Ryan OnDesign - Year in Review (2021)

On Design

Reflecting on a record-breaking year for both Ryan Companies and Ryan A+E, we celebrate that our A+E team has embraced, elevated and enhanced the way we deliver projects even though faced with a year of challenges. Thanks to our stable workload, our team defied the A+E industry, adding over 30 new team members throughout the year. We celebrated our expansion into the South Central Region with the hiring of Tabitha Evans as Director of Architecture; doubled the size of our team in the Great Lakes, West and Northwest regions; and celebrated the promotion of Linaea Floden to Director of Architecture - Southeast. As we reflect on the past year, we are thankful for our diverse mix of sectors, services, regions, customers and talent.

All the Best, Mike Rodriguez (MRod)

MIKE RODRIGUEZ President, Ryan A+E MIKE.RODRIGUEZ@RYANCOMPANIES.COM

Higher Hit Rates with A+E Pursuit Support

Whether the integrated team is simply trying to show a land owner the highest and best use of their land as a first point of contact, or we have a tightly defined site and program and we need to figure out how to fit on a site, Ryan A+E is able to jump into a pursuing projects at any point of a deal and contribute to initiating a project with development, construction, or third-party clients in a variety of ways. Many of these workflows have been utilized for a number of years, but in 2020 we focused on creating consistent deliverables for these that work across all of our sectors in appropriate ways.

We had a phenomenal experience working with Ryan A+E on our ongoing build-to-suit pursuit for Wells Fargo. Ryan A+E communicated with our preconstruction and development teams, drew on previous customer knowledge and internal experience, and in less than two weeks provided a well-thought out, crisp, and beautiful campus design that could be effectively priced and proudly presented in our RFP response presentation to the client.”

SITE PLAN & CONSTRAINT ANALYSIS

• Quick site analysis helps determine risk factors and high-cost issues to help minimize pursuit costs and decrease money wasted on bad sites.

• Zoning due diligence reviews help identify and alert the team to any issues that could result in delayed start or approval times.

SITE MASSING & STACKING MODELSSITE ANALYSIS & DIAGRAMMING

• Site analysis and diagramming can help the team and customer understand the site context, relevant local and regional aesthetic, and other site forces that could impact the design potential.

• Massing studies and stacking iterations help identity best fit options for an identified site. Our team uses these studies to compare the proforma metrics with the identified site and evaluate possible combinations. Additionally, these studies can help establish the preliminary massing and character of the building.

• Massing/stacking studies can be completed with any amount of known information and can be fine-tuned and adjusted as additional information is available.

ASPIRATIONAL THOUGHT STARTER

• Design and facade studies are helpful for starting conversations and demonstrating site potential for a land owner.

• These studies can be completed very quickly with limited information, but assumptions must be validated regarding program and cost once interested landowner is found.

-- Paul Rowsey, VP of Real Estate Development

Value of a Diverse Perspective

Diversity in the workplace is imperative to the success of a business.

The more diverse a company can be through skills, business units, sectors, regions and team members, the more creative and economically stable the business can be. With a record-breaking year financially, 2020 was the year where diversity proved to be of the utmost value for Ryan A+E.

Our A+E team makes a conscious effort to stay diverse in all aspects listed above, and in 2020 our team focused on the importance of increasing the diversity of our talent. Diverse workplaces employ people of different genders, ages, races, cultural backgrounds, languages and national origins and offers the following advantages:

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creativity and problem-solving

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decision-making

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profitability and productivity

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employee recruitment, engagement and retention

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company reputation

With a five-year goal to bring our team to a minimum of 50% women with 50% BIPOC representation, 2020 helped us move closer to that goal with 38% of women and 18% BIPOC representation, as well as more equity in representation across all leadership levels.

A+E'S ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

Increased Focus on Customer Centricity

In 2020, A+E adapted to the need for added customer centricity by adding a new layer of business development management with the hiring and promotions of individuals dedicated to customer management. These key individuals will work with our dedicated construction customer managers to have seamless representation on our projects.

Elevating Unique Skills & Perspectives

Our team values the fact that the more diverse a team is, the more diverse the ideas and thoughts, resulting in better projects and keeps us pushing for better results. We have made a conscious effort to track the diversity of our leadership, managers and all areas of A+E to make sure we have equity in representation. Our percentage of women and BIPOC each have grown over six percent this past year, and ten percent of our team was born outside the US.

Regional Expansion and Growth

As our team grows, we have been strategically hiring to build a more national practice. In the past year, we have formed a team in the South Central Region with the hire of Tabitha Evans as the Director of Architecture - South Central located in Austin, who will be joined by our new Associate Director of Senior Living, Michael Reed located in Dallas. Additionally, teams in the Great Lakes, West and Northwest regions have doubled in size this past year.

Raising the Bar on Design

Transitioning to an almost fully virtual design practice in 2020, our design team has adapted and modified our approach to help strengthen cross-region collaboration, increase customer satisfaction and enhance our design product. As we reflect on the past year, we are thankful for our team's creativity, perseverance and desire to improve the quality of our product, even during a time of many challenges. Below highlights a few tools and exercises that have helped our team navigate our new normal and elevate the way we deliver projects.

COLLABORATION

Value of multiple perspectives.

Design charrettes are a core part of our design process and for this mixed use multifamily project in the Fulton Market neighborhood of Chicago, we invited our core project team and some new voices (to offer a fresh perspective) to help us explore options for a two tower scheme. Charrettes are a great exploration for identifying design direction and aesthetic. For this project, the charrette helped us both explore massing and understand how to relate the building to the context of its historic neighborhood that had been seeing a lot of new developments.

ENGAGEMENT TOOLS - ENSCAPE CREATIVE PARTNERSHIPS

Increased customer engagement. Customers historically experience schematic design in a t wo-dimensional lens, through floor plans, sketches and spreadsheets. While these tools are critical, it is often not easy to visualize the impacts of decisions. To overcome this, our team has started using Enscape to allow customers to explore the schematic interior environment with a 3D walkthrough, viewing first impressions, design features and nods to materials and stylistic application. Ultimately, tools like Enscape allow our customers to make more informed decisions about the interior environment earlier in the design process. As design progresses, the team can continue layering additional design information, product specifications and continue to coordinate with other disciplines.

Partnering for innovation & experimentation. A+E partnered with the computational design (CD) department on a recent pursuit. The team focused on the concept of scent mapping, a nod to the confidential fragrance company’s offerings, and collaborated on ways to conceptualize this theme onto the building’s skin. By using scripts and workflows developed specifically for this project, the CD team performed a solar analysis on the envelope to create a custom screening pattern, analyzed the structural system’s intersections to anchor the pattern to the building, and performed the mathematically complex calculations with relative ease. With A+E's design guidance and CD's technical capabilities, the teams were able to produce an architectural statement of high design fit for this innovative client.

KNOWLEDGE SHARING

Elevating design culture.

Sharing knowledge, ideas and processes is critical for building and maintaining a strong design culture. The A+E team started hosting monthly Raise the Bar meetings to address a variety of design topics including design processes, charrettes, tools, emerging technologies and research topics. These meetings provide a monthly forum that encourages cross-regional and cross-sector collaboration. Topics presented in 2020 included benefits of building with mass timber, impacts of COVID-19 on senior living facilities, Computational Design, 3D printing, design software best practices and presentation techniques.

AIA Minneapolis Merit Award Millwright Building at Downtown East

NAIOP MN Award of Excellence Wells Fargo - Rochester

NAIOP MN Award of Excellence Talamore Senior Living, St. Cloud