Transcript: How to Make Sure You are Happy with Your Built Space - with Tim Tracey of SmithGroup JJR

Hello, I'm Brittany Campbell-Turner and this is the Constructor Podcast, session number 17. Hello, and welcome to this episode of Constructor. I'm Brittany Campbell-Turner and this podcast is dedicated to helping property owners have certain team their decisions about the construction projects. On this podcast, we discuss how property owners can foster trusting relationships with their project teams, understand how to lower risk, be under budget and on schedule in your construction projects and exceed your end user's desires. Hello everyone, thanks for joining me today.

Thank you for listening to Constructor, the best way to build it. Don't forget to describe at Constructor.com if you are listening to these episodes and like the content. Subscribers at Constructor.com and reviews keep me going. So let me introduce my next guest. This interview is with Tim Tracy, Director of the Chicago Office for Smith Group JJR.

Tim leads the multidisciplinary office with a focus on design quality achieved through a holistic and integrated design process. Tim leads his clients and design team through a collaborative design process, understanding his clients' core values and aspiring to expand their vision. Tim's designs solutions are programmatically responsive in a manner that celebrates their values with the built environment. One of the methodologies that Tim and his team uses is establishing conditions of satisfaction and measuring against these conditions throughout the entirety of the project. Conditions of satisfaction is our topic of discussion today.

Without further ado, here is my interview with Tim Tracy. So Tim, welcome to the Constructor podcast. Thank you, glad to be here. Yeah, yeah. I appreciate it.

Thanks for taking the time out and talking to us about conditions of satisfaction. So can you tell us what is your definition of conditions of satisfaction? Sure. For me, the conditions of satisfaction is a great term. However, it's actually a little maybe more simple than that.

In order to be able to complete a task in a way that is satisfactory to an individual or a group or whatever, you have to understand what it is that you're trying to achieve. So for me, conditions of satisfaction is really a common understanding of how success will be measured once you've delivered upon what the promises are. So it can be as complicated as a formal contract or it could be as simple as a direct promise that somebody makes to be able to achieve the day of the team.

I think it's very scalable in that regard. But it's that common understanding that people find so that you do hand something over to the individual that you made the promise to. And they can agree that you've achieved what you agreed to achieve. Okay, great. Just kind of piggyback on that question, why is conditions of satisfaction or the success of measure, why is it important to you?

Well, in my career, I've been afforded some pretty fantastic opportunities. Just by saying I don't consider myself necessarily an expert in me, but I'm definitely committed and very passionate about the things that the tools and the things that I've learned over the years that are about getting better as a professional, producing better products, producing a higher quality design. And my introduction to the women came very early in my career when I was exposed to the lean principles by working with bold construction on a project up in Phillips, Wisconsin.

And I began to hear the conversation about two-week look-aheads and how you can use lean principles in construction and design to make the process more efficient. And I began to think at that time that, boy, this sounds very interesting without necessarily understanding the implications of a lot of things that I was being exposed to. A project that I became very intimately involved with early in my career was a residential project that I worked on that was built in Pensacola, Florida. And it was an amazing architectural opportunity.

I worked in a small architectural firm with two partners. And this residential client was somebody that was a real believer in the architecture that our firm was trying to achieve. And he was a very passionate person about high-quality design. And I knew those things about him being an architect at the top. And the team really committed itself to creating this amazing piece of architecture.

He wanted a dream home. And we were absolutely committed to delivering a dream home for him. But that was about as far as it went, that the understanding, what his expectations were for how this project would be successful to him. And I remembered I used to spend many days on the job site at that point visiting and doing field observations. We worked very closely with all the tradesmen to all the different things that were being implemented at the time.

I would ask our client whenever he was involved for an evening to a walk through, how did that feel? Does it feel like home to you yet? And his answer inevitably was always no. And being an architect, I began to find myself questioning, okay, what do I have to do and what do we have to do to be really satisfied with the project? He was a very soft-spoken gentleman.

He had a great partnership and a relationship with partners at the firm. But as far as that extension out with the team, it was a little ambiguous for us to understand what we needed to do on a great basis to really achieve a measure of quality that he thought was best. And when I look back on it, I think it was an amazing piece of architecture that that team developed. Beautiful in so many ways and I thought very inspiring in so many ways. But I always sort of left that project.

