Taco Bell: A Teaching Firm Treasure

It’s Monday morning and I walk through my office, sipping my cup of ambition, the ceremonious ritual of starting a new week. I see earphones on a blonde head above the monitor, bobbing to the beats. His nimble fingers are pounding another hip rhythm on the keyboard. The steady clicking of AutoCAD commands, a beautiful and gentle sound perfected and tuned over time, but he’s almost gone. Next Monday morning that keyboard will be silent.

I always feel this way when they find their calling and move on. I know their stay with me is only temporary, but he is moving on to a bigger and better life, going to work for the firm that he knows by heart because he has been doing their drafting for two years. He will walk into that big shiny office downtown with his new jacket and tie and begin to manage the projects that he started here under my instruction.

Such is my mission: to provide a halfway house for young architectural graduates, a first step in the direction of learning and licensure, today commonly called a teaching firm. In my younger days, this was called a “sweatshop”, a practice instituted by my parents’ generation of architects, which consisted mainly of minimum wage drafting work in a physically and emotionally unhealthy environment. Over time this “trial by fire” method has failed to meet the financial and organizational needs of the architectural community because it discourages interns and turns them away from pursuing architectural careers. Today many firms are looking overseas for the answer to their “talent shortage” caused by the recent exodus, but together the “kids” and I are looking to fill the void. Teaching firms, such as ours, are not a re-definition of architectural practice, but instead a support group to a broader, evolving practice. Here in the global economy, architects are no longer immune to the economic pressures of cost management and quality control. In order to compete economically, architecture firms must leverage technology to increase productivity by identifying and eliminating all non-value adding activities. Herein lies the greatest vice of our industry; the reason for our self-imposed decline in emerging talent. Training and mentorship, traditionally performed in an architectural practice, is defined by accounting and financial professionals as a “non-value adding activity”. As this activity is non-value adding, the cost of it cannot be passed onto the client and the firm must sacrifice profit margins to continue hiring and training interns. The most cost efficient option for firms today has been to cut the expense of training and mentoring and use internet/satellite technology to outsource all intern-level work to foreign firms. As firm principals turn away from foreign drafting firms and award contracts to us, they are relieved of the social stigma that comes from outsourcing work. Deep down they all know that they have a responsibility to mentor, but mistakenly assume that there is another firm out there who has enough disposable cash to take care of it.

Design architecture has followed suit closely behind the Information Technology industry, looking for cheap labor overseas to complete repetitive computer related tasks, usually consisting of design development drafting and construction documents. With the current NCARB requirements, an architectural intern must complete a minimum of 135, 8-hour days to satisfy IDP requirements for Construction Documents and 40, 8-hour days of Design Development. If there are no jobs available to address these requirements under a licensed American architect, then there will be no more replacements trained. Consequently, as a collective profession, we begin a vicious downward cycle that only a rational economic solution can break.

The question we have answered, as teaching firm, is how to break this perpetuous cycle and make the training of architectural interns a financially viable and sustainable business practice. Through our experience we have relied on the following business model:

• Use Geographic Location and Cost of Living Index to Competitively Place Our Firm and Establish Clientele. As a teaching firm we seek to form relationships with established architectural and development firms in high-growth, high inflation areas of the country that have severe talent shortages and a need for inexpensive, high-quality architectural services. We look to take surplus drafting work from Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Orange County, which will pay us anywhere from $24 to $50 for hourly drafting services. In these cities we could not survive on this billing rate, but here in San Antonio, Birmingham, and Tulsa, our rates exceed the cost of living index and provide us with financial stability.

• Build and Perfect Training Manuals, Exercises, and Resources. From our experience, we have developed an immersive system to rapidly train new interns. We have tabbed code books, graphic illustrations of details, checklists for sheets, and quality control procedures for every aspect of the project. We break tasks down into small, manageable parts that can be explained within twenty minutes, completed within a few hours and then verified for quality control and performance feedback. On their first day, employees are performing small billable tasks such as in-house redlines or interior elevations. By their first month they will be able to move between several tasks including noting and dimensioning and elevation drafting. By their six month mark, they will be able to challenge the validity of the system that trained them. As they learn, I gather continuous feedback from them to perfect the training process. For their Office IDP credit, they evaluate and re-write their training materials and then use these to mentor and train junior employees under them. The quicker that employees can be productively billable, the higher profit margin that we are able to realize as a firm. To us its not about charging the highest fees, it is about building a solid, continuously learning, and readily adaptable drafting “force” that can quickly divide and conquer projects. Our quickness and adaptability is our niche and as a result of this, we shorten our client’s deadlines and revision costs.

