About Us
Healthcare design specialists focused on the patient experience.
The products and services we offer
Recommendations Received (5)
"I have worked with Harris Fritz for 30+ years and have found them to be accurate, responsive, and..."
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"I have worked with Harris Fritz for 30+ years and have found them to be accurate, responsive, and budget-focused. We have had many years of achievement and success in healthcare and industry with HFA."
Recommendations Given (5)
"Great work from these guys. Honest, fair and always thorough.
Their small company is growing in..."
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"Great work from these guys. Honest, fair and always thorough.
Their small company is growing in a very competitive market. "
"PWP provided the structural engineering design for our recently completed 190,000 sf tilt-up..."
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"PWP provided the structural engineering design for our recently completed 190,000 sf tilt-up concrete corporate headquarters. They did a great job, easy to communicate with, met multiple deadlines and very accurate. "
Recent Activity
No offense intended, but first and foremost, get out of the home drafting business. Plenty of money in building, but let someone else design. You don't have to be an architect to design a house. So, those services can be provided by anyone with no formal design education who can draft. This...
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No offense intended, but first and foremost, get out of the home drafting business. Plenty of money in building, but let someone else design. You don't have to be an architect to design a house. So, those services can be provided by anyone with no formal design education who can draft. This drives your professional fees down to the fees associated with competing with a draftsman. I'm sure you didn't go (minimum) six years to Georgia Tech or another accredited college and three year internship and sit for hardest exam of all professionals to compete with draftsmen. If you are not a registered Architect, then don't call yourself an Architect, it's actually illegal to do so, and offensive to those who have put in the minimum 9 years of their lives to earn that title. If you are registered, licensed and insured, then step up your game and start providing services beyond what the average draftsman is legally qualified to provide. That will eliminate that entire group from your competition realm. I've been practicing architecture for over 40 years and the first two years I wasted my time drawing houses. Super low fees, super emotionally involved clients and competing with local drafting services. Then, I switched to commercial buildings, warehouses, retail and healthcare. I got some free advise from an old guy that owned a hardware store, when we first started, we were renting the back rooms of his building. I was charging $40/hr and picking up the worst clients in town. We were complaining to him one day and he said, see this "drill", it cost me $6.00 from the factory. I can put it on that shelf for $8.00 and no one will buy it. I can raise the price to $22.00 and it will sell like hotcakes. Why? Because, no one wants a $6.00 drill. In turn, no one wants a $40/hr architect. I understood, so I raised my fees to $120/hr in 1984 and we took off and within a year had 30 employees. Our fees were less than some but high enough to get respect and it was more than the small-time developers could afford and we started picking up really good clients.
After our first 20 years in business, we "finally" learned to avoid clients that use the buildings we design as their source of income. It was like a puzzle to figure that out, because it's a hard concept to grasp. It's really hard to turn down work, but you have to because there's no money in bad work and you are just treading water and not really making money, just making a living. My definition of "bad work" is when your client is someone who is using someone else' money to pay for your services and they are building something to lease, sell or otherwise make profit from. Then, you have become a commodity to the project and your only value is how fast and how cheap you can do your line item on their profit/loss page. There are many clients like that and it's not just developers. When we "must" work with them, we have a policy in our firm to "not" place our professional seal on the drawings until we are fully paid through Construction document phase. They can not permit the project without your professional seal and that's literally your only point of leverage on a job. Once you've sealed the drawings, you may never get paid, and there are no laws that protect you, only judgements and we've never collected from a judgement.
After our first 20 years in business doing mostly developer work, we shifted our marketing efforts to specifically target clients where their source of income is not the building we're designing. These type clients include Family Practices or Healthcare clinics, Emergency Care clinics, Hospitals, Manufacturing or Company office buildings. It is imperative that the building itself is not their source of income and then we found that the character of the client is completely different. They appreciate what you do and your expertise in planning, programming and design. Their focus is also very different and directed toward their clients, patients or products. Conversations trend toward curb appeal, branding, form and function, circulation and atmosphere. Actually, for most of my clients, the structure has absolutely nothing to do with their annual earnings and our design services are intended to enhance or improve internal problems such as growth, image or function. We recently completed a manufacturing facility that makes very sophisticated small products. Again, having a new building was nice for them, but the building itself was not their source of income, making small products was their source of income and their new facility functioned very well.
Another lesson it took me 20 years to learn was another really hard thing to do, but I basically fire myself from the job after I make my initial presentation and quote. It's up to them to bring me back into the project, because, at that point, they already know my complete qualifications and they know how much my fee is. They have already decided that we are an asset if they call, but, if they bring us back and start telling us how "cheap" they can get it elsewhere, or how "simple" they believe this job is, or how "fast" they need it, I very gently and politely begin my exit strategy. I'm very polite although I have been accused of being rather cynical sometimes. I caringly try to suggest names of other architects that might be a better fit for them. I want to blurt out, "here's a list of firms that would be perfect for you, I've heard they do really simple jobs and they're really cheap and fast too", but of course, I don't say that. I'm very polite. Sometimes, we get the work and sometimes we don't. But one thing for sure, at the end of the day the clients that we get are super good clients and I'm super good to them too, because they care about quality service, quality products and quality results and I'll bend over backwards to meet their scope/schedule/budget and provide them a final product that they are proud of and happy with. We've designed more than 22 million square feet of "ground-up" buildings and more than 4,000 interior tenant plans.
4 Replies
No. We filled out the forms twice and got a confirmation number but have seen no money, no contact, no information, no communication of any kind. No nothing!
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No. We filled out the forms twice and got a confirmation number but have seen no money, no contact, no information, no communication of any kind. No nothing!
1 Reply
To focus on their needs and not on our “ten pounds of technology “
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To focus on their needs and not on our “ten pounds of technology “
