Hafsa Burt is the President and Managing Principal of HB+A Architects, a firm focused on environmental sustainability and blending avant-garde design with a strong commitment to the bottom line. Hafsa’s approach to design and space management doubles down on reducing waste and improving workspace balance.

Hafsa is a frequent speaker on indoor air quality and how it relates to architecture and is considered an industry expert on healthy building practices. She has been awarded the title of ENR’s Top 20 Under 40 and the American Institute of Architects’ Young Architects Award.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • Hafsa Burt shares what inspired her to become an architect
  • Developing a building’s character with lighting and dedicated spaces
  • Hafsa shares her team’s ten-year study on airborne diseases and how it impacts airflow in buildings
  • What changes will architects be willing to make after a year of COVID-19 guidelines?
  • The future of workplace management and space design
  • Is the hybrid work-from-home model here to stay, or is it time for a new model?
  • How will businesses begin to reduce the global footprint?
  • Hafsa shares how to organize your work-from-home spaces for increased productivity and ease of mind
  • How can you learn more about the architecture field?

In this episode…

What do you think is most important: functionality or trends?

Over the last year in particular, companies are quickly reimagining their workspaces and beginning to utilize functionality features over inspiring design. Hafsa Burt, President of HB+A Architects, believes in designing environmentally sustainable buildings where dedicated workspaces marry intentional design.

In this week’s episode of Watching Paint Dry, host Greg Owens sits down with President and Managing Principal of HB+A Architects, Hafsa Burt. They discuss functionality over trends, environmentally sustainable buildings, and how COVID-19 regulations will change office floor plans. Hafsa also shares her tips for creating a better work-from-home office layout and how students can learn more about the architectural industry. Stay tuned.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by McCarthy Painting, where we serve commercial and residential clients all around the San Francisco Bay area.

We’ve been in business since 1969 and served companies such as Google, Autodesk, Abercrombie & Fitch, FICO, First Bank, SPIN, and many more.

If you have commercial facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area and need dependable painters, visit us on the web at www.mccarthypainting.com or email info@mccarthypainting.com, and you can check out our line of services and schedule a free estimate by clicking here.

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:03

Welcome to the Watching Paint Dry Podcast where we feature today’s top facility managers, property managers and property owners talking about the challenges and opportunities of managing hundreds of 1000s of square feet of real estate and how to beautify and improve their properties. Now, let’s get started with the show.

Greg Owens  0:31

Hello, everyone. This is Greg Owens with the Watching Paint Dry Podcast. And we’re continuing our series of talking to facilities managers, building owners, property managers, and all the support services and people that support this entire industry. I just learned the other day that it’s a trillion dollar industry, just the commercial side of being a facilities manager, which is a tremendously large industry. And this episode is sponsored by my company McCarthy Painting. It’s a painting company where we do interior and exterior painting throughout the San Francisco Bay area for both residential and commercial painting. The types of projects we get into we just did, we’ve done work for Chase Bank, Autodesk, Google, Abercrombie, and Fitch, H&M stores, and many, many others, you can find out more information by going to McCarthypainting.com, or info@McCarthyPainting.com. I’m excited to have our first architect on this podcast, and Hafsa Burt of HB+A Architects out of Castro Valley. And this will be fun, because you do interior design, project, project design, project management, brand design and visual design. And so let’s just get started. And welcome to the podcast.

Hafsa Burt  1:59

Hi, how are you?

Greg Owens  2:00

I’m good. And how are you been doing in this in COVID your family and you this time.

Hafsa Burt  2:06

So we are big on efficiency, anything that, you know, we’ve been using efficient tools for communication or production in cloud and off cloud for years. So it was a fairly smooth transition for both work and family. You know, it’s a small studio, but we are extremely efficient and very, very technologically advanced in our communication and production tools. We’ve been, you know, using them and communicating via Slack, etc. So it was fairly smooth transition.

