Insights

by Heather L. Wishart-Smith
A recognized leader in design, engineering and technical services, Jacobs has transformed its portfolio to focus on technology-driven innovations, helping its business and government clients overcome disruptive challenges such as resource scarcity, security and resilience threats.

TIDI001: This Really Is DesignIntelligence
Meet Dave Gilmore and Lynn Barrett, co hosts of This Is DesignIntelligence. They discuss the major theme that Dave is watching closely in 2020 as he visits ... Click for more

October 22, 2019 | Dick Thomas
The need for great architecture has never been more urgent, the challenge to creating it never more complex. At SHP we believe our mission is informed by three things: design, research and advocacy. For most of us, the value of design is where we were born. Research underpins the way we solve problems. Advocacy is the new kid on the block...

by Johannes Kresimon and Doug Wignall:  
In 2013, HDR acquired TMK Architekten · Ingenieure, a German healthcare architecture firm. We talked with Doug Wignall and Johannes Kresimon about what they’ve learned in the years since the merger, as well as the health of the market, the state of talent and the biggest risks to the German market.

by DesignIntelligence
DesignIntelligence talked to Simon Carter, founder of corporate sustainability strategy practice Morphosis about sustainable digitalisation and his recent report, "Crossing the Threshold — A Primer for Sustainable Digitalisation in Real Estate and Cities."

The 1Q 2019 edition of DesignIntelligence Quarterly provides insights into authentic leadership to help you build a better business. 

by Brooke Grammier
When I first entered this industry, technology took a backseat to everything else. People were using computers to assist them in doing their jobs, but technology was not driving their daily tasks. Technologists were largely support, acting in a reactive state handling upgrades and repairs. We as technologists were not part of the business...

by Juli Cook
As a network of creative professionals, we have the privilege to see the design process and its outcomes generate powerful change in the lives of our clients — from inspiring the next evolution of health outcomes to encouraging a greater sense of well-being and productivity at work.

NOW AVAILABLE 2019 – The Industry’s Most Powerful Compensation Guide Just Got Better!
Since 2005, the DesignIntelligence Professional Compensation Report has been the definitive resource in the A/E/C industry. DesignIntelligence gathers information from the HR and business leaders of numerous top firms in the United States, allowing you to see what the market...

by DesignIntelligence
DesignIntelligence talked with Susan Heinking and Jake Pepper of Pepper Construction about new technologies, new ways of thinking, “coopetition” and how the construction industry can change the way it operates.

by Hans and Michele Herrmann
In today’s A/E/C industry, collaboration between designers, builders, engineers and constructors has become increasingly more important. Buildings are more complex. Clients demand better performance. Climate change is placing demands on how we build for the future in a sustainable way. Costs, efficiency, liability issues and more-all...

By Bob Fisher
Nothing could be simpler, more commonsensical: spend less than you earn and save for when you need it. Few would argue against such sound practices. Yet according to the U.S. Federal Reserve, in 2018 American consumer debt rose to just over $4 trillion, up from $3.3 trillion in 2014. And according to the 2018 North-western Mutual Planning & Progress...

August 27, 2019 | Roberta Kowalishin
Our clients hire us for creativity and ideas that improve the way people work, live, and interact. Design decisions affect every component of the environments we invent through the creative process, whether it’s the massing of a building, the façade, the landscape, the interior, the overall structure the mechanical or electrical energy...

by Jervy Zhu
GBBN’s Jervy Zhu talked with DesignIntelligence about the current architecture and construction market in China as well as the state of design education and talent there.

by James Frankel, Partner, Venable LLP
Jamie Frankel’s career within the built environment continues to serve owner, architect, engineering and construction clients. We talked with Jamie about the sides of doing business

August 6, 2019 | Julian Anderson
Change does not come easy to the A/E/C industries, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t challenge our thinking about the best ways to do business. The needs of the present (and the future) are unlike any we have previously faced.

by Nirva Fereshetian
Technology plays a critical role in what a firm can accomplish today It is now the framework to distinguish firms and their value propositions of enhancing processes to deliver more insightful services in shorter time frames. It has an impact across the board, including on how we do business development and recruiting...

