20 Years of Doing What We Love

Today we are reflecting on 20 years of architecture, layered with engineering, entwined with interior design, corralled and completed with construction.  We hesitate to call it design-build because of the misconceptions fused to that term. Over the years we’ve called it design-led design-build, integrated design-build, even true design-build. We’ve tried to get across the fact that we, at Iconica, do it differently: because we’re just one firm, because we love good design, because we want to make every dollar count but don’t want poor quality. We take pride in working as a team to bring together the best possible project, making it easy for the Owner.  We’re not perfect.  We’ve had our struggles with unexpected situations and with adjusting our workforce to match our workload, but our commitment is steadfast, our talent is great, and our process is finely honed.

When you ask our team members who have worked with traditional design-bid-build, what makes our process different, you’ll get varied answers. The architects may praise the estimators for helping them find a way to pull off an exciting idea.  The project managers may praise the engineers for finding a way to modify the design overnight and keep the schedule on track.  The superintendents may praise the project assistants for the organization and communication it takes to keep 30 subcontractors informed of a change.

And so we think about what we do and how we do it.  We’ve been designing for over 40 years and building for almost 30 years.  But as for the one-stop-shopping easy-button kind of project delivery that we love, that’s been our focus for 20 years.  We’re good at just architecture and just construction – and we’ll gladly do it – but we’re best at the whole shebang.