The impression for me was, gosh, did we really meet his expectations? And fast-forwarding, I had an opportunity shortly thereafter to, like I say, in firm, work on a project at the school that I had went to when I was in college at the Illinois Institute of Technology. And the project was to restore the College of Architecture building that was designed by Sanders. And I had an amazing opportunity there as well to work with Tony Harbaugh from a historic preservation perspective and of course, Ron Crick and Mark Sexton were intimately involved at the detail.

But that one was, it was super clear what we were trying to achieve. We were trying to restore a historic landmark. And the object was not to improve it or make it as each wood is needed to be built there in 2005, for either of these works. It was to restore the building to a classical form as it was intended to be designed in the 1950s. And it was so clear and so crystal clear that from the design team down to the construction team and every laborer that worked on the project, we were all galvanized from the mission to construct this building over the summer when school was out and restore it to its original majestic aesthetic.

And it was so simple and so clear that when I look back on that, boy, we understood exactly what the measure of success was going to be for that project. Did we achieve what was originally intended to achieve, to be achieved? Were we able to restore it? Not to put our own stamp on it, but to restore it as Neesamrio would have wanted the building to be restored, wanted the building to be in the condition when he first started and built the project. And for me, that was a bit of a paradigm shift coming out of this prior project where I didn't know what success was.

To now this project where success was very complex, very simply defined, it was clear that, gosh, that's an exercise that we should go through an empathy project that we weren't able to do. I didn't understand necessarily the satisfaction of that. That was an exposure to an expectation or way of thinking or a way of working with finding expectations that had a pretty profound impact on my career. So now as I look back on that and think of the way we are trying to practice architecture in the 50s and 50s, we often talk about we need to define the problem before we solve the problem.

If part of that definition of problem is understanding what the measures of success will be for our clients so that we're able to fully deliver the product that they're expecting and having that common understanding through conditions satisfaction is just a great tool for us as we go on the journey. I think those are excellent examples to really explain how establishing conditions of satisfaction in a project can truly be valuable. So understanding that it can provide so much value to a project, how do you establish conditions of satisfaction and how does it provide value to the clients that you work with?

Sure. Well, not to be overly simplistic, but probably the most direct answer is to say you have to ask questions. I think as architects we're natural problem solvers in a lot of ways and we want to solve the problem, but sometimes we jump into solving the problem without fully defining the problem and understanding what the measures of success will be. So one of the techniques that we use very early in a project typically is really just a brainstorming session. It's a real life, it's a straightforward conversation around the table as to okay, we understand the quantitative aspects of what you're looking to try to achieve for a project with our clients and oftentimes those are very clearly defined in an RFP, but the qualitative aspects sometimes are a little bit harder to get to.

And an example of that might be a recent project that we are working on with the Northern Trust Company and we understood the expectations with implementing sort of a fully functional training center on the floor and what that meant to them from being able to create a space and a situation that really a training area that reinforced the training opportunities that they had, but as we began talking in our conversation very early on the first day, we began to understand that this project had an opportunity to not only provide a better quality environment for those that were going to be going through the training exercises, but it had a real opportunity to make a personal impact on users that would be coming into the space because this was oftentimes the first impressions for their new project or their new life at Trust of the early training sessions that would be happening in space.

So having an insight as to how this could affect and really set a cultural expectation and have an implication of the branding aspects of what this space could mean led us to a condition of satisfaction that was not just about delivering the technical aspects of what it was that we were trying to deliver, but setting a goal to try to transform that environment so that we can create a very positive high value experience that was something that would be a memorable experience and a really transformational experience for those who use the space.

And that original, that first conversation around the table got us to this point where we uncovered this opportunity that became a condition that we all agreed that we want to live up to and set as a measure of success for that particular project. Yeah, that's a great example. Well, I hope that the value that it adds, you know, you're able to agree upon what the quantitative aspects of the project are and that's usually one of those measures of success as well, that the condition of satisfaction often in many terms because you have to meet the schedule, you have to meet the budget, you have to deliver the number of spaces that are required for the functional aspects of it, of the space to be successful.

But to take that a step farther and be able to bring in qualitative aspects of what that space can achieve requires a pretty intimate and direct conversation to be able to agree that that's an important measure of success for the project. I completely agree with you on that. I guess my next question would be, you know, that really provides clarity on how that provides value to clients and the end users who are eventually going to utilize the space and be in the space. How do you think that ultimately helps the entire construction project team?