Greg Owens  2:34

Yeah, and we were talking about this a little bit before we got on on air here. They came from my company, and a lot of ways except for that they kept us from coming into buildings for the first few months of this pandemic. And then, you know, we we transferred over to zoom and things like that to do walkthroughs if needed. But lately we’re allowed to go in, in buildings wearing masks and that kind of thing and compare that in some buildings, they only allow us to come in and only certain trades at certain times. Right? Yeah. daggering the schedule?

Hafsa Burt  3:04

Yeah.

Greg Owens  3:05

I’d love to hear how did you get into being an architect? Was this something that at a young age that you wanted to start or older,

Hafsa Burt  3:15

I’m definitely not older. So I was always very good at physics. And later, you know, when it was time to decide for college, I kind of knew that this would be a good marriage between science and the arts, because I started becoming like getting, you know, interested in the arts, especially sculpture and painting. And so early in college, I did two years of sculpture, I was just very, you know, curious by nature. And so this seemed like a good marriage between the science and the arts. And, you know, and and with architecture, you can create experiences facially, and I think that’s kind of special. And also, we were given a toolset in college that lets you solve problems and innovate and kind of, you know, invent things. And that was, I think it’s, that was intriguing, and I was good at it. So that was the beginning.

Greg Owens  4:08

I’m always fine. And I’m always interested in people that have are creative. Were you like, at a young age? Can you draw like rabbits, and they look like rabbits? And that kind of thing? Or was that not the case?

Hafsa Burt  4:22

No, it was definitely not the case. So I could build stuff. But I could not draw until I was about 1617. And then I got into drawing and now I’m actually pretty good at it. Yes. But I think in terms of skills, you can always learn and get better at stuff. And I am a huge believer that, you know, you can always you can always learn and get excel at anything.

Greg Owens  4:44

Yeah, that’s so true. Because I’m 50 and I’m learning to draw rabbits right now. So you can actually watch YouTube videos or my friend who can draw she she’ll walk me through like things and I’ll just draw them for just to you know, expand my own brain in a way.

Hafsa Burt  4:59

Good for you. Yeah,

Greg Owens  5:00

yeah, it’s been it’s been fun because I always thought it was something that, you know, Oh, I can’t do that kind of thing. But like you just said, you can learn and build upon these skills. Right?

Hafsa Burt  5:09

Yeah, yeah. And also in our field in the construction field, I mean, I’m sure you have the same experience we are. So left brain, right with the logistics of the scheduling, and, you know, the codes and everything. So with you picking up a new skill to draw, it’s opening up your right side of the brain. And so that, so that’s good

Greg Owens  5:29

that you’re done. That was the whole point was this, see if I can, like, you know, I have some time. And I’m sitting here between zoom calls and things like that, what can I do? Or if I’m on a zoom call that somebody is just talking, can I doodle? Yeah. And doodle in a way that sort of productive lives there, right. And I want to go back to because I really love this the way design is morphed and changed in my lifetime. In a phenomenally so much better, I think way. And you talk to you touched upon it a little bit is how the place makes you feel, right. And, and a lot of what you are doing these days is when you walk into an office, it’s like no, this this space is designed to be social. And this space is designed to be work. And I’d love to hear your thoughts on on that. And then where your thinking is going in this time of COVID Yeah, so

Hafsa Burt  6:20

I’m a firm believer in like exploring, you know, project types to see how we can make them different from the standard. So as an example, you know, so a couple years ago, we did a three storey medical office building in San Leandro, and it was repositioning of a commercial office space into you know, to suit the doctor’s need. And when you walk in, it looks it has this hospitality appeal, it does not look like a clinic, the lobby, you know, has this floating ceiling that match the counter and the lighting, you can do a lot with lighting. And you can do a lot with custom fixtures that sort of stablished the brand of that business. So it does have a hospitality feel. And it doesn’t feel as much as a doctor space. And I’m a firm believer in that. And we also did, you know, renovation of the first African American doctor in San Francisco Marion Health Center in Bayview, and it’s a 1950s building, we couldn’t do much to the outside, but when you walk in the inside, the colors are so warm, and the space is so open that it does not feel like a clinic. And it serves the impoverished community and Bayview. And it’s so you know, when you walk in, you feel good. And so I think with spaces, you can kind of affect the productivity of people, you can affect the mood of people you can, it’s great to walk into interiors where you don’t smell the pain, even after several years, because the designer or the architect thought about your other DLCs and just the emissions of paint products beyond the aesthetics and what it’s doing for the health of the occupants, both on the mental and the physical side. That is