by Bob Fisher
Irrelevance is the bête noire of professional service firms. In the past two decades, we have seen the rise of BIM, generative design, digital twins and other technologies that are fundamentally changing the design process and construction documentation.

by Alexia Lidas
Foreword: In November 2018, one of Australia’s leading offsite manufacturers in the residential market, Strongbuild, went into voluntary administration. In response, DFC Australia

by Janet Simpson
When I stepped into the role of president of tvsdesign in January 2017, I was only the third person to hold that position since we opened for business in 1968. Having been a leader at tvsdesign as a studio principal

by Dr. Nora Wang
In 2015, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) research facility, conducted a study for DOE on buildings of the future and developed a vision framework.

by Mark Farmer and David Ronksley
David Ronksley—managing director of C2R Consulting (a DFC Australia member firm)— talked with Mark Farmer, founding director and CEO of Cast Consultancy, about the future of construction. This is part two in a two-part series

June 18, 2019 | Jesse Devitte

As a venture capitalist, I believe creating a more sustainable environment is an investment opportunity that is not only profitable, but necessary for our future. Our physical world is under increasing pressure, and not living sustainably now will perpetuate future problems.

by Joel Pennington
Up until now, we in A/E/C have spent our careers working through a layer of abstraction—a two-dimensional screen. We design and build something that is three dimensional, but the 2D screen acts as the interface between us and what we’re designing. Removing the 2D layer of abstraction...

by Troy Thompson and Dave Ferguson
A recurring question about any professional school is “What is the primary goal of the education process?” Are universities supposed to equip students with a foundational knowledge of a profession or are they supposed to prepare a student for practice and exploration?

May 28, 2019 | Ray Daddazio
Thornton Tomasetti is a 1,500-person E/A firm with the audacious goal to be the global driver of change and innovation in our industry. To accomplish this, we need to be ambidextrous. What that means is we need to focus on our current business and results while at the same time, make relevant bets to insure our future.

by Rives Taylor and Brenden Jackson
The design profession, in its many guises, is resolutely optimistic. For a designer, no challenge is so large that he or she can’t develop a solution that will both overcome it and enhance the human experience.

May 16, 2019 | Jim Cramer
2019 marks the 25th Anniversary of the Design Futures Council! Over the years, the DFC has grown a very strong legacy of leadership and transformational change. DFC’s leadership in key trends includes sustainable design, technology, process innovation, management and design, and international practice...

by Thom McKay
This is the first of a two-part exploration of how today’s architecture practices must transform to survive. Part Two focuses on issues related to people and culture.

May 9, 2019 | Dave Gilmore
2019 is the 25th Anniversary of DesignIntelligence/Design Futures Council. To celebrate this milestone, we wanted to honor Jim Cramer, the organization’s founder, and Dave Gilmore, the organization’s president and CEO. In this piece, we’re talking with Dave about what drew him to DesignIntelligence, how he got involved, his vision for the...

by Jim Cramer
Jonas Salk, creator of the polio vaccine and also my friend and collaborator, once said, “I feel that the greatest reward for a job well done is the opportunity to do more.” We have taken this to heart with Design Futures Council, and I believe this mindset has been the reason for its success over the past 25 years.

by Paul Doherty
So, we have arrived. That moment when prognosticators have said the design professions will need to automate in order to remain relevant and increase their value. Are you ready?

The DesignIntelligence 2019 Foresight Survey is both a looking back and a looking forward to the future of the A/E/C world. This context of the perspective of the past from the position of the present can perhaps give us insights into what’s ahead. 

January 3, 2019 |  Chris Stulpin
Discussions of diversity and inclusion have been taking place in our industry for years. But the question remains: are we making any progress?

The global business of design and engineering is complex, and not likely to get any easier. Within that context, DI Research presents the 2018 Multinational Design & Engineering Firm Fee Survey Report by DI Research.

In the 2018 International Energy Efficiency Scorecard, Australia has been ranked the worst nation for energy efficiency in the developed world.

