Flad's Design / Planning Tools Workshop Expands Technological Knowledge

Seeking to help Flad's planning and design teams develop a broader working knowledge of technology – and, by extension, help support client needs – the firm recently conducted a two-day workshop bringing together senior and junior planners, designers and project architects from each of Flad's nine offices. The Next Generation Design / Planning Tools Workshop was structured as a two-day conceptual design interview preparation effort using a real-life request for proposals as a template.

The firm gathered a cross-section of more than two dozen employees with varying skill sets, from different regions and from different market sectors, and organized them into teams of five or six individuals apiece. Each was given the challenge of utilizing new computational tools and techniques to enable faster and clearer decision making during the project's planning and design phases.

A primary objective was to gain greater fluency, firmwide, with data visualization and other technological tools that can be integrated to graph out key project metrics, such as program and cost, to provide real-time data feedback to Flad's clients and the firm's own design teams regarding design alternatives. After concluding the workshop, lessons learned were disseminated by workshop participants to staff in all of Flad's offices.

November 13, 2017