Well, most simply providing clarity. I think oftentimes in the industry things get lost in translation and people fall back on norms and make assumptions based upon what they did in the previous project that they worked on or with the previous example of relationships that they might have. So finding early alignment generates, I think, a sense of clarity. I think a clarity of vision that people can focus their efforts at the team and working together, right? And that may be an oversimplification of it, but I think it's very important.

Every project that we work on, oftentimes there's a new mixture of people, whether it be a new mixture of people on just our design team or whether it be a new picture of a group of people from the consultants that we might bring in or the contractors that we bring in or especially from the client side, it's always a new endeavor, right? No one project is ever the same as the other. So there is a measure, there is an importance in placing that value on that early alignment of what your expectations are that is critical to being able to achieve success because it's never going to be the same from project to project.

This is very true. So just kind of piggybacking on something you mentioned earlier, you spoke about the general conditions that we typically measure, right? Like schedule, cost, and then you can obviously incorporate a condition that is more qualitative, like incorporating brand. But I'm curious as to, you know, are these conditions typical based upon what you've seen a client establish early on in a project? Are there other examples of conditions that you've identified that are really interesting or, you know, or you see very often and you know that it's always going to be on the list?

Any examples of that? Well, no, the direct answer to that, no. I think if you come into a project with preconceived notion that this is going to work the way the previous one did, that you're already behind the eight ball. So you have to be acceptance of the fact that you have to really start at step one, I think, on every project and ask those questions because it's really to define the conditions of satisfaction. There is a need on the owner's side.

There's something had to have happened to generate the project opportunity that needs to be met in order, you know, for the project to even have to come to life. So it's understanding what that need is and being able to negotiate your way through a reliable promise to be able to achieve that need that is sort of the first step in the critical component. And sometimes that takes some back and forth. You may think that you understand what the need is, but as you learn a little bit more about the clients or the project, that need may tweak or it may suddenly change.

That's where there's this opportunity to, I think, clarify what it is that that expectation is. And so the fundamental part is always the same, I think, is the process of defining the initial need and then having the design professional be able to make a reliable promise that is going to meet that need. And that takes that negotiation and really clarification of what the need is to be able to set that. So that part is always going to change from project to project, but what the need is is always going to change.

Okay. That's definitely a fair response. And I think that's what any client would want to hear, right? They want to know that whatever they value is going to be the condition that is established and measured to make sure that is within the design and implemented throughout the project. So yeah, that's definitely a fair answer.

You want to know that you have a tailor-made suit, right? Nobody wants just the simplified brand, right? One that's not necessarily catered to you. Okay. So kind of another question about a standard approach, is there a typical number of conditions that you will try to establish?

Yeah, they may be all different, but is there a number of conditions that's realistic to make sure you just kind of have set with your clients? Well, I love things at 3Ds, but in my mind, I would say it has to be probably three or four, but it could be more than that. And I think I've made the comment before that I think setting these expectations can be scalable, right? Conditions of satisfaction are scalable. It could be something that is a few pages long, a full-point list that is implemented into a contract.

Or it could also be a simple task that what needs to happen on this day is a first attempt at a schematic design ceiling plan. And what I might need to know to be able to do that, I need to be able to negotiate my way through it and understand what, say, the other members of the team need from me to be able to provide a schematic reflective ceiling plan that meets their expectations. So I look at these as very scalable. They can go all the way up to the macro level of a project, or they can go back down to a micro level of today activities that you are working to achieve.

And the underlying principle is consistent in either way. In order for you to be able to achieve success, you have to understand what it is that you are trying to achieve so that you can deliver upon it. Okay. You know, as you were talking, the example that you provided about your client, the one at the dream home, just kind of thinking about that some more, I'm just thinking through, you know, how do you, I mean, you constantly asked him, you know, are you happy? Is this what you, is this feeling like home to you?

And he didn't agree with you. And he was like, I'm not happy. I'm just thinking about, you know, are you happy? Is this what you, is this feeling like home to you? And he didn't agree with you.

You know, you asked the question to him, but in the next project that you worked with IT on, you know, the answers were yes when you asked that question. Is it looking like, you know, what you know, how do you know, how do you ensure that you know that your conditions are being met throughout the design process? Is there something in particular that you do throughout to ensure that these conditions are met? Well, the basic principle is common understanding and communication and clarity of thought, right?

