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From Blueprint to Breakdown: 5 Signs Your Architecture Firm’s Resource Management is Off the Rails

2023-07-13T09:00:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by Birdview PSA

In the world of architecture, where every project is a confluence of art, science, and logistics, resource management practices and discipline stand as the pillars holding the structure together. Without solid resource management practices, even the most visionary architectural project risks collapsing like a house of cards. On the flip side, architecture firms with mature resource management practices not only avoid this pitfall but actually thrive, growing faster and enjoying higher profit margins.

In this article, we explore some of the signs that your resource management might be in need of fortification and how embracing a strategic approach can be the bedrock of your firm's growth and profitability.

Sign #1: Your Billable Utilization Is Low

Resource utilization report. Image courtesy of Birdview PSA.

In architecture firms, billable utilization is a critical metric. When it’s low, it means that employees are spending a significant amou...

Our dependence on concrete is exhausting global sand supplies

2019-08-26T14:00:00-04:00

China may be the biggest consumer of sand right now, but the issue is a global one. A UN report published earlier this year showed that sand extraction is far outstripping the rates at which it is replenished. According to a team of scientists who recently wrote about the topic in Science Magazine ($) and The Conversation, “Sand and gravel are now the most-extracted materials in the world”–measured by weight, they surpass fossil fuels and biomass.

Writing in Forbes, Laurie Winkless probes the far-reaching and destructive impacts of skyrocketing global sand consumption as the world's urbanizing cities demand more and more of the substance to fuel new construction.

The Rainforest Solutions Project wins the 2016 Fuller Challenge Award

2016-10-06T20:11:00-04:00

Greenpeace, Sierra Club BC, and Stand.earth formed the Rainforest Solutions Project as part of the Tides Canada Initiative. The coalition has spent nearly two decades developing a sophisticated legal and policy framework called Ecosystem-Based Management to tackle the persisting struggle over Canada's treasured Great Bear Rainforest, while also negotiating the conflicting interests of multiple groups.

Winning over six equally worthy finalist teams, the Rainforest Solutions Project addresses both natural and cultural preservation, and it enforces stronger ecological responsibility in industrial economic pursuits. The Project resulted in a landmark 250-year agreement between all stakeholders — government, First Nations, environmentalists, and logging companies — to conserve and sustainably manage the 15 million-acre Great Bear Rainforest.

“Selecting the Rainforest Solutions Project...comes at a critical point in the evolution of the Challenge itself, as design is being recognized as an integral part of business and society,” the Fuller Challenge Review Committee wrote in a statement.

Learn more about it on Bustler.

Previously:

2016 Fuller Challenge finalists announced

2016 Fuller Challenge announces 19 semi-finalist initiatives

GreenWave's 3D ocean farm initiative wins the 2015 Buckminster Fuller Challenge

America has an infrastructure problem – and it's getting critical

2016-02-10T19:54:00-05:00

It would be helpful if there were another word for “infrastructure”: it’s such an earnest and passive word for the blood vessels of this country, the crucial conveyors and connections that get us from here to there (or not) and the ports that facilitate our trade (or don’t), as well as the carriers of information, in particular broadband... The word “crisis” is also overused, applied to the unimportant as well as the crucial. But this country has an infrastructure crisis.

Elizabeth Drew considers several recent books on American infrastructure, with an eye to both the material reality and the political system producing it. She concludes that fixing our infrastructural systems "may require even more widespread paralyzed traffic, the collapse of numerous bridges, and perhaps a revolt in parts of the country that have inadequate broadband."

"In other words, we may well need to incur more chaos and ruin and even deaths before we come to our senses," she writes.

Unfortunately, in the US, while infrastructure is falling apart everywhere, certain contingencies bear the brunt of this more heavily. The ongoing crisis in Flint, Michigan brings into sharp focus the socioeconomic and racial undercurrents of infrastructural collapse.

Interested in related issues? Check out these links: