Side Notes: The Human Element in High-Tech Facilities

Welcome to Side Notes, the bite-sized version of Side of Design. In 15 minutes or less, we'll explore one idea, one insight, or one conversation worth hearing. Let's get to it. Welcome to our first episode of Side Notes, the bite-sized version of Side of Design. I'm your host, Matt Gerstner. Joining me today is Nate Royzen, Principal and Science and Technology Practice Leader with BWBR, and we're going to take a closer look at the science and technology market today. Nate, thanks for making time to be here. Terrific to be here. Thanks, Matt. All right, we're just going to get right into it. So, Nate, what are you most excited about in the science and technology market today? Well, I think we have clients that are doing big things, and over the course of the last four or five years, I mean, projects have a gestation period, right, where you're in the room when it's being conceived of, there's design effort, there's cost, there's construction. We have some great projects that are going to be occupied at the end of this year. Oh, fantastic. And that's something that's just really exciting at this point. So, thinking about our work with the State Lab up in North Dakota, a few others that might be slightly more confidential, but all of these are great opportunities both for us to really see our design ideas come together, have lessons learned, and take advantage of conversations with the client about, oh, this could have been done a little bit better. We could have tweaked that over here. Okay. And unlike some other professions, we have the privilege of actually having a physical thing in the world that is the sum of our work. Absolutely. And we rarely get the opportunity to just sit back and appreciate that. But this coming year is going to be a chance for us to for us to really celebrate some of those accomplishments over the last five years. Well, that's fantastic. It sounds like a great coming to fruition of all these efforts that have been happening, especially for the clients. That's wonderful. So, building on that, what do you see as the biggest challenge that your clients are facing today? Well, when we think of the science and technology market, a lot of the factories that we work on aren't extremely labor intensive, but they do require people to operate. And the jobs within them are really highly skilled, especially when you're talking about computer chip fabrication or pharmaceutical. Finding the people to actually do the work of assembling computer chips, making drugs, making medical devices is something that all of our clients really struggle with. The workforce shortages that you read about in the newspaper online are very much on the front line of that. And so, helping our clients through good design, creating spaces that people want to work in, is something that I see as a really important and maybe somewhat underrated aspect of the work that we do. A lot of it's very functional. The room needs to be this big. We need to meet building codes. It needs to have certain adjacencies. It needs to have certain equipment in it. But does a person actually want to work in there? And is the room set up in such a way that when a person is spending eight, 10 hours a day for years and years in that room, they're giving their best all the time. There are certain things that the space can do that actually make their lives a little bit better. And sometimes it's not the space that they're actually working in, but it's the space outside the production environment. What does the break room look like? Do you have good access to daylight in office areas if you're doing your documentation outside of a production area? All of these are spaces that sometimes don't attract all the attention as you're conceiving of a project because it's the spaces that are going to make you the money that attract the most attention. Really matter, though, to the finish example or the finished experience of the people who are working there. I can completely see that. I mean, it's all about employee quality of life at work still. And I can see how supporting that through the built environment can definitely help them retain their employees or even find employees that want to be there. Yeah, I mean, we're spoiled. We have a beautiful office space with a nice view and great access to daylight. And sometimes it's easy to forget just how important that is when you're not the one experiencing a room that might feel a little bit more like a cave or might be really dated or the ceiling's really low or the air conditioner or the HVAC system isn't up to snuff and it feels stuffy or clammy. All these different things really matter. And it's fun to be able to bring that kind of elevated experience to different project types where the people might be used to working in something that's a lot less human scale. Fantastic. That is a great way to support the client. So when you're thinking about these things right now and you're thinking about your market, what do you love about designing for this specific market? Well, so it's funny. I hate puzzles. Okay. Like actual puzzles. Yeah. When you lay a thousand pieces on the table, can't do them. My brain doesn't work that way. Really? Okay. Okay. But I love designing science and tech projects, which aren't a lot of ways like a puzzle. There's different parts and pieces that need to fit together in the correct way. There are certain adjacencies that you need. There are certain requirements dictated by building codes, some dictated by clients, some dictated by regulators, FDA, things like this. And yet, you lay those pieces out, it's really fun to put them together. And I never quite understood why a puzzle of a beautiful mountain scenery is not something I enjoy, but the puzzle of putting a building together and figuring out how it works on the site, how it functions material and people moving through it in ways that make sense, is just a challenge that never gets old. And I think a lot of our projects in any of the markets we work in do have that aspect to it. But I think the science and technology world has a unique depth to the different types of things you have to solve. Fantastic. And it's always a new challenge for every client. Right. And the other thing is that the things that our clients do in these buildings are like magic. I mean, it is when you learn about what it takes to make computer chips, when you learn about the testing processes that a sample of soil or water goes through to find out if it has PFAS contamination. Oh, yeah. When you've learned about all the different steps it takes to create a pharmaceutical that goes in a person's body and reacts in a specific way, utilizing specific technologies with DNA or mRNA. I mean, these things are just unbelievable. And we get this little bit of a window, a little bit on the shoulder of the people who actually do this incredibly challenging, sophisticated, and ultimately world-changing work. And it's amazing just to get to interact with them. I mean, I feel like the dumbest person in the room when I'm talking with them and they're talking about the number of microns in different wavelengths that they're working with in the design of a computer chip or something. But it's also like, that's how the world works. Everybody's got their thing. And when our experience complements each other, they know computer chips, but we know buildings. And when we work together, we can make a really great building for assembling computer chips. That's very cool. It's a fun place in the world to be, a really fun place to spend one's career. Very cool. Very cool. And beyond all of that, what inspires you? Where do you find inspiration to do this work? Well, I mean, it's interesting, right? I mean, one time I happened to be at a place with my dad and I didn't realize that it would have a view of one of my projects. I said, "Dad, look up on the hill there. That's my project." And it happened to be the backside of a kind of nondescript building. And he looked at it and he went, "Oh." And the thing that I could tell was going through his head and was like, "How much money did this guy spend on architecture school?" But you know, it's really something. The sophistication of the buildings that we work on, they might have nondescript exterior sometimes, but you crack them open and there's a lot going on in there that really makes a really great intellectual challenge. And so, when we can have our voice as part of the design of something like that, it's just fun. It's interesting. We can make it a little bit better. Even better. If we can walk around on the job site and kind of see it coming together and say, "That doesn't quite look right. Maybe we need to rethink something that we had designed before." All these things are just great opportunities to just make the world a little bit better place in the work that you're doing. That's a fantastic place to end things today. Nate, thank you for your time and the insights you've provided. And listeners, thanks for joining in today. Can I look at the camera now? You can look at the camera now. Thanks, everybody. Thank you so much for joining me today and for all the great information we release by going to www.bwbr.com/contact-us and scrolling to the bottom of the page for the newsletter sign-out.