Anger has plenty of reasons to be proud of both his team and RJM. Not to mention, Anger adds, “Part of the construction was done with other tenants occupying parts of the building.”
It’s down on the L-0 level that Anger’s work truly shines. Connected to the rink on L-5 by high-speed elevators, the team’s locker room space is 22,800 square feet of state-of-the-art design. Anger fit a weight room, 40-yard turf track, theater, kitchen, and training room with two thermal plunge pools and a therapy pool around an added challenge. “There are three-foot diameter columns throughout the space,” he says. While those physical disruptions may not be remembered as fondly throughout the development, Anger and his team were equipped to handle each one and he proudly reports that the players love the space and have been full of compliments.
At RJM, our team seeks opportunities with a collaborative spirit and bold determination.
TRIA RINK, ST. PAUL, MN
The Times Square flagship features sustainable details, such as hangers made from 100% recycled jeans.
David Fenton
The Perfect Fit
Levi Strauss & Co. has long sought to encourage the expression of one’s “authentic self.” Jeffrey Eggert-Peluso’s challenge is to translate that approach into a new, immersive store design.
by Randall Colburn
“Fit” is the operative word when talking about Levi Strauss & Co., but the company’s vision extends beyond just finding the right pair of its signature denim jeans for every customer. For Levi’s, it’s also about ensuring that both customers and team members fit snugly into the office and retail locations, which the company has sought to make as comfortable and safe as possible.
It’s the culture, after all, that helped draw Jeffrey Eggert-Peluso to his current role as the company’s vice president of global store design. He cites Levi’s as being one of the first companies to implement a code of conduct—known as the Terms of Engagement—designed to protect basic needs and rights of workers in its supply chain. In 2011, Levi’s fortified that commitment with the Worker Well-being initiative, which, he says, “Supports financial empowerment, health education, and gender equality for the people who make our products,” and currently impacts nearly 100,000 workers.
The SoHo store is one of the few shops in the country that features its own tailor.
David Fenton
Equality’s been a key component of Levi’s approach since its inception in 1853. As the first Fortune 500 company to extend health benefits to unmarried domestic partners over 20 years ago and the only California business to file an amicus brief in support of same-sex marriage 12 years ago, it has continued to be outspoken supporters of the LGBTQ community and anti-discrimination. It even releases an annual Pride collection, in which 100 percent of the proceeds are donated to the Harvey Milk Foundation and Stonewall Community Foundation.
All of this lends itself to Levi’s Life and Style brand identity. “Through our products, marketing, and store experiences,” Eggert-Peluso says, “we hope to create a canvas that allows the individual to express their ‘authentic self.’”
Bringing this philosophy to life via design falls on Eggert-Peluso, and it’s a challenge for which he was ready when he joined Levi’s in 2013. After nearly two decades with Ralph Lauren, he had cultivated a keen understanding of “harmonizing business with store design.”
The key to harmonization? Collaboration. “As a rounded retail team—retailers, merchandisers, allocators, creative services, store design—we challenged ourselves to think outside of the norms collaboratively for Levi’s,” he says. “I led my team to draw out and frame actionable principles to translate to design.”
He adds, “We’re listening to our global consumers and the entire Global Store Design team—from India to Brussels to Shanghai to Mexico City to Singapore to San Francisco.”
The results were changes to Levi’s storefronts and entryways, as well as interior flourishes that create a sense of communion by juxtaposing LED light strips with light-toned wood and hot rolled steel.
A “big step forward,” he notes, was in the company’s reinvigoration of the fitting room experience. These rooms, after all, are vulnerable places for the consumer, and it’s often rare to find a fitting room design that prioritizes comfort.
Eggert-Peluso describes Levi’s revamped fitting areas as featuring ample space, crisp lighting, plenty
Jeffrey EggertPeluso cites collaboration as a key factor for the success of his team.
Janette Beckman
The Times Square flagship location is the largest Levi’s store in the world.
of seating options, and strong, illuminated portals. Most striking, however, are the built-in call buttons, which make it easier than ever to summon a Levi’s team member.
This commitment to comfort extends to another key component of the Levi’s brand: customization. Just as the hunt for one’s “authentic self” centers around individuality, so too does Levi’s comprehensive tailoring options. In stores, you’ll find onsite tailors, direct-togarment printing capabilities, and iPads that allow customers to browse designs by Levi’s tailors in cities such as London, Paris, Shanghai, and more. The latter option not only speaks to Levi’s global presence, but also embraces the increasing sense of connectedness that comes in the social media age.
All of these design elements are epitomized in Levi’s flagship store in New York City’s Times Square. Opened in November of 2018, the store unfolds across 16,902 square feet and features the world’s largest collection of Levi’s jeans, from its landmark 501 jeans to a vintage selection to a section devoted entirely to children. “Our retail was missing a global beacon for our fans to experience, so Times Square, the crossroads of the global community, became the focus,” Eggert- Peluso says.
John Matteo, owner of Prime Inc. who collaborated with Eggert-Peluso on the Times Square location, agrees. “Levi’s is a staple in the retail industry—they’re constantly pushing the envelope with respect to design and functionality, all in relation to the customer experience,” he says. “The Times Square store is just one example of how brilliant the brand is.”
