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.

Week 3

This week has been busy. On Monday Rachel and I finished organizing the trim closet. I called vendors to check for pricing and availability. I assisted the designer find a fabric selection.

On Tuesday I called vendors for pricing and availability. I assisted the designer find a fabric that fits the client needs. Rachel and I went through Miles Tabbot fabrics to find the discontinues. I also order memo for the designer to give the client.

On Wednesday and Thursday Rachel had to assist on a job which means I was alone assisting the designers. It was busy and stressful, but it seems like a handle it well. I called vendors to check for pricing and availability. I also assisted designers to find fabrics and furniture.  Thursday was a little slower. I called vendors to check if the catalogs we had were current. I went through a discontinue list and marked the patterns that were discontinuing.

On Friday I called vendors to check for pricing and availability. I also assisted designers find a specific fabrics books. We received new books of fabrics. Before we put the new books away, I pull out the pricing so the client doesn’t see the suggested retail prices.

Yessick had a warehouse sale that involved the community in May. Yessick also has a facebook page for networking. A few of the interior designer are members of IIDA and attend meetings. The interior designers are NCIDQ certified. Yessick’s Design Center has been in business for 28 years.

This is Allyson who is the receptionist. Her responsibilities are answering the phone and welcoming customers. She started last week so we are both still getting used to how the business runs. She went to school with Jonathan who is one of the interior designers.

Beach Pictures!

I spent the week in Florida on Pensacola Beach for a family reunion and thought I'd share some picture of the BEAUTIFUL beach with all of you!

However, it didn't start out so beautiful... we drove through a tropical storm and major flooding on the way down. The storm continued the whole next day. They got 13 inches of rain in one day. It was pretty impressive.

Finally the sun came out and we were able to enjoy the beach for the rest of the week!

Me and my 4 younger brothers and sisters.

The rest of my family! My mom is the youngest of 9, and this is 61 of my family members (we were missing 8). We have a reunion at the beach every other year and this was one  of our best turn outs. It was a great week!

Hope all of you enjoyed your week as well!

Week 2- "Lindsay, we need you to order some samples"

This week was all about samples for me.  I was either receiving, organizing, or ordering samples from 9-5.  When I arrived on Monday it was just me and Jess, as in Jess King, working in the office that day.  Danni Collins and Joy, one of the principles of the firm were at Neocon so we were basically running the show.  I was receiving the many samples that I had ordered the previous Friday.  We had 6 different deliveries of at least two boxes each time! so after we received the samples I had to try and organize it with all the hundreds of carpet samples we had ordered. our office was a bit of a wreak but that's what happens when there are five of us and four major project that have to be finished sometime in July.  After I organized the received samples I spent the day organizing the fabric sample that already occupied the office. 

Here are a few of the samples I organized... I had to fold all of them in half so that the label was facing up, then I had to color code them in ROY G BIV style with white in front. I also had to recycle any of the duplicates. It was like color theory! It was pretty fun. Then on Friday we were all back and I ordered about 200 different samples.  I am getting pretty fast at left hand typing.  To order samples I would first check our contact list to see if we had a dealer on the books, if not I would just go through the company website.  This time I was ordering drapery samples for the new UT residence hall as well as wood door samples and some more laminate samples. 

I am getting to see a lot of project organization first hand here because of the mass amounts of projects.  Pre-design for the UT residence Hall, UTRH, started before I got there, but the other principle, Deborah, and Danni are the main two people working on the project.  They have been meeting with the architectural firm, COPE and deciding what part of the project Lauderdale would be involved in.  They were assigned the lobby and lounge areas on each floor as well as the study areas.  I arrived in the schematic design phase where I worked with Danni on choosing the furniture pieces to be placed in the areas.  We went through several iterations and a few were chosen to be presented to the client.  This process lead to the design development where Cope, the client and Lauderdale came to an agreed design and followed through on the contract documents.  This is where we are now on the project. We are choosing final finishes and contracting the furniture pieces.  The next phase will happen within the next two weeks where everything will be ordered and ready for the new UTRH once it is built.  After it is built, Lauderdale will oversee all the installation so that the spaces are everything they are meant to be. 

The communication between us and all the other team members at Cope and UT have been working well together and have been sharing files as well as information in weekly meetings as well as through emails and calls.  Deborah is the head of the project when it comes to Lauderdale's part then Danni does a lot of the Cad and presentation work and The rest of us help when needed, like ordering samples. 

I met many new people through email this week while I was ordering samples.  Many Ranz was I very helpful contact at Fabricut when I needed to order some more budget friendly drapery.  She and I are even trying to find a time for a lunch.  If not a lunch then she will at least come update her samples and books. 

Week 2: Is it beer-thirty yet?

The neat thing about Nashville Civic Design Center is that there are so many different projects going on at once, and it is much more complicated than just urban design.  We have social scientists that study how people function in a city, what types of spaces we need in Nashville, and case studies on other successful cities.  Then we have urban designers that translate this information into design.  But since dealing with a whole city is at such a large scale, NCDC’s Plan of Nashville is a plan for what needs to happen over the next fifty years.  So there are several projects going on that are all essentially part of the big picture, which is the Plan of Nashville.  This white board in the conference room shows what the projects are, who is involved with each one, and the time frame.  So the projects are Shaping Healthy Cities, Designing Action (which is the one I am helping with), Living the Plan of Nashville, Metropolitan Planning Organization (transportation), and other fundraising.

Part of NCDC’s work is to raise awareness and educate the community about different things and to get people involved and excited about the direction our city is going.  So this summer once a week at the downtown library NCDC is hosting a film series.  This week it was a documentary on obesity. Who would have thought that obesity and design have some correlation?  What we learned was that the government’s role is to solve problems collectively that cannot be solved individually.  So by designing a city that is more walkable and has more green spaces, we could help solve this crisis of obesity.  This really is a huge issue, no pun intended, and something like two thirds of our country is overweight or obese.       

My main task this summer is to design the exhibit for the Designing Action competition that we announced last week.  Entries are due in August and the exhibit will be up for the month of September.  This is an outdoor exhibit that is across the river from the site of the competition, and I think it will be really neat.  So this week I have been coming up with concepts/ideas for the exhibit and have put six different designs in 3D for my superiors to look at and approve, which will be sometime next week.  I have also been researching local fabricators/materials/costs for our low budget. If anyone is interested the link is below, and first place gets $5,000!!!

http://www.civicdesigncenter.org/

http://www.designing-action.org/

This is Gary Gaston, the Design Director and my supervisor.  He is a UT arch grad and studied urban design in Poland.  Gary has been on numerous committees and has done countless things in Nashville including Leadership Nashville (which is a huge honor and extremely hard to get), but he is very modest and would never tell you that!  Gary really spends a lot of time with the interns, and he is a very strong leader.

Friday was a fun day because NCDC just got a technology grant so we got all new Macs.  Also, occasionally when everybody has been working really hard they say it is “beer-thirty”, so for the last couple of hours on Friday we just relaxed and hung out with each other and drank some Yazoos, which was a nice way to end the week:)