Wortham_logoJust as nobody wants to think about insurance until they need it, nobody wants to spend their time thinking about things like Crisis Management Plans. But, as with insurance, the only way a Crisis Management Plan can be useful to you is if you have established one before the crisis comes.

One of our members, Wortham Insurance & Risk Management, recently published a Risk Management Bulletin on OSHA Inspections, and it’s relevant to this precise consideration.

Who are you going to call? When the OSHA inspector shows up or a serious accident occurs at your worksite… who are you going to call? If you answered Ghostbusters… you may be in trouble. May I suggest having a system in place that outlines the procedures to be followed in the event of an emergency or OSHA inspection?

Based on the nature of the risk for construction operations it is very important for every organization to have a Crisis Management Plan which includes how to deal with governmental agencies.

What is a crisis? An explosion, a worker fatality, a bad truck accident, a hurricane? All of these can potentially be a crisis. So, when is a crisis reached? When questions arise that can’t be answered. (Kapuscinski 1932) The key to crisis management is to know the answer to the questions before they happen.

When it comes to an OSHA inspection the process should be no different.

Develop policies and procedures so all parties know the law and their individual responsibilities. The goal is to make the inspection process go as smooth as possible while maintaining control of the environment as much as possible. If you are prepared this will create a positive impression for the compliance officer and result in fewer citations for the organization.

To continue reading this valuable bulletin, including sections on knowing your rights and making a reliable plan for OSHA inspections, download the full PDF of the newsletter here.

2015Since 12:01 a.m. on Thursday morning, some of us have resolved to run a 5K by Easter, or to hike a few of Colorado’s famous “Fourteeners,” or to try every brewpub in Portland before 2015 is out. Some have decided to spend more quality time with our families, or learn how to use a food processor, or solve the NYT Sunday crossword at least once without help. These are all excellent personal goals for the new year. In case you’re looking for similar inspiration for New Year’s Resolutions for your business, we thought we’d point you to Mark LePage’s The Entrepreneur Architect Podcast.

The following is an excerpt from the blog post accompanying a recent episode titled Top 10 Ways Architects Can Earn More Money:

“As a requirement for licensure, registered architects are responsible for the health, safety and welfare of every occupant in every project we design. Like any small business, architects must pay the typical operating expenses required to remain buoyant, such as utilities, professional service fees, consultants’ fees, insurances and several other overhead expenditures. But wait… for architects, there’s more. To protect us from the liabilities inherent in our responsibilities as licensed professionals, most architects also purchase an additional Professional Liability insurance policy costing several thousand dollars each year.

“Then, there’s that little thing called profit.  Every business, including architecture firms (yes, its true!), must earn a profit. It’s one of the rules to “the game”. In order to continue pursuing our success as architects, we must not only cover our expenses and take home a salary, we must make enough to reinvest into the business.

“Most sole proprietors and small firms I know, struggle to meet the minimum requirements of operation. Forget about profit.

“Simply stated… Architects just don’t make enough money.

“On this episode of The Entrepreneur Architect Podcast, I am sharing my top 10 ways architects can earn more money.”

New year; new bottom line. We hope this resource helps you in your endeavors this year. All the best to our readers in 2015!

About the Podcaster:

Mark R. LePage, AIA, a licensed architect in the State of New York, is the Partner in Charge of Operations at Fivecat Studio Architecture, a leading residential architecture firm located in Westchester County, New York (about 40 minutes north of New York City). Mark and his wife, architect Annmarie McCarthy, launched Fivecat Studio in 1999 at the age of 29 with no money and no clients. Together they have grown the regional firm to a staff of six, managing projects worth more than $10 million. Mark is the founder of Entrepreneur Architect, this online education resource inspiring architects to build better businesses. He launched the blog in 2007 as a personal project to document ideas for business success. In 2012, Mark relaunched Entrepreneur Architect at EntreArchitect.com and introduced the The Entrepreneur Architect Podcast. Working to become an influential force in the profession, Mark’s mission is to teach sole proprietors, small firm architects and students the importance of business success in the profession of architecture.

Architect Creates LEGO Detroit

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After all the bad press Detroit has received in the last few years, it’s nice to see that the city continues to inspire architects. For Jim Garrett of Redford, Michigan, it has motivated him to pull out his childhood LEGO sets and spend months faithfully recreating scale models of his favorite Detroit buildings.

