Scott Rose often hears that running a city is like running a business. But Rose argues that it’s more like managing a building project, with a wide range of stakeholders. With 24 years of experience in the building industry, Rose, currently a principal in the Portland office of architecture, engineering, and planning firm DLR Group, says that he’s uniquely qualified to be elected the city’s next mayor in the May 2012 primary. “A person with an architectural background has the great insight of being able to look at the project and see which stakeholder is missing,” he says. If elected, Rose would like to forge business–school district partnerships to offer students educational opportunities and career assistance in growing technical fields. Running for office tends to make candidates more socially conscious, Rose says, a side benefit that has helped influence his practice.
When the AIA’s Central Valley chapter was asked last year to join Region Builders, a political action committee that includes builders, engineers, developers, and contractors, the chapter’s board had one major concern: What happens if the PAC takes a policy position that architects can’t support? Region Builders agreed that in such cases it would either find consensus or take no position. Bruce Monighan, AIA, principal of Monighandesign and the chapter’s PAC board representative, says that the coalition successfully advocated for lower impact and permit fees in Elk Grove in 2009 and 2011, which spurred Rancho Cordova officials to pursue similar legislation. And now that Sacramento has adopted an online submittal process for building plans, the PAC plans to advocate for it across the entire valley.
Benedetto Tiseo, FAIA, president of Livonia, Mich.–based Tiseo Architects and chair of AIA Michigan’s Government Affairs Committee, knew he needed to get his fellow AIA members engaged after a 2006 decision by the Michigan Supreme Court increased the statutory period during which plaintiffs could file claims against an architect from two to five years. Because both engineers and surveyors are licensed under the same statute, the architects partnered with a group of organizations called the Architects-Engineers-Surveyors Legislative Committee to amplify their voice. In September 2011, after five years of lobbying, the coalition succeeded in getting the state legislature to pass SB 77, which restored the statute of limitations for malpractice by architects and engineers to two years.
If, after decades of turf wars, architects and engineers in Texas had come to resemble the Hatfields and McCoys, both sides finally ended the feud last year, when a battle about whether engineers could provide architectural services reached the state legislature. The Texas Society of Architects (TSA) and its 2011 president, Dan Hart, engaged in months of negotiations with lawmakers and engineering professionals, culminating in a successful resolution: Architects must be involved in designing buildings for human use and occupancy, language now included in the engineer’s practice act. While TSA executive vice president James Perry says persistence and calm were key to the negotiations, the association’s robust grassroots lobbying efforts and aggressive campaign to educate state representatives about the issue ensured a favorable outcome.
When she met with Pennsylvania lawmakers to oppose recent legislation that would have allowed interior designers to become licensed, Paula Maynes, AIA, a managing member and principal at Maynes Associates Architects in Pittsburgh, had a few compelling arguments to make. Licensure is designed to protect the public’s health, safety, and welfare. But no evidence exists that designers’ work in any way endangers members of the public. Moreover, she argued, buildings are an integrated whole: You can’t separate the interior from the shell. Maynes cited as examples the State Capitol in Harrisburg, with its fantastic building shell, rotunda, and murals, all comprising one unified form; and Wright’s Fallingwater, famous equally for its interior and exterior. Maynes and fellow AIA members succeeded in keeping the bill from moving out of committee.
Carl Elefante, FAIA, principal of Washington, D.C.–based Quinn Evans Architects, says that proper planning efforts, incorporating sustainability, affordability, and sprawl repair, are essential to ensure that the future of Montgomery County, Md., remains bright. Several years ago, when the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission began to overhaul the county’s 1,000-page-long zoning code, Elefante and other architects from the AIA Potomac Valley chapter joined the commission’s Zoning Advisory Panel to contribute to the revisions. The chapter also hosted a program in February attended by about 50 area architects and planning staff, and asked them to solicit input from colleagues and neighbors. In March, they’ll report back with recommendations and participate in the political discussions about the zoning rewrite.
After a spate of recent natural disasters, architects in many states realized that they needed protection from civil liability as they aided recovery efforts. In 2006, the Alabama Council of the AIA, along with the American Council of Engineering Cos. of Alabama and other organizations, helped persuade the state legislature to pass a Good Samaritan law that provided 30 days of protection after a disaster. But when a string of tornadoes struck Alabama in April 2011, the architects realized that 30 days wasn’t enough, says Larry Vinson, the council’s executive director. Many of the affected communities remained in recovery mode. The organizations returned to the legislature, which in June extended the protection to 90 days. That allowed AIA-trained architects to perform necessary building-safety assessments before reconstruction work.
Joseph Aliotta, AIA, a principal at Swanke Hayden Connell Architects, once wasted too much time getting projects approved by various New York City agencies with overlapping and conflicting regulations. So Aliotta, the 2012 AIA New York chapter president, joined his colleagues to pressure the city to streamline the approval process. Their lobbying helped persuade the building department to adopt the “Get It Done. Together.” program, which enables architects to meet simultaneously with every stakeholder necessary to secure a project’s approval. Since May 2011, the program has generated more than 1,400 approved projects and greater than $1 billion of economic activity, according to the mayor’s office. It also led to the creation of the Development Hub, a plan-review center that will allow architects to submit construction plans digitally and resolve issues with city officials virtually.
When a staff architect at the Georgia Department of Education needed urgent feedback about a department proposal to adopt standardized school-building plans last July, he called AIA Georgia executive director Marci Reed. She sent the architect an AIA white paper and memo about the drawbacks of such plans, leading the department to drop the idea. AIA Georgia had first established itself as a trusted resource for the department in spring 2011 when there was pressure to increase the use of one of Georgia’s largest outputs, timber, in school construction. The AIA chapter agreed to convene an impartial task force to explore the issue, and two members of the board, both with experience in K–12 design, as well as the AIA chapter president, offered their insight and perspective. Though the issue remains undecided (the task force is still pending), the chapter made itself known as an authoritative source.
The qualification-based selection process for design services on public projects has worked well for decades in Florida, says Vicki Long, Hon. AIA Florida, executive vice president and CEO of AIA Florida. The law, called the Consultants’ Competitive Negotiation Act (CCNA), enables public agencies to select the most qualified architect for a project, instead of the lowest bidder. But last year, a bill that would have injected pricing into the act—likely creating bidding wars for projects—came closer than ever to passing when Gov. Rick Scott, R., helped lobby Senate Regulated Industries Committee members to move it forward. As part of a call to action, AIA Florida members virtually shut down the phone lines and inundated inboxes of committee members, Long says. The committee killed the bill. Factual information from constituents, she says, “is the ultimate weapon.”