Weekend Reading

Data shows that Venezuela benefited greatly under Hugo Chavez. How does such a significant positive change of this magnitude get completely buried by the US media's dislike for a person?

How they made and moved the SR-71 Blackbird. Lots of pictures.

Wikipedia article on the General American accent.

More money, certis paribus, makes you happier. The evidence for this has been accumulating for the last five to ten years.

GMO opponents are the climate skeptics of the left.

The first images of individual atoms forming molecules has been produced, and they look just like the chemistry text book said they would.

Apathy Towards the NSA Leaks

I was at a bar that one of my friends runs near Wrigley Field when the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup. I hadn't considered that the area would turn into a full on mostly peaceful drunken riot. Not so bright in retrospect. I'll get back to this.

On the train there I read an article (worth reading) that outlined the blowback the US is beginning to experience from the rest of the world concerning the NSA leaks. It's intriguing because it's such a comprehensive non-US-centric view, and this isn't on the list of common talking points in the US. The main issue I and many people have had in reacting to the NSA programs is, what exactly does one do about it? Riot or demonstrate in the US? Not likely.

The crowds in Wrigleyville proved otherwise. The police can't control that many people, and if they tried to use violence it'd just bring more attention to it. The depressing part is that people will form en mass for hockey but not to protect the Bill of Rights, and I'm not bashing people liking sports. I just wish people gave a fuck about the world they live in. To be fair, it's not that obvious or easy as protests aren't planned for a specific time like a hockey game.

What's so strange about the whole affair is that the Obama Administration and Congress are walking in lock step on the matter; the first issue both parties have agreed since I can remember (wtf?). Obama mostly keeps talking about how he's going to extradite Snowden, but not a single person I've talked to wants this. Yet he keeps saying it as if to pacify. What we want is for you to stop acting like the Stasi, or maybe just keep your campaign promise (italics are my emphasis):

Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.

Update: Obama doesn't think this is a big deal.

Tumblr Update

A decent amount of my energy that I would normally devote to this blog has been going towards my Tumblr. I started it not knowing exactly what I wanted to do, but I think I have a clearer picture now. I've always used my photos as a sort of extension of my memory; basically a digital photo diary. To that end I've started to upload somewhat random photos once a day from the past. I change their post date to that of the day I actually made the actual. Maybe I could change the time too...

Here's the first one I added. I plan to start uploading some that are significantly older.

Links

The average compensation of architects, from the AIA. (ht: Jason).

Facebook and Twitter attract narcissists. Study.

The death of trees has been linked to increased cardiovascular and lower respiratory deaths.

Buy/rent calculator from the NYT. Very well done.

The tricorder is here. A small relatively inexpensive device called the Scanadu can now read your vitals.

A Studio Gang project, the Clark Park Boathouse, that I worked on the mechanical drawings for (geo-thermal exchange system, ventilation, cooling, etc.) is nearing completion.

Links

Turns out no one died because of the Fukushima Power Plant Disaster. In fact, no one even got radiation poisoning. A nearly perfect example of neglect of probability when compared to other sources of energy.

Finland gives all new mothers a box full of essential supplies. "It's a tradition that dates back to the 1930s and it's designed to give all children in Finland, no matter what background they're from, an equal start in life."

The Obama Administration now judges the negative externality associated with carbon emissions as 60% higher than last year. Climate change is starting to grow some teeth.

Humans of New York - the Chess Hustler.

A different perspective on the Obama administration "scandals" of the last few weeks.

Cornell West is classy as hell.

I've been ranting for a while now about how full adoption of solar will change our world. Well, the utility companies think so too.

Government Agencies Hiring Architects: Kind of a Waste of Time

Disclaimer: This post represents my views and not that of the firm I am employed at.

Recently the architecture firm I work for submitted what is known in the Architecture and Engineering (A/E) community as an RFQ (request for qualifications) for the City Colleges of Chicago's new Malcolm X College. An RFQ consists of sheets detailing relevant work that the firm has engaged in recently, proof that the firm is insured, forms signaling that the firm doesn't have conflicts of interest, financial statements going back several years, etc. You get the point. It's a lot of information. I was in charge of putting together the RFQ for my firm along with the fifteen other firms we partnered with.

The project itself is an educational facility that has a teaching hospital component and a budget of $251 million. My firm designed two of the three hospitals that Malcolm X College has a partnership with, so we're familiar with the area and its stakeholders. We specialize in healthcare, teaching hospitals, high rises, corporate centers, and higher education.

The A/E team that won the contract can expect to see maybe 4.5%-6.5% of the $251 million budget, so the design fee will be roughly $12-$15 million which gets split between more than a dozen professions - structural engineers, architects, geotechnical engineers, etc. It's the kind of money that allows you to expand your office and hire additional staff.

Submitting for these RFQ's is a gamble. They consume a lot of time and energy that could go towards billable work. I personally put in well over 160 hours for this proposal and there were multiple people who worked with me. The document we produced is 290 pages and was coordinated between sixteen separate consulting firms. The submission required multiple physical copies in addition to electronic copies that had to be couriered over to the CCC's headquarters. All of this is done at our expense. We aren't reimbursed for anything. I would conservatively place the cost to my firm, not including the cost to our consultants, at well over $10,000 and probably closer to $20,000 or more. To be clear, we are aware that this is a gamble and typically only go after jobs that we think we are highly qualified for and have a good chance of winning.

We were selected for a call back after the initial submission, so we had to produce yet another set of booklets and show up for an interview. This requires more preparation, more printing, and more hours. We then had a second call back that was followed by more questions:

"Does your firm have enough people for a job of this size?"

"We have nineteen people in our office and we've partnered with another firm that is similarly sized. We also plan to hire additional staff." And the truth is that today's software (BIM, Revit) is so powerful that really this project could be done by maybe less than ten people in our office if they worked on it full time. We've designed buildings that were many times this size (Water Tower Place, Prudential Plaza/Tower, Old Orchard Shopping Center, etc.)

"Your team is very diverse but what about your firm?"

Crickets. How do you tell a review committee that your firm went from roughly 65 people to nineteen in the matter of a couple years? Architecture is feast or famine and right now we're starving. We used to be diverse and to some degree we still are. We're just not the kind of diverse they're looking for.

It was announced (source) that Moody Nolan, a firm based in Columbus, Ohio, won the contract. Their Chicago office has nine people (related). They also happen to be the largest African American owned architecture firm in the US; a fact that both the mayor and CCC are very proud of.

Moody Nolan is qualified to do the work and I harbor no ill will towards them, but why did the CCC pick a non-Chicago based firm? Especially since they keep touting how many jobs the project will bring to the Chicago area. Why did they question our size if they picked a firm that's local office is less than half of our size? This contract is for design development and construction documents (the design was done by Canon Design) so it will have to be handled locally with feet on the ground. Why did they question the racial makeup of our firm if we exceeded the MBE/WBE requirement (25% minority, 7% female) by almost three-fold? Are you really telling me they couldn't find a qualified architecture firm in Chicago?

I call shenanigans.

Many of the RFQ's we submit for are to some extent a ploy. The agencies asking for them are largely going through the process to satisfy legal requirements, but then choose not the most qualified firm but the one that fits whatever profile it is that they're looking for. And that's to be expected, but don't drag us along and waste our time and money. We don't have any to spare.

After the announcement my firm had a very terse Monday morning meeting. We were told that five people would be laid off by the end of the day and everyone else's hours would be cut by 20%. Just fourteen more people and an almost century old Chicago architecture firm will be out of business.