Eggert-Peluso describes the store’s design thesis as “Levi’s Global Theater,” and that approach can be gleaned not just from the theatrical lights and abundance of LED screens, but also the ways in which its escalators work to frame the breadth of the retail floor. He makes a note of the landing that separates the two escalators and, in his words, helps visitors to
David Fenton
“Through our store experiences, we hope to create a canvas that allows the individual to express their ‘authentic self.’”
Futuristic Store Fixtures is glad to be the chosen fixtures partner for Levi’s retailing growth globally.
A store fixtures focused VALUE ENGINEER AND BUILD specialist in support of each brandʼs retailing growth - from fixtures design consultancy & value engineering, store layout planning & elevations, scalable fabrication & production to inventory management - we create brand-building environments in modular system that suits in-store assembly and simultaneous installation in multiple stores.
“take the space and brand inward.” Meanwhile, the screens surrounding shoppers highlight the history of the brand, with images of cultural luminaries like The Ramones and Marlon Brando.
Capping all of it off is a clear commitment to locality and sustainability, be it in the artwork of graffiti legend Cey Adams or the store hangers wholly manufactured from recycled jeans.
While Eggert-Peluso admits he’s still learning and always will be, he’s established himself as a voice of inspiration for budding store designers at the Seattle-based Future Stores convention. There, he speaks on a number of topics, including the reality that understanding consumers is a journey, one he refined at Levi’s SoHo location before manifesting at the new Times Square store.
Cultivating a design from a philosophy, as shown in Eggert-Peluso’s work, takes time, not to mention passion and a genuine love for the brand.
Futuristic Store Fixtures is honored to be a key member of Levi’s core external team, in support of their store fixtures needs delivering brand-building environments. Jeffrey and his team are very professional in their field and we will continue to strive in our deliverables to support Levi’s retailing growth. www.futuristicgroup.com
THAT MEANS YOU
The Ideas Behind BehaviorBased Design
With user experience central to her design, Valerie Garrett works with Fifth Third Bank to disrupts spaces to ensure undisrupted work
by Kathryn Kruse
Courtesy of Fifth Third Bank
believes in a workplace that teems with variety, as reflected in this space in their Columbus, OH, location.
Valerie Garrett
Valerie Garrett, director of workplace design for Fifth Third Bank, knows that design must be about people, not just the bottom line. As she leads the architectural, interior, and environmental branding design effort for a massive workplace transition of Fifth Third Bank’s entire real estate footprint, user experience is the driving force.
In June of 2017, Garrett arrived at Fifth Third to lead the redesign for offices from Orange County to New York. She brings decades of experience in workplace strategy, master planning of multisite campuses, and working with product development teams. She has also led key projects, design and facilities process development, and strategic change efforts. Her process starts with defining principal standards. “Before specifics like furniture, fit, and finish, you have to articulate a compelling vision for the workplace plan,” Garrett says. The plan hinges on three ideas: variety, choice, and flexibility.
When you navigate the typical employee’s workday, she explains, you will see that they engage in a multitude of tasks: meetings, coffee, post-meeting chats, hanging their coat, connecting with people, solo work, collaborating around technology, and exchanging ideas face-to-face. All these behaviors should be supported with different types of spaces—an environment that teems with variety. Garrett highlights post-meeting interaction as a critical opportunity to support a universal workplace behavior. Fifth Third is creating informal spaces to support “meeting-after-the-meeting” conversations.
Valerie collaborates with her internal team and external partners to integrate design that focuses on people, incorporating human workplace experience into design strategy, with the awareness that provid-
ing a choice of work spaces is an attribute of company culture. Her interest in the use of employee-directed space is demonstrated by putting in equal value between work done in flexible soft seating, huddle rooms, and socialization space, as well as traditional desk work and individual work settings. “Work is work,” Garrett says. It comes down to personal preference that will enhance productivity.
Following the mantra, “Light is a right,” she feels no employee should be denied the ability to see outside, so formal offices have been moved to the interior and coveted perimeter spaces are shared. Similarly, people do not like their backs to doors, and they do not work well near high-traffic paths. If boundaries between individual work spaces and collaborative, noisier, open workplaces are lacking, the spaces will not be usable. Garrett and her team design around these realities.
The Fifth Third design also focuses on social responsibility, play, and well-being. To achieve these goals, Garrett collaborates with the culture team and corporate storyteller. They identify and articulate clear ideas around mission and values. “I have the good fortune of working with brilliant people including Donna Burnell, Thomas Neltner, and Curtis Bodison,” Garrett says, “who lead with one mission: To be trusted strategic partners that deliver and support efficient, effective, and innovative work environments that inspire employees and enrich customer experiences.”
Garrett Director of Workplace Design
Valerie
Fifth Third Bank
“I love to talk with fellow employees about the purpose behind the design; they understand that we are designing with their experience in mind.”
