Week 4: Weeks Fly By Around Here

We stay extremely busy here at UT Med, and this week it felt like we were in overdrive! The entire office had lists and lists and lists of things to do this week, as we have 3 large projects wrapping up in the near future.

Cancer Institute finishesMonday: First thing in the morning, Rebecca and I presented final fabric decisions to the VP of cancer, Director of Cancer, and the Head of the Breast Cancer Center. Things went well, and they felt we really captured the look and feel that they wanted for the Cancer Institute. Here is a picture of the final fabric selections. After that presentation, we were informed that the Contractor had budgeted for window frostings on some of the glass doors in the Cancer Institute. Heather and Rebecca allowed me to do the design for all the frosted doors in the hospital. They told me to be creative, but keep a simple design. I played with the designs in AutoCad, then rendered the doors in Photoshop to get a better idea of what the design will look like. Below is a photo of the final designs for the doors. During the day we also did walkthroughs of UFP, 12 East, and the NICU. The 12 East Rennovation-- Hallwayimage is of the 12 East Patient Floor rennovation. There was a moment of terror at the end of the day on Monday, when we realized that tracking and hooks for exam rooms in the UFP project (which is scheduled for phase 1 to be finished within the month) were installed, but there was no order for the curtains. What happened was that there had been talk about the hooks, tracking, and curtains being removed from the project because of budget. Somehow they were installed anyways. At the end of the day we were told the fabric had been discontinued. Luckily the next morning, they had checked and there was enough left over for us to order and get on with the process.  The only bad part is that the curtains will not be able to be delivered and installed by opening.

Tuesday: I learned something new about hospitals Tuesday morning: everyone does these things called rounds. I know I have heard of nurses, doctors, etc doing clinical rounds, which is where they all sit in an auditorium and discuss the happenings of the hospital, but I had no clue each department had their own form of rounds. Tuesday we had our rounds meeting. After rounds, Rebecca and I met with the head of the Graduate School of Surgery to discuss replacing VCT in the Surgical Residents’ Lounge. We picked out two colors, a field color and an accent color, and then Rebecca and I sketched out a simple floor pattern for the room. I put the final measurements and pattern in AutoCad, made a finish schedule (mostly just for future refrence), and sent the project off to Stacy at Broadway Flooring to get the project ordered and priced. For the rest of the day I did another UFP walkthrough (furniture was being delivered and installed) and I finalized fabric pricing for Cancer Institute. I was exhausted by the end of the day.

Wednesday: Wednesday was Rebecca’s birthday! Rebecca, Heather, and I took a morning breakfast at Door Frostings for Cancer Institutethe cafeteria to get the day started off right! I finalized the door frosting design, finalized the Cancer Institute finish boards, did another walkthrough of UFP, and worked with Rebecca on going through an entire binder of every piece of furniture in the entire Cancer Institute, making sure each finish had been selected for each piece of furniture, leaving nothing unspecified. (as Jeff would say, were were CYA!). One of the contractors took a group of us out to Calhoun’s for lunch for Rebecca’s birthday!

Thursday: Thursday things were finally starting to slow down again. Rebecca and I organized all the The super busy and messy materials library!finishes we didn’t select, and made more room to work (all of the chairs, tabletops, and pretty much every space was filled as you can see in the image). We had a lot of extra carpet tile samples that we had no room for, and so I called Lonsdale Elementary to see if they wanted them. So Thursday, we kept around 40 carpet tiles out of the dumpster, and now two Kindergarten classes will have carpet tiles for the students to sit on. For the rest of the day, Rebecca and I went through all of our Herman Miller furniture and picked out their finishes.

Friday: Usually I work with Mary Beth, but she was out of town this week, so I was able to attend the Cancer Institute Furniture Review, which is where we sat down with Steve from Office Furniture Outfitters and went through every single piece of furniture (again) and made sure that all of our notes matched his before we placed the order. We matched all of our fabrics, finishes, and pricings. The meeting started at 9 and didn’t end until almost noon! Then we had a rep take us out to lunch. After lunch I left since it was my day off and all.

StacyThis week I was able to interview Stacy from Broadway Floors. He doesn’t work in the office, but he is here more than once a week, so I have gotten to know him pretty well since I started my internship. He has a cat named Slipper (who comes up in conversation a lot), he is a golfer, and his fun fact is that he rebuilt a 1964 Mustang, which looks awesome (maybe one day he will let me take a picture of him in the car).

Marketing and Strategic Planning at UT Med

Like I have been saying a lot, things work differently here than in a firm. We actually have a marketing department, and all of our clients and all of our work is within the hospital, so we really don’t show clients our work, because they experience it daily.

Our website is the basic one of the hospital, which you can visit here: http://www.utmedicalcenter.org/.

The Facilities Planning doesn’t actually have its own website.

As far as accounting goes: Emmert actually does all of our ordering (whether its office supplies or PO’s for a project), but we have an actually Accounting department that takes care of everything else.

Comments

[MBR]

The explanation about "doing rounds" is quite appropriate for the setting in which the facilities group functions. I am curious if this is a common practice among other facilities groups in healthcare settings. The images you post continue to bring a clarity and a richness to what you write. Excellent! Although the client is set, what does the marketing department do? Investigate why this dept is important? How the public views the hospital is important and is directly connected to the work of the interiors group. Go beyond your assumptions and consider the role of marketing, strategic planning and accounting. Each area is critical in supporting your work, either directly and indirectly. Before the end of the summer, reflect and consider the details and complexity of each and how they influence what you do. You continue to gain great experience in designing and the role of finishes, and becoming a strong asset to the department.