So, I can't necessarily blame the client that had aspirations of dream home in any way, because I don't think I, at that time in my career, was either asking the right questions or trying to get to the right answers at that time either. It's something as you grow as an architect or design professional, we're constantly preaching to our team about continuous improvement. So, you're always trying to find ways in which you can get better, right? And so, for me, understanding what the problem is, defining the right problem, you need to be able to have on the opposite end than an agreement from the client that yes, that is the problem that I'm trying to solve.

There's an acknowledgement of yes, that's right, if you meet these things, then I'm going to be satisfied. And then it sets you down on a path where okay, that common understanding is there, that clear communication between parties is there, now let's go to work and work really hard to achieve those things. Once those things are achieved, there, I believe those things are achieved, then there's another check. In order for you to get sign-off on those conditions of satisfaction, right, or that the measure of success has been achieved, you have to have performed the work and then declare that we think the work is done, we think that we've achieved that, that this is how we did it.

And then the response back from the client has to be yes, we agree that you achieved that, or you achieved these four things, but not these two other things, yeah, that this is why. If we get this fixed and that fixed and this fixed, then hey, okay, then I agree that you've achieved those conditions of satisfaction. But it's this back and forth common dialogue and sort of testing and evaluating to go find and get to that point. And then in the end, the client has to accept that those conditions have been met in order for you to have measured or achieved that success that you were trying to measure along the way.

So there are those couple of steps that once the conditions are defined, that the team has performed the work to do it, you have to test your understanding of those conditions with the client to make sure that that was achieved and have them agree to it. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. I think that the iterative process of checking in and clarifying and checking in once again, it makes a lot of sense. And as you mentioned before, right, these conditions can be scalable.

So even if you define something in the beginning and it's summarized, for instance, at the beginning, it may evolve into something else. So consistently asking and clarifying and asking for that feedback specifically, is this what you expected or hoped for? Is this meeting your expectation? It makes a lot of sense. One of the techniques that I try to encourage our teams to do are to keep those front and center, right?

And that could take a different form in different phases of the project or different types of projects. But in the design phase, I would like for once those measures of success are defined, I would like those to be a part of almost every presentation. And it's not like you have to linger on that slide and read the word to word, but it's sort of a memory, it's sort of jogging the memory of, okay, these are the things that we agreed upon. And this next part of this presentation is going to show you how we're working towards achieving these measures of success, right?

And I think somehow keeping those front and center is an important part of the process. It could also be that once you're in construction of a project, that those things are taped up on the trailer wall, they're on the wall of the construction site, so that it's not held in a vacuum. It's something that everybody can participate in and see that their efforts are leading towards the achieving of those conditions of satisfaction. So being able to communicate that in a wide variety of ways, I think, is another sort of very important part of whether you actually can achieve that success or not.

Yeah, I think that that definitely establishes an intention as the design is actually taking place. You know, when you put something in front of you like that, it sinks into your subconscious, right? And you have no choice but to make sure that's, you know, that's your focus. And if you're veering off of that for some reason, you know, having that in front of you once again, and even in front of a client, it really helps to gear your focus, right? I like the idea.

I like the idea of putting it in the trailer. I never thought about that. I think that's excellent because, you know, when the delivery is taking place, you know, there's no question right? There's no question as to what's important. Yes.

And if you think about the process, there's so many layers to the process. There's so many layers of individuals that get involved. And breakdowns typically occur in projects when communication fails, or there's handoffs of things to different people. So trying to find common alignments and consistency of messaging is very important. Now, I'll refer back to that project that I worked on at the College of Architecture at IIT before I joined Smith Group JJR.

One of the amazing things that the design team did at the time is Mark Sexton and Gunny Harbo actually gave a presentation of the design process to all of the tradesmen on the first day of their construction was starting, or just before construction started. I don't remember the exact time, but it was before things really got into the swing of things. And expressed the real importance of what this building that they were about to work on over the course of the summer, what it meant to the architectural history of Chicago and sort of the fabric of that architectural history that they were going to touch and impact over the next couple of months.

And it really created this team camaraderie of all for one, one for all, because there was a common understanding of what the expectations were. And that's an example, I think, of how you can achieve that common understanding in a way that didn't even... At the time, we knew nothing about conditions of satisfaction. We just knew that it was...Mark just knew that it was smart to get everybody on the same page. And that resonated with me.