Garrett employs design thinking to turn these principles into actual offices honed to Fifth Third’s needs. For example, when creating spaces to support agile teams, she engaged employees in visioning/voting exercises to help communicate their ideas on work effectiveness and experience. Fifth Third now has an easily modified kit of parts to support design for agile teams, and it is developing a full kit of parts to create consistency in workplace and retail projects. This effort ergonomically supports all aspects of collaborative and individual work, from everyone-at-one-table work and stand-up meetings to adaptable individual work settings.
Along with bank employees, Garrett gleans expertise from external A/E partners to improve user experience. She leverages an integrated team-based process to quickly and consistently offer new solutions to various offices. Based on urban design principles, she creates spaces that are intuitive to navigate, providing clear paths, nodes, and neighborhoods that bring people together. She is especially proud of the new Cincinnati headquarters, with new projects that will accommodate a commons area where everyone can come together in a centrally located coworking space
for a wide variety of meetings and presentations essential to the bank.
Not content to simply assume that her designs work, Garrett tests them with ethnographic observation studies, leader reports, and key experience surveys that ascertain employee pride and perception of productivity. Her findings tend to support her theories. “As work has changed, so too have our real estate needs,” she says. Garrett sees that, through becoming more tech-enabled and supporting varied work behaviors, companies can often shrink their footprint. This is especially true as spaces become more open and communal, creating connections between employees. While she spends a great deal of time testing with collaborators and reviewing schematics, Garrett’s passion for design finds another outlet as she takes on the task of explaining the science behind the art to employees in the midst of a transition. She strives to demystify what designers do and demonstrates the intersection of sciences and art in great design. Because change is hard and there is power in empathy, Garrett views the communication as part of this artful science. “I love to talk with fellow employees about the purpose
Fifth Third is creating informal spaces to support “meeting-afterthe-meeting” conversations.
Valerie Garrett is proud to include commons areas for employees to gather and connect.
London that are undergoing transition to support the new approach. Critiquing offices that have already opened, Garrett says, “These spaces are finished spaces. The details are considered. When you walk through, you see indicators of who we are. Employees report that they like to be at work; this is high praise for our team.” Through clear principals for workplace design integrated with a new experiential branding, Fifth Third’s new environment is designed to be a place, Garrett says, “that lives and breathes and embodies the essence of who we are and who we aspire to be.”
APG Office Furnishings congratulates Valerie Garrett of Fifth Third Bank for being a champion of innovative workplace settings and design. We are honored to be her partner in creating spaces that propel her team forward. By dreaming big, acting with purpose, and believing in better, APG helps organizations create space for success.
BDG Architects appreciates the opportunity to partner with Valerie Garrett and Fifth Third Bank as they recreate the workplace for their employees to provide an environment that utilizes the latest in technology and promotes collaboration and wellness.
—Philip Kennedy, COO, BDG
Architects
LIVING WALLS
Section 04: Portraits
Sharing stories that detail motivations, ambitions, and missions of executives in the building industry and getting a firsthand look at what they are achieving today
Building a Better Approach to Project Management
Joe Grimaldi is transforming his industry with a leadership style that streamlines the store buildout process for L’Oréal
by Arianna Stern
Joe Grimaldi Director of Store Development & Construction
L’Oréal USA
Courtesy of
Ever since his childhood, Joe Grimaldi wanted to be a force for good in the world and make his family proud.
“I want to be a person who effects change—positively, of course,” he says. Today, as director of development and construction at L’Oréal USA, the beauty and retail giant, he has the opportunity to refine and improve management practices in the construction and store build-out industry. More specifically, he can reverse what he perceives as a destructive trend.
“Despite increasing volume of construction projects, there seems to be less and less focus on project management,” Joe says. In contrast to that trend, he works closely with his vendors at all stages of a project and makes himself approachable. He learned much of what he knows about “discipline, leadership, and camaraderie” from his time in the US Army.
Joe took his first job out of high school in the US Army, where he served as an engineer. He spent eight years in the service—with a tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2010 and with a duty as a reservist based in New York through 2016. To make the transition from military service into civilian life, Joe enrolled in an
apprenticeship program with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners in New York, both because he liked to work with his hands and because the industry was flexible enough to accommodate the schedules of reservists.
After graduation from the apprenticeship program, Joe’s independent and entrepreneurial spirit led to a decision to start his own small business as a general contractor and woodworker. Through that endeavor, he established a fruitful relationship with the owner of On-Site Group, a small construction management firm based in New York. He eventually joined On-Site Group as a project manager, where his work on beauty retail projects ultimately led him to become director of construction for NYX, a brand owned by L’Oréal.
While at NYX, L’Oréal implemented a central retail support team concept, which included centralized construction management and development services. Since January 2018, he’s served as director of store development and construction for L’Oréal USA, providing project management and construction services to L’Oréal’s multi-brand divisions, including Atelier Cologne, Armani, Lancôme, SkinCeuticals, NYX, and Maison Margiela, among many others.
Atelier Cologne’s Madison Avenue flagship features a map that showcases the global locations where the brand sources its ingredients.
The Madison Avenue shop is the company’s 20th location since the brand’s launch ten years ago.
Courtesy of L’Oreal
The Maison Margiela pop-up shop in LA was intended to create a unique experience for customers that couldn’t be replicated in nearby department stores.
