we can do that.” Instead of, “You need to be prepared for more money than that, or you have to reduce the scale of the project.” Some architects were willing to just simply say, “Yes, we can do that,” and then apologize later. It happened time and time again. The second issue is agreeing to a fee that you know won’t work for your firm, so then you start going about a change order process. That was something we were unwilling to do. If we negotiated a fee, it was the fee unless the owner added considerable scope, which rarely happens. What changed in the architectural industry during the period you practiced? The changes were unbelievable. I started drafting with pens on Mylar: hand drafting and working tediously over details, learning how to letter and taking pride in the way that you could letter. Then the Wang came out. We went to a seminar Niels Valentiner did where we looked at the Wang and thought, “Wow, that is interesting, but we just can’t see it applying right now to what we’re doing.” Probably a year later, IBM came out with their first PC AT, and we purchased a computer and a plotter we affectionately called the boat anchor. The plotter was a four-pin plotter you needed to watch and you needed to fill. We’d draft all day, and then someone would have to stay all night and watch this plotter work because if the pen ran out of ink in the middle of a plot, it was garbage. You could never recalibrate to the exact point that the pen ran out of ink. We migrated through several iterations and finally arrived at AutoCAD. From then on, we always had AutoCAD in the office, and a little bit at a time, we moved people from hand drafting to computer drafting. It was a very difficult learning curve for those of us that had learned hand drafting and some people just simply didn’t take easily to the computer. Looking back on that, it may have been better to have accepted that technology earlier, and there were a lot of pains in accepting it when we did. I think some did a better job than we did jumping into that technology. But once you evolve into Revit, where you can model buildings in three dimensions and you can look at conflicts in structural, mechanical and electrical systems, and there are no dimensional errors, the advantages are enormous. The disadvantages are cost and the continual upgrade. The longest we could ever make it with a computer was two and a half to three years. I think the longest we ever made it with a plotter was about two years because they would be continually advancing, and then there is our computer network, our backup capabilities and some of the systems that we had to use. It became a major cost center for us. But we also found that we drafted more efficiently. We produced documents more efficiently. We did better work: we could visualize it better, and we could show clients much better. Do you have advice for young architects starting in this field? I would tell them that you’re headed into a difficult process. You have to be convinced that this is the direction you want to go because the most discouraging thing would be for you to get partway through the process and decide you don’t want to do it. There are many that do that. And, if you’re married, you’d better make sure that your companion is fully committed to this process as well because they’re going to sacrifice a great deal. You’re not going to have a lot of time when you start into graduate school. Are there any things you would have done differently? I don’t think so. I was blessed with wonderful people — very talented, dedicated, hardworking people. I am probably most proud of the people that we were able to employ, work with, and get to know during the years that I practiced. I wouldn’t change any of that. I would certainly change how we educate architects. I think our educational process focuses exclusively on design and does not appropriately prepare architects for the rigors of practice. There are many wonderful designers who cannot succeed at architecture because they have no business acumen. They don’t understand the nuances of running a business because we simply don’t focus on that. I learned fairly early that my talent was not necessarily in design. I soon migrated into the role of the primary marketer, and the one who was managing the business. I started to learn how to run a business by doing the books in my father’s service station at about 12 years old. I understood that if the business doesn’t succeed, then there is no business. I would commonly tell some of our talented designers, “You can’t spend indefinite time designing. You have to recognize that this is a business.” That’s difficult for some to understand. They’re prepared to design, and that’s all they want to do. I also would focus on changing architectural licensing laws. During my time on the NCARB Board, we fought very hard to try to make the process more acceptable, more meaningful, and not necessarily easier, but less timeconsuming to achieve. At NCARB, I developed a strong friendship with Andy Prescott of Einhorn, Jaffe and Prescott — one of the best mentors I’ve ever had. We fought hard to allow examinations while in school. My last thought is that it is a great, great way to spend your life. I would never have done it any other way. It is exactly what I think I was meant to do, and I wouldn’t change any of it. 16 REFLEXION
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