7:00 am Coffee & Registration

8:00 am Chair’s Opening Remarks

  • Jeanette Shaw Director of Quality & Sustainability, Powers Brown Architecture

Building a Culture of Quality

8:10 am Cementing Quality as a Cultural Goal Rather Than Policy Driven Process

Synopsis

  • Promoting personal integrity among designers’ work as a means to encourage an increase in quality at an institutional level
  • Building Quality Champions: Preventing the compromise of quality checks through  active team engagement in quality, emphasized by project managers
  • Working with firm leadership to create personal goals and development targets that reinforce consistent quality implementation 

8:50 am Is Clash Detection Enough? Advance your BIM Quality Program with Solibri

  • Lauri Luoma Enterprise Business Manager, Solibri, Inc

Synopsis

  • Communicating the importance of BIM Quality to project teams
  • Defining and establishing Quality standards for your BIM
  • Implementing comprehensive Quality checks beyond clash detection throughout your BIM workflows

9:00 am Audience Discussion: Securing Senior Leadership Buy-In to Lay the Foundations a More Successful QA/QC Program

Synopsis

  • Identifying the best metrics to support your business case for increasing resources to your quality management program
  • Educating senior leadership on the long-term benefits, such as saved time and money due to a higher upfront quality, and therefore less RFIs during construction
  • Discovering the most impactful actions leadership can take to promote firm-wide buy-in

9:40 am Morning Refreshments & Speed Networking

Maintaining a Quality Focus

10:20 am Integrating Quality into the Daily Operations of Project Teams to Ensure Consistency in Adoption

  • Stuart Hendricks Architect, Director of Quality Control, TETER Architects and Engineers

Synopsis

  • Benchmarking best practices that help integrate QA and QC into the natural design development process
  • Finding ways to keep Quality front of mind despite conflicting time and cost pressures
  • Building stronger integrations between Quality and Design personnel to be seen and utilized as a positive resource for technical knowledge and learning 

11:00 am Panel: Adapting Design Workflows When Working to Compressed Schedules to Prevent Quality Being Marginalized

  • Jillian Lanser Vice President - Deputy Quality Office Director, HDR
  • Kim Wilson Owner/Principal, Quality Director, Holst Architecture

Synopsis

  • Supporting teams to prioritize the most important aspects of design documentation to prevent large mistakes or omissions
  • Identifying areas of the quality process that can be dialled back, better integrated or redacted to shorten traditional timelines
  • Evaluating other areas of the design process where time can be saved or activities reworked to ensure there is still the appropriate amount of time for Quality activities
  • Understanding how software can be used to expedite quality execution

11:40 am Navigating Change When Introducing New Tools & Processes to Maintain Buy-In & Ensure Adoption

Synopsis

  • Establishing a consistent procedure for the introduction of new QA/QC tools
  • Developing a manageable roadmap for project teams on the integration of new tools into existing workflows
  • Building effective feedback loops to ensure the continuous improvement of new tools being adopted 

12:20 pm Lunch Break

Tracking Quality

1:20 pm Case Study: Exploring Strategies to Track Process Implementation & Ensure Continuous Improvement of Your Program

  • Jim Hanna Former COO & Director of Quality Assurance at The Preston Partnership, The Preston Partnership

Synopsis

  • Finding ways to track quality implementation without lots of additional work for teams
  • Working with design leadership to reinforce the importance of data collection and to continue to improve data input
  • Reviewing data collected to identify areas for improvement

Leveraging AI & Technology for Quality

2:00 pm Panel: Benchmarking Strategies to Ensure Effective Implementation of Your Program Without Creating a Culture of ‘Policing Staff’

  • Jim Hanna Former COO & Director of Quality Assurance at The Preston Partnership, The Preston Partnership
  • Brian Kaplan Principal - Quality, CannonDesign
  • Robert Karow Director of Technical Services, Quinn Evans
  • Kim Wilson Owner/Principal, Quality Director, Holst Architecture

Synopsis

  • Maintaining a healthy working relationship between Quality and Design leadership to gain honest feedback on Quality implementation
  • Mitigating communication challenges to effectively provide feedback on the gaps in teams’ work
  • Benchmarking approaches to track quality implementation when you don’t have an extensive auditing system

2:40 pm Empowering Staff to Harness Technology Effectively, Without Over Reliance or Complacency to Minimize Design Errors & Subsequent RFIs

Synopsis

  • Ensuring universal understanding of the limitations of software and the role of the responsible architect
  • Increasing resources for training on advanced design software, without taking away from designers already busy schedules
  • Maintaining an architect’s practical skillset in the face of technology that has the power to automate tasks

3:20 pm Afternoon Refreshments

3:50 pm Panel: Exploring How AI Can Be Used to Improve Design Quality & Increase the Efficiency of Your Teams

Synopsis

  • Figuring out where the value lies for AI in Quality Management, helping to increase accuracy, speed and higher quality work
  • Gaining control over vast amounts of project data to enable effective application of the technology
  • Addressing the challenges of using AI in architecture, including the potential impact on professional responsibility, licensing, and liability, and how you can mitigate these

Implementing QA/QC Programs

4:30 pm Bridging the Gap Between Design Documentation & Specifications to Improve Coordination of Teams & Reduce Inconsistencies

  • Michael Zensen Vice President Regional Quality Leader and CA Leader, CannonDesign

Synopsis

  • Overviewing the issues that can arise from having two separate teams create drawings and specifications
  • Encouraging early initiation of technical document creation to streamline development and enhance consistency
  • Harnessing technology platforms to integrate development of both elements and ensure coordination throughout the process

5:10 pm Utilizing Interdisciplinary Reviews (IDR) to Improve Design Collaboration

Synopsis

  • Evaluating traditional versus electronic review methods and software options
  • Enhancing interdisciplinary design collaboration for remote and in-office design teams
  • Exploring the advantages and limitations of parallel/concurrent processing and serial processing
  • Discovering common failures and best practices for interdisciplinary design reviews.

5:50 pm Chair’s Closing Remarks

  • Jeanette Shaw Director of Quality & Sustainability, Powers Brown Architecture

6:00 pm End of Day One