As part of the chief retail officer and centralized support team, Joe can positively influence more people than ever before—which poses a challenge at times. One of the biggest challenges, he says, is gaining the trust of all the different people and brands’ executive teams within his purview. Still, Joe is undaunted in the face of his increasing visibility in the company and many important responsibilities. Knowing that people will rely on his contribution empowers him and enables him to win that trust.
“Working with Joe is always a great experience,” attests Rachel Brisco, director of business development for the construction management firm, VCMG. “His hands-on leadership, project management background, and aptitude for finding cost-saving solutions never fail to turn a challenge into an opportunity.”
Joe owes much of his success to his leadership style. His colleagues and vendors know they can approach him with a problem and that he’ll help them with it, rather than shrugging it off.
“One of the biggest things in this industry is helping to solve problems, and not saying, ‘There is a problem, figure it out and come back to me,’” he says.
He also emphasizes the importance of trusting his convictions and notes that he is thankful for the opportunity to work under L’Oréal USA’s chief retail officer, Marc-Alexandre Risch. This proximity grants him better visibility to what the other brands are doing and allows him to do his due diligence.
Jeff Pinette
“I put a lot of emphasis on positive reinforcement with my GCs and my vendors—I make sure they know their efforts and expertise are valuable to our mutual success.”
Organizing Through Obstacles
In 2018, Joe had the opportunity to showcase his leadership skills on both coasts by spearheading high-profile projects on each one.
Atelier Cologne: Joe led the build of the flagship store on Manhattan’s Madison Avenue, which was complicated by a short timeline (about two months), a brandnew concept design, and plenty of restrictions. Aside from being limited to a building schedule that could only occur during business hours, they were also faced with international delays. “We had custom-cut mosaic tile that we had to have imported from France. It got stuck in customs,” Joe recalls. In spite of these occurrences, he and his team pulled off the build on time and within budget.
Maison Margiela: This pop-up shop in Los Angeles proved another challenge, as it not only called for another quick turnaround, but it was also the first brick and mortar FSS presentation for this hugely trending influential brand. While they were given a month to build, he and his team only had a mere five days for installation. Joe managed the entire project. “It’s a large, organized team effort,” he says. “It was a lot of firsts, but everyone came out happy and that’s what was most fulfilling for me.”
As a leader, Joe challenges his contractors and partners to do their best work and also ensures their efforts are rewarded and celebrated. He continually finds ways for contractors to simplify their work when they may have complicated plans unnecessarily—for example, by trying to follow a mock-up too carefully. At the same time, he takes pains to make sure his contractors get paid on time, and that they take part in the celebration of their finished projects.
“I put a lot of emphasis on positive reinforcement with my GCs and my vendors,” Joe says. “I make sure they’re noticed, and that they know their efforts and expertise are valuable to our mutual success.”
While motivation and empowerment are both drivers of Joe’s leadership style, he also underscores the community aspect that is crucial in pulling off the types of projects his team is responsible for. After the completion of the Atelier Cologne flagship store on Manhattan’s Madison Avenue, Joe proudly shared photos of the final product on LinkedIn. “It’s build-outs like these that create families,” he said in his post. “From the design team in Paris, to our vendors, to my contractors, and their subcontractors. We all put our blood, sweat, and tears into this one, not to mention yelling and begging, but most importantly we got it open on time and under budget.”
US Construction Group is a general contracting firm specializing in retail, commercial, and CM projects nationwide with 22+ years of experience. We want to congratulate Joe Grimaldi on his achievements at L’Oréal. We appreciate L’Oréal’s partnership with us and look forward to completing future projects with them.
VCMG always goes the extra mile, consistently willing to do what it takes to get the job done, without exception.
Joe Reeves - Director of Construction, Teavana
From large, high profile stores to minor retrofits, VCMG never fails to deliver competitive pricing and quality work, as well as outstanding communication and customer service.
Lisa Kerns - Director of Store Development, Starbucks
We have been extremely impressed with VCMG’s professionalism and quality of work over the years. The team is thorough, responsive, proactive with possible field concerns, and willing to provide cost saving ideas/ solutions.
Jennifer Miranda - Senior Project Manager, ArcVision
VCMG has a proven track record for delivering projects on time and under budget, and is a company of very high integrity.
Christopher Geraci - Senior Project Manager, Party City
Working with VCMG for approximately 10 years, they’ve consistently demonstrated integrity, versatility, and commitment.
Joe Aulenta - Director of Store Planning, The Walking Company
Consistently delivering high quality work and often exceeding expectations, VCMG builds confidence and long term relationships.
David I. Balzer, AIA - DIrector of Retail Design, Larson Design Group
Partners to Prosper
AlfaTech Founder and CEO Jeff Fini is growing his company globally through strong relationships with his customers, team, and a new affiliation with German-based RSBG
by Tricia Despres
Eric Laignel
AlfaTech provided mechanical, engineering, and plumbing engineering services for LinkedIn’s 26-story San Francisco location.