“Twelve of those buildings are replicas of real Detroit structures, including the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Detroit Public Library in Midtown and the Fisher Building in New Center. Most of his downtown Detroit buildings are on view at The Henry Ford this month. Even the old red sandstone Union Depot, which stood at the corner of Fort and Third until it was demolished in 1974, is on display.”

The 51-year-old Garrett has been known to clear out LEGO sections in toy stores whenever they go on clearance, but these days it’s easier to find what he needs on the internet. For these kinds of detailed projects, he suggests the site bricklink.com, “sells specialized pieces like arched windows in bulk.”

When constructing Detroit’s tallest Art Deco skyscraper, The Penobscot building, Garrett was relieved to find “LEGO made some grooved bricks that perfectly matched the detail on the actual building.”

“I bought almost the entire world’s supply at the time,” he said.

“It took eight months to erect the Penobscot’s 47 stories. The model is 9.5 feet to the roof and 11 feet to the tip of the red ball at the pinnacle.”

Donna Terek penned the original article for the Detroit News, and it includes a video of the exhibit which is worth a watch.

As Garrett wholeheartedly admits, “It’s my hope that people who aren’t familiar with Detroit will realize there’s more to Detroit than crime stories and bankruptcy. I’d like to think it will help them get an appreciation of Detroit’s architecture.”

Sometimes it’s difficult to sort through all the resources available to design professionals on the internet. We recommend you check out this series of eleven free videos from aecKnowledge, each one an interview with a respected architect in California’s Bay Area.

aecKnowledge Insights video series

Jack McAllister, FAIA

Throughout his long career, Jack McAllister has placed value on understanding how materials were fabricated and buildings constructed, and the importance of working directly with clients, allied design professionals, and the craftspeople building his creations. Above all, Jack learned the value of mentorship, as he describes so poignantly in this in-depth interview curated by Tim Culvahouse, FAIA.

Chuck Davis, FAIA

At age 78, Chuck remains a partner in EHDD, a fabled Bay Area architecture firm with a distinguished international reputation. In this candid interview, Chuck shares his insights about his early years with pioneer Joe Esherick, working with David Packard on the design of the Monterey Aquarium, his post-partum blues, collaborating with clients, the “search and discovery” that makes great architecture, and passing the torch to a new generation of leaders.

Peter Dodge, FAIA

Peter is a founding member of EHDD–one of America’s most distinguished architectural practices. A Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, Peter is the 2008 AIA California Council’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In this interview, he describes his circuitous path to architecture and talked about his contributions to the profession.

Visit the aecKnowledge website to watch these interviews. The following is a list of the rest of the interviewees:

  • George Homsey, FAIA
  • Odile Decq
  • Thom Mayne, FAIA
  • Gwynne Pugh, FAIA, ASCE
  • Steven Ehrlich, FAIA

“A hundred years after we began building with tall buildings, we have yet to understand how the tall, high-rise building becomes a building block in making a city… in creating the public realm,” says legendary architect and teacher Moshe Safdie of Safdie Architects in Boston. This is the driving force behind his TED talk on How to Reinvent the Apartment Building.

Emphasizing the importance of light, permeability, and nature, Safdie demonstrates how breaking the mold of the standard residential skyscraper could transform the urban environment and the experience of those living in high-density housing.

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is everywhere these days. From the guy next door to your favorite aunt and uncle to Gwenyth Paltrow, it seems everyone agrees that raising money and awareness to fight “Lou Gehrig’s Disease” is worth a deluge of ice water over their heads and capturing the hilarity on camera. Donations from the campaign have already topped $53 million! Thank you to the Novedge Blog for collecting a few videos of architects taking the challenge and challenging one another, all for a good cause! Here are a couple more good ones we found:

FitzGerald Associates Architects

Continue reading “Architects Taking the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge!”

marijuana_wallpaper_plants_nature_wallpaper_1024_768_1169Two states have legalized the recreational use of marijuana within the last year, and it feels like the trend will continue to unfold, too. How does the state-level legalization of a federally-restricted of a narcotic impact workplace drug policy? Our April 2014 Guest Essay, authored by Stephanie Rawitt of Clark Hill, seeks to answer this very question for you. The following is an excerpt of that essay. You can download the full PDF of the newsletter for free from our website.

