Minutes of meeting held on 13th March 2017, commencing at 2 pm in Room 24, Newton,
Nottingham Trent University.
PRESENT: All members
J. Borkowska (JKB), J. Bowen (JHB), S. Dowson (SD), M. Ford (MF), F. Knights (FK)
ACTION
1.0 MATTERS ARISING FROM PREVIOUS MINUTES:
Every member to produce their fictitious CV. - Starts in 2017, the year when graduated NTU - Add in everything after then to lead you up to your role within the practice Look up how much architecture practices pay themselves when they start up BIM level 4 research and what it is about Behaviours in collaborations, in response to BIM level 4 research Research technologies in relation to chosen sectors Create our individual SWOT analysis referring to our individual roles Create company SWOT analysis Finish PESTEL analysis What is the evidence of your directors suitability for their chosen roles within the firm (modelled partially upon personal career development plans following graduation)? What is your firms product? What is the market for this product? What is your unique selling point (USP)? What are your firms strengths and weaknesses? What opportunities and threats may affect its success? Who are your clientele (and who else might they be in the future)? How does your business fit into the Nottingham community? Who is competing with you locally and/or nationally for potential clients? How will you demonstrate commercial viability? Where will you get set-up funding, and how much is required? What will be the capital and running costs of the practice? What profits do you anticipate and when? How will you manage your company? Will it be a private or publicly owned organisation, a partnership or a co-operative? What kind of employer will you be? What is your attitude to sustainability and carbon reduction? How might another economic recession affect your business? How would you diversify or change course if needed? How might you expand the scope of your business activities? How will you market/promote your company? Researching into ways we can provide a hands on promotion on the stand Research in more detail PPS Not just precedent research but the construction process behind it Maybe start looking at these precedents in further detail, look on the company website for construction details Look how materials get put together Green roofs do further research on construction details
2.0 BUSINESS CARDS
JHB printed out in print shop and cut down to size 3.0 NAME BADGES Bought 5 for 50p each JHB to design a name tag to put inside the badges 4.0 EXHIBITION FK to try to get hold of an ipad to use in the presentation 5.0 EXHIBITION INTERACTION Litre of Light - Way to show how we work in the community with children - An example of a project we have done - Box look through - Not really interaction Lucky Dip - Have a bad that holds bricks - Pick bricks out the bag - Place bricks onto the table to build a little city / building - Could even use lego for (Does Lego use recycled plastic?) - Can have a digitally interactive version rather than 6.0 SWOT ANALYSIS INTERNAL (THE PRACTICE) Strengths and weaknesses (possibly put into a table) - Yourselves and your backgrounds (your strengths things that you have) - A strength could be that one of the directors is a qualified Structural Engineer (then dont need to hire anyone in but we may be lacking in other areas) - MF could have a skill in people management (if not good at it you action is.) - SD strength as Admin could be that she is able to offer course in CAD to not only the company but externally (would prove to be another source of income) - Weaknesses (things you dont have so you have to hire in external people eg. A Structural Engineer) - One of the directors could not be up to date on their CAD so require training up to a particular level S.W.O.T analysis includes the skills you have rather than what you do which is influenced by the PESTEL analysis 7.0 WEBSITE DESIGN Marketing page contains S.W.O.T And PESTEL analysis diagrams with some conclusions in response to them S.W.O.T analysis includes strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities - Example of threat lots of robots in the future who are taking peoples jobs Marketing page is a summary of what is on all the other pages - Add the changes in the market to this page - Can't find marketing page easily Need to have links between the person and the page for their sector - eg. Marketing page and Marketing Director - Technology page and Technology Director - Also you might say about robots in the S.W.O.T and then link that to the Technology page which then their use in the world then links to marketing and also they have financial implications which links to finance page (changes in the future) Any laws that are coming in that will make us do things differently will go on the marketing page Start with looking at the context first on all directors pages Publications / Awards / Clients might go under marketing or admin Website needs to be more connected up References reference information up till 2017 and after that make it up Eg. say source: the office of national security Concentrate on the website first before we do the panels for the exhibition Rest of pages seem to be easily navigable PESTEL How far out you go depends on what you are going to do Only include what is relevant when looking at the world - Add plastic research to it as this is relevant to our construction processes in 5 years time - Eg. We are going to go into an economic recession in 2024 so as a result of this we need to diversify and have different projects of varying sizes - Building schools for the future program got scrapped - Could say that BREXIT doesnt affect us as we dont get materials from the