Jeff Fini, AlfaTech’s founder and CEO, long dreamt of the day in which his engineering design and energy solutions company would join another like-minded business to grow together in a shared success story.
AlfaTech, which works with companies such as Uber, LinkedIn, and Adobe, is powered by the uniquely dynamic relationships it fosters with its clients. “By ‘relationships,’” Fini explains, “we mean the connections we’ve founded and fostered with the real people behind the brands.”
This mind-set is something that Fini and his company sought in a potential union, which is when German-based RAG-Stiftung Beteiligungsgesellschaft (RSBG) came into the picture. While the parent company is in a different industry than AlfaTech, the culture of the firms aligned.
Over the past decade, AlfaTech has long been looking for ways to fortify its business by adding additional services and talent to meet its clients’ constantly evolving needs. Though it was not known how a relationship with RSBG would play out, Fini notes that his mentality for expansion had always been global. “We didn’t know if it was possible,” he continues. “Still, we decided to just have a chat with RSBG, to see if our firms could come together.”
That casual chat turned out to be much more impactful than Fini first assumed, once he traveled overseas and found the company cultures and personalities were a perfect fit. “RSBG was not looking to change our name or make major changes,” he recalls. “They simply wanted to expand, and that gave me the assurance that this would not become the typical buyout situation. Instead, this partnership was going to give us the financial foundation we both have been looking for.”
RSBG is Germany’s largest foundation, and across all its companies has more than 3,600 employees, providing a wide range of consulting engineering services across numerous offices in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Now that it’s partnering with
Jeff Fini Founder & CEO AlfaTech
AlfaTech, both companies will be able to increase their global presence, as well as better their current services and support.
“We specialize in innovative engineering design and project delivery that is environmentally conscious and sustainable,” said Fini in a press release. “Cultivating best practices, building on our core competencies, and enhancing our services to best serve our clients in any location is integral to our DNA.”
Going forward, AlfaTech will now have access to additional talent and expertise via its new expansive sister companies, and this collaboration will give its clients such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Uber a larger array of specialized services through more than 100 locations around the world. “We are as attentive to the needs of our clients and partners as we are to our own ideas and solutions, which we feel truly makes us team players,” Fini says, excited to deliver more through this global expansion. “Careful listening is our first priority. Without it, we could not offer the most innovative and appropriate solutions.”
“It really has been a very easy transition,” Fini says. “I have been so impressed at how this whole deal was conducted. There is nothing like being connected to so many different companies.” Fini, who has more than 30 years of experience in the engineering design, devel-
AlfaTech’s project for Uber featured design solutions from conferencing space to childcare facilities.
opment, and execution of projects totaling more than $13 billion worldwide, is no stranger to that feeling.
With any major change in a business setting, there is the inevitable unease experienced by the employees who wonder about the future of not only their own roles but also the company culture itself. “There were those normal questions asking if I was planning to retire or if the company was being sold or if there was going to be new management,” Fini says. “But they soon realized that this was just about going global. There has been no change in payroll. There has been no change in benefits. Their everyday lives in reality haven’t changed.”
In addition, Fini says he has no intention of changing the philosophy that they have always based their business on, and that is by focusing on the relationships they have built throughout the years. He even met with his clients’ CEOs soon after to share the news of the partnership that was announced.
The merger has essentially reenergized the company as it enters 2019. But despite these changes, Fini is sure to maintain a certain consistency in his company that was formed more than 31 years ago. “This was a great opportunity for all of the companies in terms of expansion, and it’s definitely a ‘pinch yourself’ kind of moment,” he explains. “But AlfaTech will always have my full attention.”
Room for Growth
Kellie Soto leverages her people and design skills to make AKQA’s New York studio shine
by Kelli Lawrence
Who knew that the question, “What do you think of this space?” could lead to a career full of creative impact?
Kellie Soto certainly didn’t know. When she earned a BS in mass communications and broadcast journalism, then accepted an executive assistant/office manager role at a nonprofit foreign policy institute, she was simply excited for the opportunities that her first job out of college afforded. “I loved that I got to touch so many different things in such a high-pressure zone,” she recalls. “There wasn’t a lot of room for mistakes.”
But as Soto evolved within her work environment, she found the “office manager” part of her job evolving too. “While I was there I started doing little things to make the
space look better, and function better,” she says. “It’s something I took on naturally.”
By the time she was working at the digital marketing agency SocialCode—again, initially, as an executive assistant/office manager—her knack for knowing what works and what doesn’t in an office layout had become more evident and respected in kind. When she was asked the, “What do you think of this space?” question, and many of her thoughts were in fact implemented at SocialCode’s Washington, DC, office, she knew her ability to connect and build great rapport with people was creating unexpected opportunity. Within six months she was making recommendations to the company’s Chicago office; 18
John Stallings
Kellie Soto
Associate Director of Workplace Operations and Design
AKQA
months after that, she had relocated to the New York City office as SocialCode’s new head of office operations and workplace design. Soon after she completed the refurbishment of its NYC office and the build-out of the LA office.