In a wave of change that children of the 1960s only dreamed, debated and theorized about, almost half of the states in the United States have now passed laws legalizing the controlled distribution of medicinal marijuana, and two states have even legalized the sale of recreational marijuana. While this could truly be the “Dawning of the Age of Aquarius” straight out of the Broadway musical Hair, these new laws raise a variety of questions for employers who have drug screening programs or any type of drug-free workplace policy. The big question for employers is – are their drug-free workplace policies still enforceable? More specifically, what happens when an employee or job applicant with a prescription for medical marijuana fails a drug test? Will employers who discipline employees using medical marijuana who fail drug tests face liability under the Americans with Disabilities Act or their respective state anti-discrimination laws? While in one sense, there are easy answers to the questions raised by the states’ legalization of marijuana, there are many grey areas which require employers to understand their state and local laws and also to pay attention to the landscape of this evolving issue.

For the most part, courts have been affirming an employer’s right to enforce its drug-free workplace policies. Despite the increasing rise of the states’ respective medical marijuana laws and the legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado and Washington, marijuana possession and use is still illegal under federal law. The Controlled Substance Act (CSA) categorizes marijuana as a Schedule I drug, which means that it has a strong potential for abuse and is not currently recognized by the federal government as an acceptable medication. See, 21 U.S.C. §§811-812. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the possession of marijuana is illegal under the CSA regardless of whether a state allows the use of medical marijuana. Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1 (2005). Plainly, with reference to this issue, federal law will pre-empt state law where there is a conflict between the two.

Given that marijuana use and possession are illegal under federal law, employers that have federal contracts or are subject to federal drug-free workplace regulations should not need to change or modify their existing policies. These employers should continue to comply with applicable federal law, even if they are located in a state where marijuana has been legalized for medicinal or recreational use. Continue reading “Stirring the Pot: Workplace Drug Policy Implementation in the Era of Legalized Medicinal and Recreational Marijuana”

According to Alison Killing of Killing Architects in Rotterdam, Netherlands, the role of the architect in modern society is undergoing a shift: moving away from the architect as a “master builder”, towards someone who is a specialist in the “built environment”.

New Generations – Killing Architects from New Generations on Vimeo.

Killing Architects recently won first prize in a competition on the future of architecture practice. The contest was put on by the New Generations network of young European architects in late 2013. Watch Ms. Killing’s short interview about the role of architects, and the opportunities for young architects who are willing to take risks and commit to research as a major part of their individual practice.

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We were excited to see that AIA Florida picked up this timely article by Mark Jackson of Jackson Collinsworth Johnson, an a/e ProNet member. Hope you find it helpful, too!

There are two important contract clauses that design professionals should include with every client contract. The first clause provides protection to individuals and the second limits the firm’s liability.

Individual Protection

The first clause we recommend gives individual protection for your licensed professionals. In 2013, the State of Florida signed a law relating to design professionals known as the Fairness in Liability legislation. Beginning July 1, 2013, design firms are now able to negotiate contracts that protect their professional employees from being sued individually by their clients.

The new law grants design professional employees immunity from liability for economic damages resulting from negligence occurring during the course and scope of a professional services contact. The law does require that the design firm maintain professional liability insurance as required under the contract.

The new law also extends to individuals the protection of contractual limitation of liability clauses. This comes four years after the courts ruled that individual professional employees were not protected by limitation of liability clauses in a contract. (Florida appellate court case Witt v. La Gorce Country Club, Inc., 34 Fla.L., Weekly D1161a)

Design professionals should take advantage of the benefits of this new law. Your contracts should be amended to include language that an individual employee cannot be held liable for negligence. The law has five conditions for this protection to apply:

1. The contract is made between the design firm and the client.
2. Individual employees are not to be named as a party to the contract. All professional services contracts need to be made between the client and the business entity.
3. The design firm must maintain Professional Liability insurance, as required by contract.
4. The contract contains a prominent statement, in uppercase font that is at least five point sizes larger than the rest of the text, that an individual employee or agent may not be individually liable for negligence.
5. Any damages are solely economic in nature and the damages do not extend to personal injuries or property not subject to the contract.

To continue reading, download the PDF here…