It started out as a simple, straightforward idea: Let’s start paying attention to how we manage our natural resources, with an eye to reducing the accelerating contamination of our air and water, using energy more efficiently, and understanding the long-term implications of our consumption-based behavior.

How do we know if a building is doing well by the building occupants and the environment? Answering this question is tricky.

Water is the incredible common thread that connects our communities via food, power, manufacturing, environment and ultimately our health.

September 29, 2017 | Scott Simpson
What Schools Don’t Teach, but Should.

September 27, 2017 | James Patten
The rapid development of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies is propelling us toward a world where an ever-increasing amount of our experiences are mediated by digital interactivity. As this trend continues, the task of designing our built environment will be as much about designing the interactive experiences that happen in that space as it will be about form, program, materiality and so on. The fields of interaction design and architecture will become one and the same, and we’ll need to work across disciplines and cultivate new skill sets to design new buildings.

September 25, 2017 | Phil Harrison

These thoughts derive from a presentation I delivered a few years ago at the Design Futures Council Leadership Summit on Sustainable Design.
Are design firms doing enough ...

September 19, 2017 | Patrick Thibaudeau
Think about this for a moment. When the kindergarten students of 2017 are college freshmen in 2030, what will the world be like? Will they have a bright, clean energy well and a health-focused world? Will we have done anything substantially different so that they have a better future?

September 13, 2017 | Carl Roehling and Troy Thompson
SmithGroupJJR recently completed a successful transition of the firm’s senior leadership. Two key participants in that process continue the story, addressing the details of moving forward into the implementation phase and some lessons learned along the way.

September 5, 2017 | Scott Simpson
Every design firm suffers from the illusion that it is unique. While each one certainly has distinguishing characteristics, there are far more similarities than differences.

August 29, 2017 | Carl Roehling and Troy Thompson
Editor’s note: Leadership transition/succession is one of the most important issues facing firms today. This article is the first of a two-part series on succession planning.

SmithGroupJJR recently completed a successful transition of the firm’s senior leadership. Two key participants in that process tell the story of how they executed the smoothest transition in the firm’s storied history.

August 23, 2017 | Julian Anderson
As any student of history knows, the concept of sustainability is not new. It has been practiced in agriculture and forestry as far back as 6000 BC, when it was recognized that the success of future harvests was dependent upon crop rotation.

August 15, 2017 | Phil Bernstein
We sat down with technology thinker, practice educator and architect Phil Bernstein to talk about technology and the future of design.

August 9, 2017 | Lois Vitt Sale
The practice of sustainability has been built upon relativity in measuring, managing, and making improvements to the status quo. In large measure, the practice of sustainability is influenced by both local and federal policy environments as well as by market and economic forces.

August 3, 2017 | Lauri Goodman Lampson
Organizations interested in staying ahead of the curve are seeking transformative change. How can design innovation continue at its rapid pace without leaving end users behind?

July 25, 2017 | Katy McQuaid
cul·ture (klCHr) n: the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization

June 29, 2017 | Jim Cramer
We all know that the pace of change is exponentially faster than it has ever been. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Yet it can confuse and cause all sorts of misunderstandings. Sometimes the speed of change ironically leads to management paralysis. This paralysis develops in some people an intellectual or behavioral hesitation to embrace change. It is what keeps struggling organizations on the lower end of the value delivery curve.

June 20, 2017 | Carl Ganter
When we look back at the water planet—that most famous picture taken by Apollo 8 astronauts from the moon—we see beautiful, pristine blue, with swirling white clouds of vapor and massive caps of ice. And the first thing we seek when we look to the stars is for other circles of blue like us. A rare planet in the “Goldilocks zone” that has water … and maybe life. Perhaps Proxima Centauri.nasa-53883... But Houston, we have a problem.

June 14, 2017 | Bob Fisher
It is easy to believe that complex buying decisions are made primarily on reason, facts and numbers. However, evidence shows decision-making is far more complex. One can make a compelling case that in the end, emotions play a larger role than reason in business-to-business purchasing contexts. Such insights change the way that A/E/C firms should approach their brand-building and integrated marketing efforts.