Soto was about four years into her job at SocialCode when she started thinking about the next step, careerwise. But she hadn’t gotten very far into that thought process when she received a LinkedIn query from AKQA, a digital agency with over 20 offices worldwide (including New York). While Soto wasn’t familiar with AKQA, she checked out the company website and was instantly intrigued. “Immediately when you look at the site and see how cool and clean it is,” she says, “it was an aesthetic that I knew could lend itself to awesome workplace design.”
The organization was initially looking to hire Soto as an office manager, but after a few conversations AKQA was tipped off to her goals with design. An in-person interview with the international managing director —a lover of design and architecture who encouraged Soto’s ability to give AKQA organizational direction—
ultimately led to Soto’s hiring as associate director of workplace operations and design in late 2017.
Her first year on the job came with a clear-cut goal: the development of a “tech lab” that would be housed in AKQA’s Fifth Avenue studio. Described by Soto as “an empty space filled with fluorescent lighting and a ping-pong table” initially, she and her team reviewed their ideas, along with those of other creative minds at the agency and weighed them against time and budget constraints before proceeding to the design phase with M. Moser Associates (architecture) and Reidy Construction Group (general contractor). Having previously overseen the office’s 2014 buildout, M. Moser’s involvement assured Soto that the bones of the tech lab were in good hands—which was crucial, given the number of details to which she soon found herself tending. “While there was some pressure for us to get it done,” she says, “There was also the leniency to make sure that we took our time to get it exactly right. That was really cool.”
The project, with planned completion in early 2019, will benefit greatly from local partnerships. One made
A new tech lab project is currently in development for AKQA.
Courtesy of M Moser
“Immediately when I looked at AKQA’s site, I knew it was an aesthetic that could lend itself to awesome workplace design.”
with Greenery NYC, a botanic design company based out of Brooklyn, for example, selects and maintains living plants customized to the needs of different AKQA workspaces. “They do the work for you while allowing you to be a part of the design process if you wish, making it very easy to incorporate plant life in your space and take care of them,” Soto says, which, in turn, leaves her the time to focus on her work. A similar partnership with Naava, a company specializing in “smart, movable green walls,” gives the AKQA studio additional flexibility with the plants it uses and the space in which it uses them.
The companies that Soto has collaborated with feel these partnerships are equally advantageous to them, as well. “Kellie is at the forefront of workplace experience, perfectly marrying technology and design,” Envoy’s CEO and founder, Larry Gadea, says of his experience with Soto’s work. “We're privileged to support her vision in creating a thoughtful, secure, and streamlined visitor experience for AKQA.”
Soto’s goals in caring for AKQA’s space always include maintaining a certain standard that is reflected in every client relationship, and the experiences they have while at the studio. She has been very careful to assemble the ideal team to bring their studio projects and initiatives to completion.
“They’re empowered by the autonomy they’re getting—it all sets up new ground rules for them, but also lets them put their own stamp on what they’re doing,” Soto says of her team. “That’s what makes it feel genuine, and that’s what brings the humanity back into the space.”
AKQA seeks to develop partnerships with a purpose
Lights Out
AKQA has developed a plan with Wavelength Lighting to reduce 60 percent of lighting-related energy consumption and one ton of landfill waste over a fiveyear period.
For the Love of Leftovers
With the help of Rescuing Leftover Cuisine (RLC), AKQA donates the unused food from events it hosts, which are then distributed to underserved communities of hungry families in New York City.
Gallery of Diversity
Through a joint effort with Artlifting, which connects businesses with paintings by homeless and/or disabled artists, AKQA now has six of these new works of art featured in its Fifth Avenue Studio—and counting! The paintings are swapped out every six months to add a new spice to the atmosphere and feature an array of talent. Soto’s strategic placement of the art allows staff to view it both when they arrive and head out—as a way to help keep everyone grounded.
Home Is Where Your Desk Is
Allison Olsen’s dynamic management of CorVel’s space is rooted in being intentional and strategic when creating an environment that accommodates its associates first
By Russ Klettke
Alayna MacPherson Photography
Allison Olsen notes that an “employees first” focus played into the company’s Fort Worth, TX, office.
CorVel Corporation is a national provider of risk management solutions in workers’ compensation, auto, health, and disability claims management. These are essential services that the Irvine, California-based publicly-traded company delivers to help client companies save money while providing protections for employees.
But Allison Olsen, the company’s director of corporate real estate, uses pragmatic language to describe the day-to-day operations where the company’s nearly 4,000 employees work. “It’s all about the people,” she says. Though the industry is not exactly glamorous, the company occupies Class A or B space to serve clients’ needs, and to meet the needs its own employees by providing a thoughtfully-designed and high-quality workplace.
CorVel’s operations are sprawling. It has 86 leased locations in 43 states, with about 650,000 square feet of office space in total, situated as close as possible to clients. The company is growing, and Olsen was the first person dedicated to its real estate management responsibilities when she took the position in 2013.
She has a lot of leases to manage, but her job entails much more than legal documents. Olsen’s marching orders from Chairman of the Board Gordon Clemons are to create memorable workplaces that enable recruitment and retention of high quality productive employees. Sometimes those employee ranks can even increase by double digits within 30 days at a single location due to business growth. Although she has to scramble to find temporary solutions for sudden expansion, she approaches all real estate decisions with prudence.
