What does your standard day involve?
It's incredibly varied. There are a lot of meetings so it's a lot of interaction between different people including clients, internal teams and also some of the management team and project teams within the studio.
I can be in or out of the office, for example yesterday I was in Newcastle and did a lecture at the University and then tutored students for the afternoon.
The day before that I was in Canberra for the morning for an interview for a new project and in the afternoon had client meetings. It is exceedingly varied. At night time I usually sit down and do design work or think through projects.
What tools and software do you use?
I do everything by hand - mainly because what I'm doing is looking at high level strategic work so I'm not a high user of software. Some of the things we do use during the day are Word or Excel; pretty standard really, I don't use any CAD or any other programs.
What is the biggest challenge you come across in your day?
Time management. Just being able to find enough time to do the things as well as possible, so that's probably my biggest challenge.
Also because I want to spend time with people and work through projects, I just have to manage that and make sure that I create some time for myself to be able to fit in thinking work as well.
What training and education do you have?
I have an architecture degree and then in terms of getting to my role, most of my training has been on the job.
It's been through slowly progressing, starting from working as part of a team to leading a small part of a team to taking on leading an area of the firm and then I went on to set up the Melbourne office, establishing it and growing it.
I've had quite a varied series of roles within the practice over the past 15 years.
Most of my training has come from those sources, but we've also done quite a lot of leadership training within the practice with an external training partner, so that's been looking at team management, and looking at presentation and skills around communication, which are things that you don't learn at university.
Interestingly my business education has come from the corporate clients who I have dealt with extensively and learnt a lot from in terms of management styles and business culture.
What do you like best about your job?
Variety. That's the thing that I really thrive on. We have a great bunch of people that work within the studio and do really good work and that's really important to me - the quality of the work, the quality of the design. But also the variety of the different project types and learning new things- a new project area or sector area - I find that really challenging and exciting.
What is the biggest frustration in your job?
I don’t have too many frustrations because we have such a great team and great support so I'm not frustrated by that. It's probably more personal in that I wish I could do more!
What project are you most proud of and why?
There are a couple of projects that I'm proud of. One is the Bendigo Bank Headquarters which was the first major project that I led as project principal so that has a special resonance.
Bendigo Bank Headquarters. Image courtesy of BVN Donovan Hill.
That was a project that we did in association with another architectural firm but we had a very talented team working on the project and also an incredibly engaged client which made it rewarding.
I would also say the same for Ravenswood School for Girls in terms of having a great team and a really committed client body in the school who were open to new ideas and were always challenging us, so they've been really important projects.
Ravenswood School for Girls. Image courtesy of BVN Donovan Hill.
A fairly seminal project in my education and one that I have a fondness for too, was Campus MLC in North Sydney which we did in the late 1990's with a client called Rosemary Kirkby who was part of MLC.
It was probably where I learnt the most about the importance of consulting and engaging with the users into the design process. So that was a very important education project for me.
What are you most proud of in your professional life?
What I'm most proud of in a way is being part of the principal team that has developed the BVN Donovan Hill practice to where it is today.
It's rewarding to see younger team members come through and have a place where they can show their talents and work within a really good team environment to do the best work that we can. I think the evolution of the practice is something professionally that I'm very proud to be part of.
What is your biggest career challenge?
They're every day in some way; there is always a new challenge. One of the biggest things in terms of challenges is the changing workflow so I think sometimes having too much work or not enough work and that becomes a challenging process of how to manage that within a larger practice. When you've built all of these talented teams and then find that there isn't enough work to keep them going.
What is the biggest challenge facing your business?
Change. I think a changing business market and the effect of a post GFC world but also there is a high degree of international or global practices entering our market.
The landscape of the Australian architectural world is changing rapidly so I think they're the big challenges that we're facing.
The implementation of new technologies is also a challenge and the shortening of timeframes of projects in terms of clients expecting things faster and cheaper and that all means we need to re-design the way we deliver the projects.
Change is going to be the biggest factor that's going to affect us in the next few years. It has affected us so far and it's one of the things we've been very good at adapting to and it's also one of the things that will be pushed in the coming years.
