Building things, as we all know, is a risky endeavor. I think of myself as an optimist, but the reality is that there are countless things that can go wrong. There's approvals risk, political risk, market risk, construction risk, design risk, and many other kinds of risk, some/many of which will be entirely unforeseen. If you asked me two years ago, I wouldn't have listed pandemic risk as being all that high up on the list.

So one way to think about the process of building/developing is that it is an exercise in risk mitigation. This makes it sound a lot less sexy than "city building." Given this, there can be a natural and understandable tendency to want to repeat what worked the last time around. Why make a change and introduce more risk into the system if you don't have to, right? This is arguably one of the reasons why it is often said that the real state industry isn't all that innovative. Too busy managing risk.

To give a specific example, let’s say you’re really focused on managing design risk. In this case, you might make the decision to always work with the same architect. This way you can establish a set of typical approaches and a standard spec. You know how to work together and you know what you're getting when it comes to working drawings. Rinse and repeat as best you can.

There is also something to be said about a kind of product-driven or branded approach to development. In this case you want some consistency to help build a specific brand and experience. And just because you’re using the same firm, doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t innovate and be design forward. This is what great architects do. Think Foster + Partners and Apple. Their stores are powerful brand symbols but also wonderful and highly site specific.

What happened in Surfside, Florida this week with the partial collapse of a 12 storey building is a horrible tragedy. My heart goes out to everybody who has been affected. I can't imagine how this must feel. The New York Times is reporting that some 159 people are still unaccounted for, as of last Friday night. At least 4 people have been killed in the incident.

The focus right now is on saving as many human lives as possible. Without a doubt, that is priority number one. But this situation also raises a critically important question: How the hell could this happen in North America? When I saw the terrible news this week, I immediately flipped the article to one of our structural engineers with a note asking basically this.

As many of you know, buildings are typically designed and built with lots of structural redundancies. This is so that these sorts of tragedies can be avoided. It is too early to know exactly what happened here, but there are going to be questions around the building's original design and construction, its maintenance program (saltwater is awful for buildings), and much more.

I am sure that all of this will come out in the fullness of time. And it is important that it does.

Building things, as we all know, is a risky endeavor. I think of myself as an optimist, but the reality is that there are countless things that can go wrong. There's approvals risk, political risk, market risk, construction risk, design risk, and many other kinds of risk, some/many of which will be entirely unforeseen. If you asked me two years ago, I wouldn't have listed pandemic risk as being all that high up on the list.

So one way to think about the process of building/developing is that it is an exercise in risk mitigation. This makes it sound a lot less sexy than "city building." Given this, there can be a natural and understandable tendency to want to repeat what worked the last time around. Why make a change and introduce more risk into the system if you don't have to, right? This is arguably one of the reasons why it is often said that the real state industry isn't all that innovative. Too busy managing risk.

To give a specific example, let’s say you’re really focused on managing design risk. In this case, you might make the decision to always work with the same architect. This way you can establish a set of typical approaches and a standard spec. You know how to work together and you know what you're getting when it comes to working drawings. Rinse and repeat as best you can.

There is also something to be said about a kind of product-driven or branded approach to development. In this case you want some consistency to help build a specific brand and experience. And just because you’re using the same firm, doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t innovate and be design forward. This is what great architects do. Think Foster + Partners and Apple. Their stores are powerful brand symbols but also wonderful and highly site specific.

What happened in Surfside, Florida this week with the partial collapse of a 12 storey building is a horrible tragedy. My heart goes out to everybody who has been affected. I can't imagine how this must feel. The New York Times is reporting that some 159 people are still unaccounted for, as of last Friday night. At least 4 people have been killed in the incident.

The focus right now is on saving as many human lives as possible. Without a doubt, that is priority number one. But this situation also raises a critically important question: How the hell could this happen in North America? When I saw the terrible news this week, I immediately flipped the article to one of our structural engineers with a note asking basically this.

As many of you know, buildings are typically designed and built with lots of structural redundancies. This is so that these sorts of tragedies can be avoided. It is too early to know exactly what happened here, but there are going to be questions around the building's original design and construction, its maintenance program (saltwater is awful for buildings), and much more.

I am sure that all of this will come out in the fullness of time. And it is important that it does.