It’s largely driven when the company is onboarding new client assignments, a critical moment for any company in a business-to-business service environment. “It’s really a kind of a dance,” says Olsen. “But it’s a good problem to have.” For companies such as CorVel, commercial real estate is an essential component of service delivery. “Our goal with real estate is to be close to our customers. We pride ourselves on being the local solution for risk management services.”
Part of the dance Olsen cites also includes allowing some autonomy and engagement in space planning decisions at the local office level. For example, CorVel is migrating toward open-office configurations, as do many companies for a variety of reasons, but rather than presenting it as an edict from the corporate office, Olsen encourages local office managers to take ownership of changes that have a direct effect on employees.
Allison Olsen made sure to incorporate a “Texas flair” into the Fort Worth, TX, office.
Alayna MacPherson Photography
“When you can take pride in the environment in which you work, you can’t help but take more pride in your work as well.”
Allison Olsen works to create a space that will feel like employees’ “home away from home.”
WORKSPACE Interiors
The chairman has instilled in the company’s management tier an ethos of putting people first when it comes to office space. Olsen adds that his vision is to have spaces where employees are proud to work. “We care about associates’ happiness,” she says. “We try to be deliberate about building for them, and to give them a space they are proud to return to every day. That pride has a way of affecting the business: when you can take pride in the environment in which you work, you can’t help but take more pride in your work as well.”
She cites an example of how that “employees first” focus played into the company’s Fort Worth, Texas, office. The office in that city was occupying a second generation space, taken as-is from the previous tenant. Very little thought was directed toward customer or employee experience. When it was time to design the new space in a new part of town, Olsen made the people her first priority, and the result proved to be a major success.
The employees are now in a space that is open, refined, and professional, yet still maintains a laidback quality with some Texas flare. During a visit, one of the customers was so pleased with the office, they asked for design references so they could implement the same look and feel in their new office. “I worked hard to make design decisions that are still in line with the corporate standard,” she says, “but I wanted to make sure their space felt personal to the associates: their home away from home.”
Alayna MacPherson Photography
A visiting customer was so taken with the Fort Worth space that they asked for design references to recreate the look for themselves.
As a technology-focused risk management company, Olsen explains that she and her team want their offices to feel on-trend, similar to the layout of many tech startups even though they are well-established. One of the changes affecting the CorVel spaces going forward is the increasing digitization of records and how those records are handled. This change is allowing the company to transform square footage previously dedicated for scanning operations and paper storage to common areas. Large lounge spaces serve as a gathering or work space for out-of-town visitors, with a coffee shop vibe. “We have to be thoughtful in our space planning to accommodate changing technologies,” she says, “and we are always tweaking the standard to pick up what we’ve learned along the way.”
Commercial real estate remains a world of moving parts. Not only does office automation change the game, so too do the lifestyle patterns of younger workers. In many markets the trend is to move downtown while CorVel has remained in the backyard of their customers. This has allowed the company to service customer needs personally and create longstanding relationships that become familial.
To the matter of budgets, Olsen follows a smart strategy of being a “second generation” tenant. By that they most often move into previously occupied space where costly elements such as plumbing and electrical from the preceding client are repurposed for CorVel’s needs. This drastically reduces costs in the build-out. And while the company makes no major green claims, the reduction in material waste quite likely reduces its carbon footprint as well.
“We want our space use to be as efficient as possible,” says Olsen. “As a publicly traded company, we want to be good stewards of our finances. We strive to spend as little on overhead as possible, so our customers reap the benefit of our lowest pricing.” In early 2018, Olsen established a schedule of real estate financial projections to anticipate rising costs associated with the coming year. It’s about being intentional and strategic, she says—two factors that keep the workplaces as elegant as the company’s share price.
Special thanks to our valued partner, Allison Olsen and her project management team.
Savills is proud to continue to support Corvel Corporation’s national real estate needs.
womblebonddickinson.com
Human
Impact
As insulation giant TopBuild continues to thrive, CHRO David Whan unifies and engages all 290 branches through humanitarian strategies
by Joan Livingston
Consider the challenges David Whan faces as TopBuild Corporation’s chief human resources officer given the nation’s largest installer and distributor of insulation has 10,600 employees working in 290 branches.
But the experienced Whan is up to the task via close communication with a team that includes direct reports and regional HR managers who in turn support branch managers.
Based at the Branch Support Center in Daytona Beach, Florida, Whan maintains contact by utilizing all the tech tools available to keep branches unified and engaged. “We’re distributed across the country so it’s early mornings and sometimes late evenings we’re connecting,” he says, “but it’s not intrusive.”
Having a reliable pipeline of branch managers is key. Besides handling financials, these managers must know the insulation business and how to engage their employees by listening, understanding, and offering support.
“Day in and day out, how do [regional HR managers] keep those people motivated, enthused, excited, and—most importantly— safe,” he says, “so they’ll be here tomorrow morning and be able to go out to a couple of different job sites to do what they need to do to support our clients.”
