It’s a phrase Annmarie and I use almost everyday.
“Go clean your room!”
Every parent of young children can relate. With those four words, we attempt to instill a sense of order and responsibility within our children.
On most days it seems fruitless and a waste of breath, but we know the lesson is being taught… and someday, in the same way lessons were learned from our own parents, the importance of “having a place for everything and everything having its place” will sink in and become a part of who they are as adults.
Or not…
Especially as architects, we know the critical element of order. Order creates a system of understanding and clarity. It becomes the basis on which other elements can be layered and built upon to become amazing works of architecture.
Today’s article is not about putting away your LEGOs though, or the repetitive modules of modern architecture. It’s not about creating the forms and space in which others work, live or play.
Today’s article is about YOU and the space in which you work. It’s about your studio and your systems of keeping it clean and organized.
Our Paperless Office
In November, we moved from a 2,000 square foot open plan design studio to a new 200 square foot home-based studio built at our private cottage in the woods of Chappaqua, New York. Our staff now works remotely from their own studios and our file server now lives online in the cloud. With that major shift in business model, comes many new ways of doing business.
One such change is our shift to a paperless office.
All our drawings are converted to PDF files and stored on Dropbox. Our project notes, business records and receipts live as digital reproductions on Evernote. Everything from our corporate documents to our personal health records, and everything in between, is digitally sorted and filed in a simple system of searchable folders. All the paper has been shredded and recycled.
With no paper in sight, the new studio is a place of order and efficient professionalism. I can find any document with the click of a mouse and have it available for review within seconds. Hours of time formerly wasted searching through piles of paper waiting to be filed, can now be dedicated to creating better architecture.
Or not…
The Reality of Our Paperless Office
The truth is that my paperless office has not been so successful. My tiny workspace still has several bound construction document sets stacked on the work table and short piles of paper, every stack representing another critical category of business or pleasure, dot the desk tops and line the edge of the floor.
The experiment of going paperless has not been a failure, but I have much work to do before it becomes a true success.
We have seen some progress.
Our project files have been migrated to Dropbox, and just this week I started entering project field notes directly into Evernote via my new iPad Air. Though the CDs on the table and short stacks of miscellaneous “important papers,” remain waiting to be scanned and sorted among my new system of digital folders.
The Plan to Go Paperless
Around the same time that our business model changed, our workload increased. We are busier than ever and my hat rack continues to grow. I have not had much time to shift to new systems and keep the new studio as clean and organized as it should be.
A plan must be activated. The goal of becoming paperless must become a priority. The hours wasted searching and the risk of losing critical documents are just too great. I am tired of living among the piles.
I have set three goals with deadlines in order to make this important business system happen. Here is what I am going to do:
Goal 1: Scan, file, shred and recycle all paper documents that enter the studio from this date forward.
This will stop the piles from growing and the new system will slowly become routine.
When we moved to the new studio, I purchased a Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 Scanner
Goal 2: Create record drawing sets in PDF file format for all active projects and file in a dedicated folder for RECORD COPY by August 1, 2014.
I currently have most of our active projects already converted and often access the files from the field via Dropbox. Its a pleasure to now walk the job site with an iPad in my hand rather than a heavy roll of drawings under my arm.
Goal 3: Hire part time administrative staff to scan, file, shred and recycle all existing paper documents (i.e. The Piles) by September 1, 2014.
The existing piles will be eliminated from my work area and documents will be easier searched and sorted.
My hope was to accomplish this task myself, but I think delegation is the appropriate business move to make here. My time is much more valuable completing other tasks and if I leave it on my own to do list, it simply won’t get done.
With these three simple steps, my studio will begin to shift. The piles of papers will disappear and my productivity will increase. A clean room is not only important from the practical point of view of getting things done, but also from a psychological point of view. Working in an organized and orderly space allows you to be more productive, grow a stronger business, create better architecture and live a happier life.
So… go clean your room!
I suspect your studio may look like mine. Us creatives tend to find ourselves among the clutter. Let me know what you think of my plan and share your own goals for becoming more efficient in the comments section below.
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Photo Credit: luminastock / 123RF Stock Photo
“Working in an organized and orderly space allows you to be more productive, grow a stronger business, create better architecture and live a happier life.” I agree with you Mark, 100%. In this digital age, we should devise ways of thinning out our baggage and becoming more efficient. It really feels very nice to be able to be in a meeting and all the consultants flip their gizmos when discussing a drawing because the drawings are online and accessible. It couldn’t get any better….long live paperless age!!!
should the already DWG , DWF format drawings be converted to PDF format?
Ghassan, The PDF file will allow you to view the drawings on any device and easily share the files with owners and contractors, whether or not they own CAD software.
Mark – I can relate to this as I have piles of CD’s or “blueprints” piled up on both sides of my desk. The dilemma is….when I get a call from a contractor, I do not have time to shift through computer files to quickly answer questions. Also, I have been working on some large house projects and like to have full size sheets – 30″x 42″ of the elevations on hand so I can reference them in detail. The darn things barely fit on my desk!
We have an office meeting today. I should suggest our office consider this.
