Do you work for a firm that has ever been awarded the IDP Firm of the Year? How do they do to support you/interns in IDP? How do they help you obtain credit with contracts and construction administration?
Or on the flip side, have you worked at a firm that could have cared less about IDP and your progress? Describe a situation when this became blatantly obvious to you.
A- in case you are wondering, this query is a result of something you posted on another topic. it got me thinking about what others have experienced.
when i started out in the profession in 1993, i was told (to my shock and horror!) during an interview with a very prominent architecture firm that they would "sign off" on whatever paperwork was necessary. this was their idea of "supporting" IDP. they weren't really interested in my career development, they just wanted to help me through the beaucracy. (ironically, one of the principals in this firm was later asked to resign due to fraudulently representing himself as a registered architect.)
luckily in my 4 years there, IDP became a requirement for licensure and they began to take it more seriously. we also had a group of interns that were very proactive and interested in licensure, so we formed a lunch time group where we asked project managers, architects, engineers, and planners on staff to talk to us about project management, systems coordination, specifications, etc.
while we didn't obtain all of our training units this way, we were able to get an intro to some of the topics and pursue it further within our individual project teams.
As far as I understand no firm profits from the IDP program and it wouldn't make sense in all ready busy schedule to sweat over an IDP program from which a principal/owner wouldn't make a cent from. On the other hand I believe that the IDP is not going national until this Jan 1st 2005; there are I believe many states that aleady enforce the IDP. I believe that there hasn't been a standard set yet from which to draw a good or bad firm in pertinece to the IDP. Just my $.02.
check ratings of firms on www.insidearch.org
They're mainly written by interns, about internship experiences.
As far as "going national" - the vast majority of states had fully implemented IDP by the mid 1990s, so at this point there should be quite a cross-section of firms to analyze out there - except perhaps in the handful of hold-out states.
i have said this before and until this simple fact is rectifide nothing will change; there is absolutely no mechanism, none, zero, nada that will compel firms to provide adequate and required training for IDP. what can and should happen is that firms can be forced to document how and what skills are provided to interns much in the same way we report and in the same way Architects are required to maintain their learning units for AIA and state req - the state part i am not sure of...but the gist of my point is there.
I'm interested to know what I posted that started this thing.
Personally I've never worked for an IDP firm of the year. Not sure how that is awarded. I did hear the KKE architects of Minneapolis won that award recently and am somewhat familiar with their firm/work. Knowing former employees of their large corporate work environment none of them found it to be the best place to work.
My experience was more lip service than action on IDP. They were good enough to get me some broad experience on the production end of everything - schematics, DD, CD, eng coordination, etc. The construction administration stuff was terrible. Don't fault them because I wasn't earning the company $$ doing that. Then again if the NCARB is going to require IDP the employers should embrace it. I'm very cynical about the IDP process and think it need reform. Thankfully there are people working on that - so I'm told.
Additionally, yes, most employers I've heard just sign off on IDP without a care as to how accurate it may be. One major reason for my distrust of the system.
Nov 10, 04 2:19 pm ·
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which firms do/don't support IDP?
Do you work for a firm that has ever been awarded the IDP Firm of the Year? How do they do to support you/interns in IDP? How do they help you obtain credit with contracts and construction administration?
Or on the flip side, have you worked at a firm that could have cared less about IDP and your progress? Describe a situation when this became blatantly obvious to you.
A- in case you are wondering, this query is a result of something you posted on another topic. it got me thinking about what others have experienced.
when i started out in the profession in 1993, i was told (to my shock and horror!) during an interview with a very prominent architecture firm that they would "sign off" on whatever paperwork was necessary. this was their idea of "supporting" IDP. they weren't really interested in my career development, they just wanted to help me through the beaucracy. (ironically, one of the principals in this firm was later asked to resign due to fraudulently representing himself as a registered architect.)
luckily in my 4 years there, IDP became a requirement for licensure and they began to take it more seriously. we also had a group of interns that were very proactive and interested in licensure, so we formed a lunch time group where we asked project managers, architects, engineers, and planners on staff to talk to us about project management, systems coordination, specifications, etc.
while we didn't obtain all of our training units this way, we were able to get an intro to some of the topics and pursue it further within our individual project teams.
Just I guess.
As far as I understand no firm profits from the IDP program and it wouldn't make sense in all ready busy schedule to sweat over an IDP program from which a principal/owner wouldn't make a cent from. On the other hand I believe that the IDP is not going national until this Jan 1st 2005; there are I believe many states that aleady enforce the IDP. I believe that there hasn't been a standard set yet from which to draw a good or bad firm in pertinece to the IDP. Just my $.02.
check ratings of firms on www.insidearch.org
They're mainly written by interns, about internship experiences.
As far as "going national" - the vast majority of states had fully implemented IDP by the mid 1990s, so at this point there should be quite a cross-section of firms to analyze out there - except perhaps in the handful of hold-out states.
i have said this before and until this simple fact is rectifide nothing will change; there is absolutely no mechanism, none, zero, nada that will compel firms to provide adequate and required training for IDP. what can and should happen is that firms can be forced to document how and what skills are provided to interns much in the same way we report and in the same way Architects are required to maintain their learning units for AIA and state req - the state part i am not sure of...but the gist of my point is there.
I'm interested to know what I posted that started this thing.
Personally I've never worked for an IDP firm of the year. Not sure how that is awarded. I did hear the KKE architects of Minneapolis won that award recently and am somewhat familiar with their firm/work. Knowing former employees of their large corporate work environment none of them found it to be the best place to work.
My experience was more lip service than action on IDP. They were good enough to get me some broad experience on the production end of everything - schematics, DD, CD, eng coordination, etc. The construction administration stuff was terrible. Don't fault them because I wasn't earning the company $$ doing that. Then again if the NCARB is going to require IDP the employers should embrace it. I'm very cynical about the IDP process and think it need reform. Thankfully there are people working on that - so I'm told.
Additionally, yes, most employers I've heard just sign off on IDP without a care as to how accurate it may be. One major reason for my distrust of the system.
Block this user
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