Greg Owens  7:50

so true these days, because I know I when I was first starting painting, we used tremendous amounts of high voc alkyd paint, and it would clear out offices and things like that if we painted right, and now people hardly even notice it. It’s so much fun, even myself, like if I travel and I go to another country where they use they still use those kinds of paints, like Oh, wow. or blue or the glue and carpets or whatever the case may be because and that’s a big learning curve for you in the architectural industry, because there’s so many things that are off gassing that you had to start looking at. closer with. Yeah, yeah. So

Hafsa Burt  8:31

we started actually working on that in 2009 11 years. And you know, I did over 100 presentations all over the west coast of New York City to about indirect quality, healthy buildings and the effect of you know, just the choice of materials it has on your occupants health. And, yes, so and, you know, back then we were using Legionnaires disease as a, as a case study for airborne transmission of cases that happened in hotels and 1011 years later, people are talking about airborne tendencies of COVID with this pandemic, so yes, so this is something that we were, you know, discussing a lot for 11 years, and sometimes people were like, Oh, it’s not urgent. Sometimes, you know, we just fell on deaf ears, but it’s very relevant to how our buildings, you know, just contribute to our health and the health of the planet, of course,

Greg Owens  9:21

yeah, no, both of those. And then even like in this time of COVID, making the employees or helping the employees feel safe about the buildings they’re walking into, right that people are looking at all these things. I know that I’ve talked to a few people on the podcast from Europe. And Legionnaires disease is a much bigger thought process in their mind than it is here in California where we’re so it’s such a dry climate, and our buildings are built and they’re much much newer than something, you know, it’s built in Europe that’s much older. And so that’s been actually a major concern over there during this time that nobody’s in the building the system. distill work, keep up keeping all that stuff to keep it clean. Yeah, interesting. What are you seeing now that we’re almost into a year of this pandemic? What are you seeing from your end as far as like changes to the workplace from an architectural standpoint?

Hafsa Burt  10:17

So I think with the short term memory, people will still be, you know, working in a hybrid environment. And with that said, most people, I mean, most of the calls that we’re getting is for, you know, improvements to their workspaces. And we don’t usually do small scale residential, but on the commercial side, and retail side, like I have a client who’s opening up a third wave, you know, retail space in San Jose, and they are beginning to ask, okay, so how can we prevent airborne transmission if it if this is a high traffic, you know, business and so we are looking into solutions where you can put a heat filter with a booster fan in the mechanical system, and improve the air quality and operate h HVAC systems and fan only mode. Also, you know, distancing, I don’t think it’s going to go away anytime soon, social distancing. So it kind of helps do allow space in between occupants. So they can, you know, easily flow in a one way traffic kind of load kind of similar to how airports are designed for heavy circulation.

Greg Owens  11:16

Yeah, yes. more space needed in the retail industry. Makes sense. Right. Like, yeah, and you mentioned, third wave retail. I’ve heard of third wave coffee. Well, yes,

Hafsa Burt  11:27

it is a third wave coffee shop coffee, and oh, yeah, it’s under construction and should be coming up in spring. It’s a very cool concept.

Greg Owens  11:37

Yeah. Hopefully we get they still eat. Even even just outside, right. I know that was kind of sad to see them take away restaurant seating outside even.

Hafsa Burt  11:50

Yeah.