• Commitment to Innovation and Technology. Through training and “cheat sheets” we keep track of and implement all changes in AutoCAD and BIM technology platforms. Since we contract services for many different types of architecture firms, we are inundated with settings and styles. A crucial part of our training is to deeply understand the limits of the AutoCAD and AutoDesk platforms in order to match our client’s drafting styles, improve drawing transmission, and fix technical errors. Simply knowing how and what to draw is not the end of our training. Each person is encouraged to embrace the technology and become a CAD manager and developer and get involved with the creation of office menus, scripts, VB, Lisp, or other plugins. The intent is not to create professional drafters, but instead to create well-rounded individuals that can confidently solve problems as project managers and creatively streamline production processes.

• Tailor Experience Toward Completion of IDP. Everything we do paid and unpaid is geared towards obtaining IDP credit. As the firm principal, I organize optional Friday afternoon site visits to see local construction for Construction Observation credit. Sales representatives are invited to present various types of materials that are applicable to our projects and then we use the time for Materials Research credit. We also have a cooperative agreement with a small structural engineering firm and one intern at a time is “leased” to the engineering office for redlines and Engineering Coordination credit. We use our imaginations to stretch every minute we have into preparation for the license exams.

• Provide Superior Study Materials and Support for Concurrent ARE. A prerequisite for employment at our firm is a commitment to take the ARE exam, through either IDP preparation or taking the exams concurrently with IDP as the system is amended by NCARB. Our firm has purchased full sets of the most popular test preparation systems and employees can borrow them for free to study for exams. Exam fees are reimbursable and time is given off for testing. Within the office we host study groups, mock tests, and quiz sessions and every effort is made to encourage interns to take as many tests as possible. For us there is safety and strength in numbers and we are able to pull each other through the pain of studying to be able to take the tests.

• Job Placement. In order to prepare all interns for relocation to design or project management jobs, they are given the opportunity to prepare a portfolio of work completed. The hardest part of finding a job in an established architecture firm is proving that you have done and can do construction documents. Many firms that hire us agree to allow voided versions of their documents to be used by our employees in future interviews. By removing the logos/names/dates and other sensitive information and writing VOID over the drawing, employees are able to exhibit their accomplishments when they interview for management positions elsewhere. What we do here in our firm isn’t rocket science. No plumbing details or interior elevations ever are, especially of a Taco Bell. But to us, Taco Bell isn’t just a Friday lunch. It’s the 30 hours of construction documents that someone needed for IDP. What might be one firm’s trash work is a treasure to us because it means training and hours for licensure.

Why is “Taco Bell” training so important to us as a teaching firm? Much like a dancer practices repeatedly to the same music to become fluid in the steps, we train with Taco Bells. Each Taco Bell is similar in size and scope, yet different as it is placed into different parts of the urban fabric. Our client, a design architect who represents Taco Bell in large scale developments, has found it cost effective to contract the design development and construction documents of every new restaurant to us. “Taco Bell” training involves rapid cycle repetition and analysis of a well-defined building type. It only takes a couple “Bells” for an intern to become graceful at production. Once they master “the Bell” they move on to more complex repetitive exercises including production housing and apartments. As their confidence and problem solving skills mature, interns will progress to the construction of highly variable projects such as custom homes and themed shopping centers.

Even more important is the question we are often asked. Why does the “Taco Bell” cycle work? The answer is simple: it is fully self-sustaining. New interns come straight from design education to this firm to bridge the gap. Through regimental and guided training, we bring them quickly to billable status and then shortly thereafter to profit-producing status. When in “profit” status, they have reaped the full benefit of the teaching firm and they are ready to move on and find a management or design level job. Upon entering the market, they find that their market value is higher than that of their non-trained peers because their experience is quantitatively verified. Outside firms recognize and value the level of training from our teaching firm and actively recruit new talent from us as well as award contract work back to us. The more we contract, the more we train, and training moves interns forward in their careers. The resulting vacancies restart the cycle which will begin again for me next week.

Now on my last sip of coffee, I return to my desk. On my chair is the worn out box of General Structures cards. Those cards aren’t just a lucky charm for the person who passed their test yesterday. They are a part of everyday life here in this office, as is the blood, sweat, and tears from the transition process of school studio to professional office. In my e-mail I find a message from a firm looking to hire one of my employees and another to start work on a new Taco Bell. So the cycle continues. The kids will never get rich working for me, but then again, their hopes and dreams of practicing architecture are simply priceless.