I think as we built our practice at Smith Group JJR, it's sometimes a struggle because the complexity of the projects that we're dealing with, with hospitals or laboratories, or sometimes these projects can have many layers of clients where there's the decision-making process. There's the decision-makers, but then there's the implementers. And sometimes the facilities team and the user groups are not always on the same page with their own common understandings. So one little thing that we can do is try to make sure that we're showing a consistent message and communicating a consistent message to try to align as many people around what those expectations are that that project is trying to achieve.

So it can be, I think, a very important part of the process. You mentioned healthcare. I did want to ask the question, is there any ideal project type to make sure that conditions of satisfaction are established? I would say every project. And that may be...you might think that's a cop-out, but we do a lot of work in our firm with different markets and different project sizes, project types.

And if you don't understand what the expectations are, a project that's a small-scale interior renovation has just as big a chance of failing as a $100 million hospital. So I think it has the same impact regardless of project type and project scale. And I'm a big believer through working with the Link Construction Institute and Integrated Project Delivery, and we're working hard in the Midwest region to try to educate people on these different tools and different aspects of lean and design and lean and construction. But not every project that we have a chance to work on is an integrated project.

Sometimes there are just some very realistic traditional methodologies that have to be employed and contractual underpinnings end up being very simple and very traditional. But that doesn't mean that we can't modify our behaviors to be integrated, even though that's the case. And that doesn't mean that we can't think of using the same tools that we find success with an integrated project with lean principles, as we do a traditional design-build project. So I believe that it's transferable no matter what. And that's what we're trying to model because we are.

I am very happy to hear that it can be used on any project. Well, knowing that, I did want to ask the question, you know, how would you suggest implementing, using this approach to establish conditions of satisfaction on a project right away? Sure. Well, you know, I would say ask questions. And one of the great things of being in our city is we have a lot of practitioners that are doing a lot of different things.

And having been a part of the Lean Construction Institute for the last couple of years on the core group, there's some tremendous resources there that people could use if they want to just ask questions and understand what some of the different techniques are and what some of the different tools are. I'm a resource that could be reached out to as well. I have lots of opinions about what can work and what can't work. But I would most say that use some of those resources and reach out to the Lean Construction Institute and give it a try.

And commit yourself to trying to embrace some of the tools and some of those opportunities to make it happen. It really starts simply by understanding the implications of the questions that you're asking and then trying to implement those things. That's great. I would absolutely concur with you to reach out to the Lean Construction Institute. One resource that I have found very beneficial that is on the Lean Construction Institute website, I think it's leanconstruction.org, right?

It's the book called Transforming Design and Construction. And it actually has a chapter dedicated to project conditions of satisfaction. So I think that's a good resource. And there's another book called Conversations for Action. That's another one that kind of establishes what the commitment is and how someone can ensure that they're meeting that commitment.

So, so yeah, I'm this you can tell this is a topic I'm very interested in because I'm looking at resources and I'm interviewing Tim here. But yeah, this is great. Thank you so much, Tim, for joining joining me and taking part in this interview. Last question I have for you. Yeah, thank you.

The last question I have for you is how can people get in touch with you? They want to learn more about conditions of satisfaction or anything else? Sure. Well, the best way is probably email. I think or you could reach out to me via LinkedIn and we could establish a connection.

My email address. I don't know if I should get that to you here. If you want to just go ahead and give it to me. Go ahead and give it to me and I'll put it in the show notes as well. OK, it's Tim dot Tracy Tracy's built T R A C E Y at the group J.J.R.

dot com. That's that's the best way to reach out to me and I'll do my best to help however I can. Awesome. Thank you so much, Tim. Sure.

Well, thank you. I mean, I think that the more people are talking about these tools and the more people that are, you know, sort of spreading the word that there there are ways in which to do things that we can all learn from each other. I think that's a great thing. So I appreciate your setting this up and let me share some of my thoughts with you. Hopefully you found it useful.

Absolutely. I hope you enjoyed this delightful interview with Tim as much as I did through iterative measurements. We can determine whether a project team is meeting project goals during design and construction, ultimately continuously improving AEC standards and best practices. Find the show notes at Constructor dot com slash E P 17. And don't forget to subscribe.

If you like my content, please subscribe at Constructor dot com. This will encourage me to keep going, providing you with excellent interviews with awesome people crushing it in this industry. And when you subscribe, you'll be getting an email from me every week letting you know when a podcast is released right from your inbox. All right. Look forward to talking with you next week.

Bye for now.