EU, we source them locally so this is one of our strengths as a practice - Have half a dozen strengths as a minimum Do PESTEL before the SWOT analysis - Write down things that pop into your head throughout that time period - Is there anything political that will affect your business during that period? - Opportunities and threats around the world that will affect your business - Could say there has been a law that has been passed that we have to build with 80% recycled material - CLT wood BUSINESS PLAN Business Plan not be a page within itself Move business plan page to one of the main page headings Business Plan what does the Context page refer to? Financial Context, Social Context or Marketing Context etc Business Plan What does the analysis page refer to? Analysis of what? Market or technology etc Parts of the Business Action Plan will appear all over the website on each directors page. But the whole table will be gathered together and put on the finance page Put financial context on finance page POSITIONING STATEMENT Positioning statement needs to be added onto Home Page (ESSENTIAL) Remove the words positioning statement that are copied twice Positioning statement is too long so we could shrink this down and have a mini statement that is put before the longer one ETHOS Ethos section to come under the positioning statement Our Ethos - three strands to this (three branches for the community) - what you believe in as a practice Our ethos may change if our ethos changes we have more of a business plan COPING WITH EXPANSION AND FACILITIES WE PROVIDE If we aim to expand over the next few years across both the UK and internationally, how do we need to change how we operate in order to still be able to do community projects? We would need to employ different people and divide them up to be on different sites as well as us directors Does our office have a kitchen to house facilities to make tea and coffee and snacks to provide within client meetings - Eg. Tea parties - This has financial implications so goes within the finance and image sections PORTFOLIO Text on portfolio page needs to reflect a change in image or how it reflects our image. What is our plan for the future? Move from community to education? Say this is the community projects we did in the past and we are moving forward into education Name image page portfolio as they mean the same thing Introduce colour into the different section headings on the website - Each heading to use a different colour CPD One RIBA member could go to all the different CPD sessions and then come back to the office to feed the information back to the practice. We could have a budget for CPD for the year for every person. This gives everyone the chance to choose what they spend their own CPD budget on. The ideas about the CPD go on the admin page but the costings of this would go on the finance page We could give lectures at local schools to class as part of our CPD hours If looking at CPD policies we can look at other practices websites - We can copy their policies on our website - If we do so we need to reference them CPD could be free - We could attend conferences 8.0 EXHIBITION Can do 3 A1 boards - keep simple - use information from the website Bring refreshments (for not only the public but ourselves) Want whole presentation to be interactive and enable people to engage with the stall linking to our ethos and emphasis on participatory design Presentation could be printed on recycled paper - Fits in with our ethos of being sustainable - Recycled paper could be sourced from the Nottingham area - Printed using natural dyes - Add this information onto the back of the booklets - Make the information about our sustainability on the back of the booklets bigger as this is a big part of our practice and we need to make it stand out - Add on FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified to the back of our publications Invite people to see our work but only the answers of those who have been around all groups have their feedback to count ENGAGING STALL ELEMENT Picture Frame - The practice name and logo written on - Instagram, Facebook and Twitter feeds - Get people to come and have the photo taken with the frame and be put on instagram MDF Brick Wall (Similar to that for IWD (International Womens Day) - People instead of bricks - Get people to write on the people - Draw around peoples hands UK Map get people to add on pins of where they are from All about emphasising interaction and the community
9.0 ACTIONS TO BE COMPLETED
MF to upload PESTEL analysis to the blog MF to write out personal profiles FK to finish doing graphs to do with the population in Nottingham, East Midlands and England age range back up compare to rest of population Research about sustainability in communities and schools such as case studies, government directives, success stories Have links on statements that we say that link with to research or another part of the site Eg. Talked to older people within the .. project participatory design link this back to another session SD to turn world sustainability research into section on the PESTEL analysis and read through booklets uploaded on blog for Market Research of the world - what has happened in the world MF to type up the practice page, ethos page look at information on minutes about the ethos MF to improve how the surfaces page is written (RIBA Stages) and add images JHB to write the publications and awards page writing SD to complete minutes JKB to complete finance spreadsheet JKB to put together break-even chart
10.0 DATE OF NEXT MEETING:
We will be meeting at 10am on both Saturday 18th March and Sunday 19th March 2017 to complete all work and to check we have everything