Greg Owens  11:51

But now though, now that we’re back. That’s good. And then the days here in the Bay Area are absolutely beautiful right now. So hopefully, people are getting out there and going see nice restaurants and coffee shops and supporting Yes, yeah. Well, they

Hafsa Burt  12:02

sit in a pandemic. I mean, basic epidemiology suggests that, you know, you do need to isolate and quarantine the sick. So I think in terms of like those precautions, the state has been actually pretty good, because otherwise we could have had pretty bad spread. Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Greg Owens  12:21

And I’m watching people’s behavior on a regular basis. And yeah.

can see a lot of slips right here, where it were a resident company in a commercial company, that commercial industry has done a phenomenal job of like, really, following the rules and everything. I watched residential, it’s like they were having Christmas parties.

Hafsa Burt  12:43

Yeah, not get,

Greg Owens  12:44

it doesn’t matter what political views they had. They still had friends and family over and that kind of stuff. Right? Yeah. Yeah. The people. I think people feel like others are risky, or high risk, and but they’re close friends or not. But it’s like, it’s a numbers game. Right?

Hafsa Burt  13:00

Yeah. Yeah. I think we just need to listen to the science event. And, you know, take precautions, because that’s the same as the long room.

Greg Owens  13:09

What’s your and then once looking at the future here with COVID, and this sort of hybrid of people coming back to work in that kind of thing? What are you seeing? or What is it like, as far as the space is designed, though? Right, like, you know, there’s, there’s been a lot of push to having these collaborative workspaces and big open areas inside offices, or we do a tremendous amounts of dry erase paint, where people can collaborate on wall, what do ya What do you see coming in the future, as far as the designs go?

Hafsa Burt  13:43

So going back to, you know, high circulation areas, I think airports already set a pretty good example of one way traffic, and then you know, as though as many of touchless fixtures and automatic doors, you know, high high touch surfaces need to be eliminated. And, yes, space always helps, because people can socially distance. And I mean, zoom has a pretty good whiteboard feature that you get that helps with collaboration, we use it all the time in our client meetings, and also, you know, collaborate with each other. So I think in terms of like, you know, short term memory experience, people would prefer that it was like less touching and more distancing. And again, the the heap of filters in a track or the booster fan as a good way to keep the indoor air clean.

Greg Owens  14:29

That’ll help with the smoke in everything we had for going into fire season again.

Hafsa Burt  14:34

And that’s the other thing you know, at some point, our indoor air quality is pretty bad. But then at some point, when we hit the fire season, it’s gonna be the outdoor quality’s gonna be equally bad. So we I think we will start seeing more and more of these filters actually being implemented. Right now, the codes bandaid on a Merv 13. So, enviro 16 is a better option, but I think eventually we’ll start seeing more and more April filters with a booster fan. Even if it’s not mandated by codes,

Greg Owens  15:03

then what does Murph stand for? Again? You

Hafsa Burt  15:06

know, I don’t remember off the top of my head, but I can’t.

Greg Owens  15:09

But it’s a significant difference between the numbers in that. And then, and then I have the filters beyond all of those in a way. Yes,

Hafsa Burt  15:17

yes. Maurice 13 is mandated in March 16. a little better. But March 16, does require a booster fat,

Greg Owens  15:26

right? Because it’s pushed it the airs coming through much, much finer and finer filters, it needs to have some extra. Oh, yes. Through that, and especially with a HIPAA. Yes.

Hafsa Burt  15:38

And also, I mean, in airplanes, they have, you know, a higher exchange rate, air change rates. So that would help to, right. I think MVP guys are gonna be our best friends in terms of, you know, coming up with innovative solutions to say, Okay, what can we do in a space?

