Jim Walker, AIA
Owner / Principal Architect, Studio C (Portland)
SFx Oregon - Coffee and Collaboration
Small architecture firms occupy a unique and necessary role in our industry. (For the purpose of this article, a small firm is defined as having around 10 people or less but really it’s just a state of mind.) We’re nimble. We’re focused. We’re incredibly diverse. We’re everywhere in the state, within arm’s length of every project site.
Because of the essential role that we play, small firms have unique opportunities and some interesting challenges. The opportunities tend to stem from the entrepreneurial spirit that stimulated the forming of small firms in the first place. The challenges are often related to how small firms have fewer resources so firm owners have to wear so many hats. When you are HR manager, accountant, business development director, quality assurance guru, Project Architect AND primary production staff while also being the face of the organization, sometimes you can feel like you’re on an island. Sometimes you just need someone to talk with to share your experiences and ideas and to get a fresh perspective on how you’re doing things.
Since October of 2022, AIAO’s Small Firm Exchange (SFx Oregon) has been meeting virtually on Wednesday mornings at 9am. We call it the SFx Coffee Break. It’s a 45 minute online meeting led by Jennifer Wright, AIA, where we meet other people that own or work at other small firms and find ways to learn from and help one another.
Each meeting starts with a bit of networking. Everyone introduces themselves and what they often focus on as a business. While it may look like we’re just socializing, these get-to-know-you sessions have been very productive in helping people get comfortable with each other, ultimately resulting in at least one collaboration on a project between firms. Small firms are uniquely well suited to cross-firm collaborations and our hope is that the SFx Coffee Break can be a catalyst for many more such partnerships to come.
Once that’s all done, we have a weekly topic. We dig into the Topic of the Week where we’ve discussed such things as how to do community engagement, fire resiliency, accessibility, and the design of smart building envelopes. Next week’s topic is:
“How to Price Your Services”
This will be a discussion about the different methods that are used to establish a design fee or rate and the ways that your contract can help you to stay within your design budget. We suspect that it is going to be a lively discussion! (Learn more here)
Like all of our meetings, this discussion will be purposefully free-form in nature rather than a stiff class with a strict syllabus. As such, please be willing to share your wisdom, however experienced it may be, with the group. Ask some tough questions as well. Please also be prepared for the discussion to touch on adjacent and relevant sidebars. Those usually result in the following week’s topic.
This meeting can be whatever you want it to be. Just show up and help drive the agenda. It’s very easy and mindfully low-key. As mentioned, we’ve been meeting now for about 6 months. We’ve had folks from Bend, Medford, Eugene, Salem, and the Portland area joining in. We’d love to see people from other areas of Oregon joining as well. We have a reliable and diverse core group of participants that are eager to broaden the reach of the SFx Coffee Break and hope that you can join us Wednesdays at 9a.
I’m looking forward to having coffee with you.
Cheers.
-Jim