Week 6

This past week, I had many interesting conversations on Sustainability. At HOK, we have sustainable design professionals. Recently, the sustainability specialists designed a sustainability plan for the city of St. Louis. They also do consulting for many other firms. HOK was just voted for a 3rd time as a leader in sustainability. The interns had the opportunity to sit down with HOK Sustainability Leader, Tim Gaidis. Tim shared with us that 90% of the employees in our office have become leader certified. I will be taking my test in 2 weeks, and I am excited to become a LEED Green Associate. We had really awesome conversations about what sustainability meant to each of us, and what it means to HOK as global arch. firm.

This is a video of Tim. My person of the week. Tim teaches a class on sustainability at local universities. He is very knowledgable on the topic. He enjoys hang gliding because of the perspective you gain on the world.

Also, this week, we made a site visit to Missouri Baptist Hospital. HOK is redoing the campus which includes a new building, parking, entry, landscaping, and a green roof. Very cool stuff.

Missouri Baptist

Resources: Our HOK Database online is very affective for storing information about vendors and product information. Also, in our e-mail, we have a directory of all reps for our products. We rely heavily on our reps to keep us up to date. Reps are welcome to come in at any time during the work day and update the library or put out new samples on 1 of our 3 product tables. Typically, they have to call ahead though to reserve the product tables. Our librarian and newest designer, Kirsten, manages the library and all rep presentations. We have a lunch presentation every Tuesday, and 2 smaller morning presentations on Friday. Most companies, especially fabric, have great websites showing all product offerings.