Greg Owens  15:54

Right, right. And yeah, I’m really hoping I keep looking for case studies. And I like some of the ones I’ve seen so far, but so few compared to like, what I was hoping for during COVID, right, like on airplanes and things like that. There’s been a few, for sure, right? Showing that. But it would be nice to see some for like coffee store or something like that, like they go in and they test surfaces, and they test things and say and test the air. There was one case study out of Korea, I think one girl that never met the other girl who had COVID, approximately 20 feet away got COVID, because of the way the air was traveling through the mind, is the theory. Right? Yeah. And Korea really, really tracks this things. I mean, they were able to track it both from their cell phone data, which they have access to, and the CCTV that they had on on the restaurant, right, that these two guys actually got too close to each other. But it was the only person on this particular island that had COVID and spread it to this other person. Yes, this theory goes. But you know, there’s a lot to that I was just talking to a friend from from New Zealand, a kiwi, he was saying that, you know, they’ve had actually gotten it down to zero cases in New Zealand, except then they got like one case from an African strand of COVID. And they think it came through packaging,

Hafsa Burt  17:15

like my God,

Greg Owens  17:16

is there an island and they’re really, really super strict, like you fly in and they escort you to a hotel room, right, like for 14 days

Hafsa Burt  17:23

for 14 days. Put it in writing now. Yeah, I think with the variants and everything, I don’t think masks and social distancing. And just, you know, General hygiene habits are not I’m just not going away. I was in, I was traveling in Hong Kong, right after SARS. And I noticed that they had washing stations everywhere. Yeah. And people wore masks, because they have dealt with it for so long that you know, it’s it’s a good base to learn from them and see, you know, what are the practices just in terms of hygiene, we can get crazy, but I think with globalization is just going to get worse and worse instead of any better.

Greg Owens  18:01

Yeah, I think so too. I think, you know, I think in Asia, like you just said, they’ve been subject to this so much more often. So they have more way more protocols in place, and we’ll start to see those come to this country for sure. And and it’s gonna be a slow, it won’t be an end, like the pandemics over and it’s like a victory party. It’s gonna it’s gonna be a very slow, long, gradual sort of, and people’s comfort levels, right? Yeah.

Hafsa Burt  18:28

So the the filter thing that you were asking earlier as minimum efficiency reporting value, so how efficient the filter is, and how far is this? Of course, the best right now? Right?

That’s what the sport is going to. So if you want to fly somewhere, make sure you’re taking a boy.

Greg Owens  18:47

That’s good to know. I wonder why it’s different. Do you see any other trends just in general, within the InDesign and that kind of thing going forward?

Hafsa Burt  19:00

You mean outside the pandemic,

Greg Owens  19:02

or just in general, just sort of like color trends or workspace trends or things clients are sort of looking other things that clients are looking at?

Hafsa Burt  19:11

So I think, I mean, not necessarily in terms of clients at some point looks only good so far. Right? So I’m a firm believer in functionality and also what your space or product is doing for the environment. And we’ve been proponents of, you know, green building and for 20 plus years, so I think electrification is going to be a big trend and just to provide the infrastructure so if somebody does choose to switch to all electrical efficient appliances, that’s going to be a huge thing. In terms of aesthetics, that’s mostly subjective, you know, driven by the branding that the client is looking like for this coffee shop in their retail space. You know, he has a very minimalist tastes so it’s mostly you know, like the the Snow White, some blunt colors that create this more of a minimalist space. I think color anesthetic is very subjective. And when we work with clients, we end up you know, listening to them and what in the statement or the story that they’re trying to tell. But in general, I feel like there’s a big awareness of like, in the next nine years as we do need to reduce our GHG below 65%, just to even meet the Paris Agreement goals. Yeah. So I think we’re gonna see more and more awareness toward just screen building and efficiency and reliance on renewable energies, zero carbon zero energy spaces and products. And if anybody’s not doing it, I don’t I think at this point is just ethically wrong,

Greg Owens  20:36

though you can always was just, we were talking yesterday about this, then you can still see in San Francisco, none of the buildings are being used very much. And there’s still a tremendous amount of just lights on. something so simple in this day and age that you think could have been, you know, there are some old buildings, but not that it’s not that difficult. And in no time, right,

