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072: Rethinking Procurement & Business Identity with Russell Curtis, RCKa
In this week's podcast, I interview Russell Curtis one of the founding directors of RCKa. Russell oversees RCKa's commercial and residential infill projects and is responsible for the delivery phase of the practice's work.
Russell is also a founding director of Project Compass CIC, a not-for-profit organisation campaigning for increased transparency and accessibility in public sector procurement in the UK.
In this conversation you will learn:
- How RCKa evolved into doing public work
- Why post occupancy evaluation and the life cycle of our buildings is so important in communicating our value as architects
- Strategies for how young practices can begin to win public work
This week's resources:
Book your 2020 Results and Vision call with Rion
https://www.businessofarchitecture.co.uk/2020-Results-and-Vision-call
RCKa
Project Compass
Concerning a lack of accountability, I was watching Grand Designs and from what I could tell, a lot of the award winning houses lacked a visible HVAC plan or legend standardization. is that a part of the reduction in quality discussed in this program or do the residents get so fed up with being left out of the “loop” that they turn to more experimental sources.
In this episode Russell was focusing on the reduction in quality particularly in public work as the architect becomes further removed from the procurement process (they are not necessarily involved after initial designs or building control ) and architects then lose connection with the end product and building and the end user. Whilst information maybe passed on – e.g specifications – those decisions can then get changed by someone else with no one monitoring or holding accountability for quality. The end user also is rarely involved in any the procurement process. Post occupancy evaluation for example becomes something critical for both architects (to improve their services and designs and also to celebrate and promote the successes) and for end users and it’s a stage that’s often neglected.