Buildings 2.0 Library
Conversations on the future of the built environment
81 episodes of the Buildings 2.0 podcast, each bound as a short book: the ideas, the numbers and the lines worth keeping.
Season 1, Episode 41 /Dec 26, 2024
Aligning teams with culture and leadership, part 3
Preston Smith, Integrated Projects
Dec 26, 2024 /The Business of AEC
Aligning teams with culture and leadership, part 3
Preston Smith runs BIM operations at Integrated Projects, where a team of architects turns laser scans of existing buildings into 3D models at industrial scale. Trained as an architect, he has watched the profession from both the studio and the production floor. This conversation, the third of three, is about why architecture shares so little, what studio culture quietly teaches, and how to build a firm that pays people what they are worth.
Preston Smith, Head of BIM Operations, Integrated Projects
In this conversation
Preston's case that the industry stalls when firms keep their methods to themselves, in a field that historically learned by copying what others built.
How Integrated Projects moved from scanning a building to a BIM model to downstream derivatives, so moving a wall or checking a code impact becomes an edit rather than a redesign.
The lesson that studio culture leaves behind: patience, respect for other people's input, and the constant tension between widening scope and narrowing focus.
His observation that most people judge a building without ever walking into it, and why designers should appreciate the decisions behind a building anyway.
I don't think that the industry goes anywhere without sharing the things that you're tackling.
Preston Smith
Chapters
The least open industry
Why a field that learned by imitation now shares almost nothing, and what that costs.
By the numbers
Annual value at stake if construction productivity caught up with the rest of the economy
Preston argues the industry stays stuck because it does not share what it learns. McKinsey put a price on the stagnation.
Source: McKinsey Global Institute, Reinventing Construction (2017) ↗What studio actually teaches
The habits of mind that architecture school instills, and how they surface later in leadership.
Expanding and narrowing focus
The push and pull between taking on more and doing less, inside a growing company.
Working with people, not alone
Why the best ideas came from collaboration rather than solitary talent.
Paying people what they're worth
Building a workplace that does not run on unpaid overtime.
Ninety-five percent of people never actually walk into the building. They're going to look at the building and make a judgment call.
Preston Smith
Takeaways
Architecture is among the least open industries: firms learn by looking at each other's work yet rarely share how they solve problems, and Preston argues nothing improves until they do.
The firms that became known as technology leaders did not master a single tool. They treated software, databases and pipelines as a support function: do something ten times, productize it, then do it a million times.
A sustainable practice is one that can pay people fairly without exploiting their hours, which requires designing the workflow as carefully as the building.
Now you can do it ten times, you productize it, and you make it into a million.
Preston Smith