During a recent meeting in Orlando of branch managers and leadership from the Branch Support Center, there was great focus on a plan of action to attract talent for the company’s installers through a community-based network. That means making connections with church and civic groups, workforce development boards, even high schools and colleges.
About 44 percent of hires, notably the installers and warehouse workers, also come from referrals. “It’s not uncommon in a branch to find cousins and brothers and fathers and sons and daughters who are working at these locations because they find out this is a good place to work,” he notes, adding that he’s very familiar with the scenario, as he worked in his family’s businesses at a young age while growing up in the Midwest.
Whan has been with TopBuild for 18 months. Previously, he worked 20 years at John Deere, where he held several HR-related jobs, an admittedly rewarding experience. Still he says, “Ultimately from a career aspiration standpoint I had the desire to move into the head of HR, to lead an entire function.”
A number of factors made TopBuild the right choice, one being that the company had just spun off from Masco Corporation and in that short period, its stock price had doubled.
During his first conversation with its head officers, he also found the leadership team to be transparent, lean, and approachable—a definite plus. “I wanted to be involved in an organization that could quickly and dynamically make decisions that could impact the entire [company],” he says.
Initially, Whan’s interest career-wise was in the public sector. His degrees, which include a BA in international management from Augustana College and an MPA in public administration from University of Kansas, reflect that. (He later earned an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.)
His shift to the private sector came when he and his wife, Mary, began their family. It was an opportunity to step away from governmental bureaucracy and be directly involved in an organization’s culture, which he found at John Deere and now TopBuild.
At TopBuild, Whan oversees the full package of human capital processes. He explains that HR is not just an enabling function but an active part of the business that includes setting strategy. “We don’t simply wait for the handoff,” he says. “I’m involved on a regular basis with the C-suite folks here in setting that strategy, regularly getting updates. And then in turn, I work with my team to make sure that our processes are aligned to enable the strategy.”
Whan has a handful of projects on his radar for 2019, which include developing a multiyear strategy for benefits, and integrating newly acquired companies in an efficient manner. An initiative he’s especially excited about is the implementation of Workday, a leading platform for HR systems that will offer a full spectrum of online services to managers and employees. For example, installers who are paid by a piece rate will have a mobile device showing them what they could make potentially that day and at the end, how well they did.
“It saves us on efficiency to enable managers more time to do what they need to do, that is, sell the services that we have and make sure their teams are aligned with what they need to achieve and to make sure everybody is safe,” he says.
“I wanted to be involved in an organization that could quickly and dynamically make decisions that could impact the entire company.”
Whan takes his mission to ensure the well-being of people beyond just human resources for his company. TopBuild is also actively involved in philanthropy, which was triggered by cementing its top industry position after acquiring United Subcontractors Inc. in 2018. This success allowed the company to share the wealth by having employees choose a charity to support. Last year, the selected organization was Habitat for Humanity, for which TopBuild donated $50,000.
As CHRO, Whan has the overall responsibility for charitable giving, but one can also find him running in a 5K event or flipping burgers at a cookout. “It’s one thing to talk about employee engagement,” he explains, “but another to act on it by supporting causes important to them.”
“As an innovative employee benefits leader, AssuredPartners congratulates David Whan and TopBuild on the well-deserved recognition. Sharing in a vision to provide valuable personal and professional enhancements to promote the recruitment and retention of top talent, we are proud to work with TopBuild on the design and management of modern employee benefit programs.”
—Billy Grossmiller, VP, AP Benefit Advisors
points of interest
Some of the quirkier takeaways from this issue
App-reciation
There’s a popular misconception that Apple invented the “App Store,” but the term was actually coined by Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff, three years before the little blue icon showed up on iPhones. Benioff gifted the trademark to Steve Jobs as a thank-you for the insight and support that Jobs had given him years earlier. (P. 76)
Frozen But Not Forgotten
Known for all 10,000 of its lakes, Minnesota is proud of every last drop, which is why they borrow their lake water to create the ice in the Xcel Energy Center. (P. 86)
Cover Reflections
The refractive sculpture pictured behind John Parsons on our cover was produced by legendary artist, Anish Kapoor, with whose work you might already be familiar. Kapoor also designed the renowned “Cloud Gate” (commonly referred to as “The Bean”) in Chicago’s Millennium Park, as well as the “Sky Mirror” in Nottingham, England. (P. 10)
Dressed to Impress
After Bing Crosby was nearly denied entry into a high-class hotel in 1951 for wearing jeans, Levi’s crafted Crosby his very own custom tuxedo made entirely of their trademark 501 denim. It even included a permissionslip patch sewn on to prevent any future misconceptions about just how debonair a denim suit can be. (P. 90)
Going Green on the Deep Blue
With a commitment to sustainability “from ship to shore”, Carnival Cruise Line pioneered the use of liquefied natural gas (LNG), the world’s cleanest fossil fuel, and has plans to develop a new generation of ships that will be entirely LNG-powered. (P. 62)
Matt Harris, head of workplace technology at Envoy, was happy to show photographer Cass Davis around the San Francisco office for a glimpse of the employee culture. Harris is pictured here with George, who holds the title of “chief pupper.”
Cass Davis
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