Hafsa Burt  21:01

automatic shut off, well,

maybe they’re relying on occupancy sensor, and there’s no occupants. So there’s like, okay, the lights are off, bro. Right. So it’s a sad, and I think consumer behavior of just, you know, awareness of your carbon footprint and where it fits in the bigger picture, it’s, it’s just so important. And advocacy is needed, because a lot of people are just devoid, like, if the lights go on where the water is coming from the faucet, they’re just not they just don’t care about the bigger picture of these resources. And where it’s coming from. And even with like the ordinances and the mandated codes, they’re so tight to new building construction, that you start worrying about the existing building sector, because that’s such an energy sponge. And yeah, like, we need to retrofit existing buildings to be more energy efficient for lighting. And, you know, just for general use

Greg Owens  21:49

that HVAC for sure to write like,

Hafsa Burt  21:52

yes,

Greg Owens  21:52

it’s such a complicated thing in an old building to get right. Yes,

Hafsa Burt  21:57

yes.

Greg Owens  21:58

And I love that you kind of touched on it, and I want to just explore it a little bit more was the, when you go into a new meet with an owner that has an idea for a project, and they have a brand and a company and and a culture, how much time do you spend on that front end of trying to get an understanding of the culture, the brand, and what they want the space to look like, and sort of integrating all those pieces, right, kind of like what you’re saying, like about the minimalist, like the owner of the coffee shop is a minimalist sort of person, and his brand is a minimalist, and then you had to deep dive into I would think more and more about what that means to him.

Hafsa Burt  22:40

Yeah,

so first, conversations are very important, because it sort of tells you, you know, I mean, it’s there, it’s, it’s their baby, it’s their, you know, it’s their, it’s their story. So you do have to listen a lot to what they’re trying to do. And then also focus on the budget concerns and see, you know, how you can make it better. Like in terms of the coffee shop, he came in with a very solid idea, like he had pictures and ideas. And he was he came in with a very solid idea that this is what I want. And if there was room for me to provide input I did to make it better. And, but most importantly, it was his story. And it’s his, you know, his child, and we wanted to make sure that it’s a successful, you know, successful project in terms of like that medical office building, I was speaking to you about that we gave him a hospitality touch. It was, you know, I knew that he wanted to modernize the space. So when we came in with that hospitality approach for the common areas that was entirely lost, because I thought it went when people go into I compared it basically to their older space. And it was very, you know, very medical office building look like with like the fluorescent fluorescent lighting and you know, the dark colors.

Greg Owens  23:51

Not very comfortable.

Hafsa Burt  23:53

No, no. So you’re basically looking at your watch, okay, I’ve got my 15 more minutes, but my appointment, how can I get out of here?

Greg Owens  23:59

Why is the doctor late? I want to get out of this space.

Hafsa Burt  24:04

And I wanted to give it more of a hospitality field. So patients don’t, first of all, when they come in, they get in a better mode. And they’re like, Oh, I don’t mind spending time and space and my mood is better. Even if I’m coming in to see a doctor. I think that’s important. I think experiences in a space are very important. And they can be easily created with lighting with color and with fixtures like furnishings that are sort of, you know, just married to this space in a way that is probably unconventional.

Greg Owens  24:35

Yeah. And it’s so true because I know that my place of work because because I’m out in the field all day long looking at projects and that kind of stuff, my place of work with coffee shops, right. And so I would, I would find, you know, it was great Starbucks sort of led this trend of like bringing the limit like having a living sort of room feeling in a lot of ways to a coffee shop and I can spend some time in there. But then I watched how like different brands change that dramatically. Phil Being one of them completely changed, like I would seek out a Phil’s over a Starbucks because of the sense and feeling and you’re just bringing that up right now is like it would draw me to it, I want to go over here and work. I mean, of course, their coffees way stronger too, but their environment was so enticing. And for some reason the type of music they were playing, and the layout of the chairs and the tables and things like that made it so that it was like much more of a place that I would spend time at and work at. Yeah, I would think that comes into play all the time when you’re looking at when you’re,

