Building a Great Team - February 2007

Levitt Goodman Architects made a name for themselves with projects that set new standards for social housing and now they are carving an equally noteworthy-path with their environmentally friendly and sustainable designs. Their sensitive and humane approach extends to how they manage their practice. Principal Janna Levitt tells us how they built a great team.

Oomph: You started out in 1989 and today you lead a successful, design-driven firm with a unique management system and culture. How did you do it? Janna: We've grown slowly but steadily, so we've had time to evolve our systems. From time to time, Dean [Partner Dean Goodman] and I asked my brother [a corporate lawyer] and a friend who's a partner in an engineering firm for advice, but for the most part we evolved our system through trial and error.

There are fourteen of you now. Have you reached thresholds where the system stopped working and you had to change how you run things? Yes, once there were ten of us it became difficult for Dean and I to juggle all the jobs between the two of us. We needed to delegate more. We also realized that we had people who had been with us ten, twelve years and we saw the need for an environment that would encourage them to stay.

So what did you do? We revamped the structure. We invited Brock James to become a partner and four other "long-timers" became associates sharing responsibility for management.
  
How does it work on a day-to-day basis? What are your practice and project management structures? Each partner has practice management duties, deals with regulatory issues and manages projects. Every project has a partner in charge, a project architect who audits the project every month and an architect in charge of internal controls who tracks the process for trends on a quarterly basis. As well, all architects participate in contract budgeting and administration, so everyone understands the impact of their contribution and actions. In addition to ongoing project meetings, the partners meet once a week, the whole office meets once a month and the partners and associates meet once every three months. 

Is size an issue now? Not really, with fourteen people you are still aware of everything that goes on. And the systems we've created ensure that we can continue to maintain our accident-free record.

How many support and contract staff do you have and which procedures do you outsource? We don't have any support staff - all of us are architects and we all have specific areas and tasks we are responsible for depending on our level of seniority and skill. We don't "hire and fire" so we're very careful about bringing in contract staff which we do only from time to time. The only procedure we outsource is bookkeeping.  

OK, let's talk about money. With the systems we've set up to administer contracts and with everyone active in the budgeting process we're very efficient. On the other hand, with three partners and four associates out of fourteen architects, we don't have the profits of a firm with a higher percentage of juniors and support staff. We have chosen quality of practice, quality of design and quality of life over bigger profits. This is how we maintain our creative edge and our ability to produce innovative work on an ongoing basis.

What is different, what is better and what is not-so-great now that you have a formal infrastructure with partners and associates? Like with everything else, there are advantages and challenges. The best part is not having to work twenty-four hours per day! As well, we now have a very inclusive environment and there's an entrepreneurial spirit in the office; everyone is energized and contributing, which is a joy. It's also a great learning environment: we're very open about our successes and our mistakes, so there are more opportunities to learn from each other.

The difficult part is the trust factor, now that you're not doing everything yourself. When something goes wrong, you instantly second-guess yourself. The irony is that you don't realize that doing everything yourself can be quite dangerous. And, it takes longer to do things. Before, Dean and I made all the decisions, now we have to involve everyone else.

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Levitt Goodman's work has received numerous awards including a Governor General's Medal of Excellence in Architecture for Strachan House, a Toronto Urban Design Award for The Meeting Place, two DX Design Awards for Eva's Phoenix and TO GO, the Peter J. Marshall Municipal Award of Excellence for Eva's Phoenix, a Silver Georgie Award, Vancouver, for Port Royal Presentation Centre and a Best of Toronto Life 20th Anniversary Award.

Their latest project, Janna and Dean's home, is the first private residence in Toronto with a green roof. It's on the cover of this month's Azure magazine. Click here to read the article.