Maintaining the Relationship Straightforward cash compensation, insurance, and other benefits are important to keeping any employee, but, says Ben White, a design professional and vice president of the design/build firm Benvenuti and Stein (B&S), Evanston, Ill., there are “two equally important forms of compensation for most design professionals: One is opportunity and the other is personal development through relationship building.”
As in most design/build firms, B&S’s three licensed architects and three designers have easy access to the contractor side of the business, and both groups benefit from the exchange of information.
B&S can take it a level further because of its on-premise cabinet shop.
“Designers can work with cabinetry as well as architectural objects,” White says. “You can walk 50 feet and ask a cabinet-maker how something is made and get feedback for your designs from the shop floor. That’s a powerful selling tool for people who come here looking for a job. You’re not just drawing the shell of a building but learning to shape the interior, the things that our clients use every day.”
Architect Sue Hagerty, who spent 12 years doing commercial work before coming to B&S two years ago, agrees. “It’s great to have samples made and to work with the cabinet shop on the details, see something being built, and check the progress of it.”
That teamwork extends to the relationships B&S’s designers have with their clients. “A designer or architect may have a relationship with a client that lasts 10 years. That makes it easier for clients to stay in touch since they are dealing with someone who is more than just a salesperson,” White says.
In a traditional stand-alone architecture firm, architects might get to work directly with clients, but they don’t have access to the variety of work and level of responsibility they do in a design/build atmosphere.
“I’m not just sitting at a desk drawing details,” Hagerty says. “I’m a little more mobile. It’s talking to clients, making finish selections. It’s very satisfying and more hands-on.” She likens the job of designing residential projects in a design/build firm — as opposed to commercial projects in an architectural firm —to being a general practitioner.
John Nahra, of Landis Construction, who’s working toward getting his architecture license, sees design/build as a way to gain field experience.
“When you build it yourself, and you’re working with lead carpenters and field crews, you see the mistakes in your design that you wouldn’t necessarily see otherwise,” he says. “You’re more responsible for your design. It’s not just another contractor you’re never going to meet. You’ve got to be sure that what you design on paper is going to work in the real world.” He says that the best part of his job is the opportunity to “problem solve on the spot. It’s an unpredictable business day-to-day, and it’s always keeping me on my toes.”
Residential design/build architects also choose this arena because of the scale of the projects. “Huge projects take so much to coordinate,” Gaspar’s design professional Brandon Skinner says. “You’re worried about a lot of different things on a larger scale. Here I get to work on more touchy-feely kinds of things, more details.”
The one thing that architects interviewed cited as a plus for design/build was that what they design gets built, and they can see progress quickly. “If you worked for I.M. Pei,” Landis says, “you might spend two years working on a stairwell. In a big firm you might take five years to see a project like a school or an airport get built. You might never get to see your finished work.”
In residential work, on the other hand, “projects tend to be quirky and filled with problems that architects like to solve quickly using ingenuity,” Jenkins says. “They’re a quick turnaround.”