Hafsa Burt  25:35

I think just by changing lighting, and you know, warming up the space. And you know, just like furniture placement and how the spaces whether it’s open or whether it makes you feel claustrophobic. So I’m very well more than visual, I react more to spaces with how I feel in them. And that’s been like, since forever since like, I think even before college like I would go into a space not like that needs a window. So I think I can easily manage, like imagine myself walking in a plan, if it was a drawing and see how I can make it better in terms of more, being more open and more inviting. And just more livable. If you have to spend you know, as a as a patient, you go in for like, maybe an hour, but as a doctor, if you’re stuck in that space for like eight to nine hours, then you know, you just need to feel like okay, I can probably last here for like nine hours and be productive and happy and

not in a bad mood.

Greg Owens  26:29

Yeah, I didn’t even think about that how much it affects the doctor and nurses and things like that. And that’s so important because you want your doctor feeling good all day long, because he’s going to be in a better mood and, and more likely to find what’s going on with you.

Hafsa Burt  26:43

Or even a worker, you know, he’s got exposure to daylight instead of fluorescent lighting all day, or just dark colors.

Greg Owens  26:51

Yeah, any advice for people that are working from home of how they can do a few things in their home office to make it feel better? Because I know there’s a lot of people that are working from home these days. And maybe you have some thoughts on that?

Hafsa Burt  27:05

Well, not

every body may have access to a view. But if they are in a habitable space, and they’ve you know, established an office space, which is not in a storage room or a garage, I’m sure they have a window. So just having a desk close to a window can help. You know, just get natural daylight rely less on artificial lighting. Just probably paint I guess for you brighten the colors with a lighter coat of paint.

Greg Owens  27:36

Yeah, the coat of paint everybody do that?

Hafsa Burt  27:38

Yes. And also, I think ergonomic furniture helps because if you’re gonna be spending long hours, you want to feel comfortable. And then you do want to do want to quiet so you can focus and you do want, you know, a private space where you can have calls. That’s very important.

Greg Owens  27:54

Yeah, yeah, I find myself in my truck a tremendous amount of the time now doing Oh, really work from there. Because we’re you know, we’re out in the field, we’re looking at projects. So yeah, I’m in the truck, I need a bigger truck.

Hafsa Burt  28:10

printer in your truck, too.

Greg Owens  28:12

I do have a printer. handy. We we can print contracts from there, you know, change orders, things like that. And then also, we do a tremendous amount of things with pictures, right? Like your picture, you take on the phone, and then you’re able to like, hey, this cup, this wall gets this color, this wall gets this treatment, that kind of thing to get it handed off to the painters actually visible. Right?

Hafsa Burt  28:34

That’s great. Yeah, do you have to So what are some of the Wi Fi mobile Wi Fi sources that you rely on?

Greg Owens  28:40

I have an at&t iPhone that has that I can create a hotspot and I just do that. And then I’m able to work from now the only problem with the truck is like I’m turned off to the side. So that’s not good. ergonomics. Right. So I try to move seats and jumping from one seat to the other instead of switching up or, or stand on or sit on the delegate, you know, and yeah, work. But again, I get opportunities for lots of fun. And as we wrap up here in the podcast, I love checking in around if there’s because there’s a lot of people out there that don’t know about this industry being the as far as like facilities management, property management, those kind of things or let alone I mean, or is it just more so I think people know about architecture and that kind of stuff. But any suggestions for people that are that are young or old, and they’re trying to change their careers and want to get into doing something some of the things that you’re doing, what would you suggest this day and age

Hafsa Burt  29:37

in terms of getting into the field of architecture or

Greg Owens  29:40

Yeah, yeah, either or what however, but architecture is your Yeah, you know, so that’s fine.