Mark –
Great post. i think that it is admirable that you have taken things to this level. The ability to clean the both literal and mental ‘clutter’ from our work lives is also good for our non-work lives. I have moved in this direction as well but still have work to do to make this a complete reality. The use of PDF’s is a paramount as it is the most recognized format being used today with many software apps being able to read them.
Additionally, there are many software packages that are pushing this as well. The BIM authoring software that I use, ArchiCAD; developed an App called BIMx Docs that will take the full Model and the associated documents to the field. The contractors LOVE this as they can see the 2D view and open up the model to see where it exists.
As a profession, we are getting to a fully integrated workflow but we as practitioners have to make that all important mental shift as well.
“LIKE”
I actually keep very little paper of any sort and have managed that for many years. The next step is not so much in my hands: getting contractors and their subs to use tablets instead of 24 x 36 drawing sets. Not going to happen soon.
Hi Mark,
Great goals and a terrific topic!
We try to have a neat and organized workplace and as “paper free” as we can, however we wind up printing out what we need anyway, and wasting more time to do so rather than just having the paper files or drawings on hand..
I think some hybrid version is optimum for us…
Try to archive completed projects (drawing files) digitally and have active ones readily accessible.
With recent power outages at our office and no access to digital (our building does not have a generator), and then a horrible oil spill that closed our firm for several months forcing us to work with remote access, we were forced to eliminate a lot of our old paper files/sets of plans due to lingering odors.
We are already are missing those old paper files/plans and have to spend loads of time trying to re-create what was lost.
From our recent (awful) experience, I found It’s truly not so easy to search for that one piece of “paper” you are looking for when forced to go through hundreds/thousands of digital/scanned documents!
Sometimes “Old School” – opening a file and thumbing through is/was much quicker!
Trash is trash, so I think for me and my firm, judicious “editing” seems to be the best option!
best,
Carol Kurth,
FAIA
PS – And hiring staff to scan documents seems like overhead resources I rather spend elsewhere – like new photography – “digital” of course!
Hi Mark, all good stuff! One observation: Apps like Evernote are document storage apps. Evernote is widely used and very good at document storage, but last time I checked it stops there. If you consider design and construction as a set of processes rather than just documents, perhaps it would be better to build your records around a complete project work plan as I have done.
In my world each project starts with a work plan that is quickly built in workflow order from a library of traditional (and not) design and construction processes and procedures, each of which includes work instructions for the juniors, a progress diary and associated forms and templates. The iWorkPlan, as I call it, is web-based, accessible online and offline from an iPad or laptop. It includes all the steps, places to record your progress and completion, means to manage emergent issues and to capture new knowledge “on the fly.” Naturally you can attach scanned docs, photos and URL’s to any Procedure or issue.
I enjoy your perspective. Regards,
Brian Palmquist
We have staff and constants all over the USA. We use drop box, google drive, ibackup for shareing files, and for meetings, GoTo meeting.
We do not “permanently store” our files on a private cloud server owned by another private company. This is a legal issue. The “cloud” is a bunch of hype and your data can be mined. (read the fine print of the agreements you will be amazed)
Trusting that the service will be around tomorrow is just a silly idea also. If they shut down, there goes all our files. It has happened. Drop box is a problem because you don’t have control over what goes in and what people can remove.
So, we use our own in house servers which we can access when on the road. I can VPN using my tablet. With google drive, drop box, and specially ibackup, we can control documents. We use Revit mostly
We do a lot of archiving electronically, but for active projects, I perfer having a hard copy 1/2 size set at my side and a binder or 2 to quickly find what I need.
The (2) 24″ LCD monitors that we have in front of us is still is not as much real-estate as my desk with (2) 24″ monitors.
Mark, it seems like Evernote and Nosbe have some redundancy. How do you use them separately? What documents go to what service, or do you use Nosbe to refer to documents in Evernote?
Thanks for the post. In my side jobs, everything gets scanned to pdf if not already digital and stored on my hard drive and backup drives. The paper gets shredded and into the recycle bin.
My International Ballroom dance book has 700 pages and my Container Housing book has about 500 pages, but each one of them are still being revised every so often. I cannot trust the electronic recording completely. That is my problem. George Wu, Architect, A.I.A. 2014-7-24
Mark – great article and thanks for sharing. I went through the same process a few years back when my file and document storage systems were taking up more room than my studio. I also found that my role as a lead consultant was becoming bogged down with requests for information. So I also ended up trying to get Basecamp, Dropbox, ScanSnap and Evernote to work together as a solution for organising and sharing all the info. I did end up clearing masses of paperwork but didn’t really solve the sharing and publishing issues.
I also discovered that I was splitting up my workflow with my data creation and storage needs. So I looked into AEC project management systems but for a small practice I discovered the complexity and cost was just out of our reach.
So I hooked up with a fellow tech guru and we started building our own application. It’s been an interesting journey doing so and we’ve met some great people and unravelled some really complex issues. We’ve published a first draft app that is a platform for aggregating built environment data and our aim is to keep developing with the focus on integrating workflow and collaboration needs.
So there really isn’t a perfect solution for reducing the amount of paper generation because in the end our complex role as architects means we need to make sure our practice management issues are integrated into the way we work with other teams. It’s not something that should be tackled in isolation.
We’re having fun exploring this issue and sharing the advantages we discover.
Ian