Hafsa Burt  29:47

I say I would say get an experience at like even high school level, there are opportunities to get an internship. It’s not really called an internship. It’s more like a mentorship in an architect’s office, just to see how it works. And even in a Real estate firm like development or property management, a lot of school offer mentorship opportunities. So just to see if that’s, you know, if it’s if it’s a good fit, if that’s your calling, and if it fits, and if it fits, you know, and if it is your calling that pursue it, pursue, like, take the, you know, take the electives that you need in my field, because it’s fairly creative, and it’s rarely changing all the time. I think curiosity always helps. And if you’re, you know, naturally a curious person, then you will be drawn to something like this, because because trends are changing codes, you know, just information because there’s such a load of information coming from every direction. And I think if it was a, you know, just be supportive of each other, because that’s extremely important. I feel I built my business on collaborations and teamwork. And I’m a strong believer that, you know, with collaborations you can actually achieve more than just, and that in a competitive environment, and I think as a team, you can go farther along. So if if somebody gets direct exposure to working in a team at an early age, like before college or early in college, then they can develop those skills. It’s so more important than just knowing AutoCAD or Revit. It’s just how you how well you work in a team and how collaborative you are, and how supportive you are of your team members. I think those are life skills. Right? Probably be good in any field.

Greg Owens  31:19

Any field practically, right? Like for sure. The same thing with our company, right? We’re a team trying to get the trying to get good work done out there.

Hafsa Burt  31:28

Yeah,

Greg Owens  31:29

yeah. You mentioned Revit, and AutoCAD any other software, AutoCAD is incredibly challenging to learn how to use. There’s other ones that are easier to any other technology and things that you found or apps or stuff like that, that you haven’t been, yeah,

Hafsa Burt  31:46

so we, I mean, AutoCAD Revit. Cloud features and also 3d Max, we use 3d max a lot for rendering. We’ve been we’ve used we are but not so much client communications. But you know, if I had to produce like a 3d panorama or rendering we we’d literally produce it overnight because of 3d Max and importing AutoCAD drawings. And that’s a good communication tool comes with a 3d panorama. You can even pull up your phone and show clients. Okay, this is what your room looks like in a 360 environment. So, yes, those are the common tools them which is Revit. AutoCAD, I think if you’re just starting out, just get into Revit right away, just because coordination is so much easier. And it’s very, it’s a smarter. Yeah, it’s probably a smarter software.

Greg Owens  32:31

It’s more intuitive, right? Like things come in, you think about it, and it’s right. There.

Hafsa Burt  32:39

It’s well coordinated. It’s well coordinated. Like, yeah, if you put it heights in the plan, it’ll show up on them in the elevations in itself. And you can invite teams to coordinate it to like you can have your mechanical engineer, the problem is that some of the consultants are still using AutoCAD. So you know, that’s where it sort of lags.

Greg Owens  32:56

Yeah. Yeah. And it’s interesting, because as you were saying about the VR, it’s like, so far, I’ve been lucky or not, maybe, maybe not. But I haven’t had to go that direction for our takeoffs and proposals yet, because I only have so much time to me personally, that I can spend on computers, you know, and it’s, that’s a challenging piece. But I can see 10 years from now that, you know, a bunch of our proposals and take offs and things like that. walkthroughs will be in a VR setting, right?

Hafsa Burt  33:26

Yeah, could be, easily.

Greg Owens  33:28

Technology is moving that way so fast. It’s unbelievable.

Hafsa Burt  33:31

Yes,

Greg Owens  33:32

the one this has been wonderful talking with you and about what your knowledge in the architectural and design fields. How would people find out more about you and your company and that kind of thing.

Hafsa Burt  33:43

So you can look us up on our website at hbaarchitects.com? And you know, we’re pretty active on our website. It’s updated regularly. Yeah, our contact information is all there.

Greg Owens  33:54

Okay, that sounds great. Thank you for spending time with us today on the Watching Paint Dry Podcast.

Hafsa Burt  34:01

It’s been a real joy so much. Thank you so much.

Outro  34:15

Thanks for listening to the Watching Paint Dry Podcast. We’ll see you again next time. And be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.

 

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