Last week I was in Oklahoma.  The reason for going was personal, but I visited a couple of museums and since I am no longer able to see through the eyes of an everyday visitor anymore, the line gets fuzzy where work begins and ends.  It’s a blessing and a curse.

At one particular museum, I had the privilege of meeting with the head of exhibits.  As we walked around all the galleries, he pointed out barriers which had to be installed because visitors were known to climb on the dinosaurs and other animals!

There was even a buffalo in one exhibit which had an obvious barrier, but visitors would climb up the side then trample over the grasses and smaller animals and insects to take photos on or near the buffalo.

To me conduct such as this is mind boggling, especially when it’s the adults encouraging the behavior.

So, in an effort to possibly curtail bad behavior at museums, nature centers, etc., here are some things not to do in an exhibit gallery (or anywhere else for that matter):

• Don’t climb on the exhibits! Just because there’s not a sign telling you not to do something, does not make it OK to do it.  Most institutions make it pretty obvious what is touchable and what is not.
• Don’t pick at the graphics! Not all facilities are financially able to replace their graphics or other exhibits routinely.  A peeling label or lettering is not an invitation for you or your children to pick at it.  My one year old is an expert label peeler.  I’m not sure what is so fascinating about peeling something, but he is instantly drawn to those opportunities.  I know this, so I proactively watch him and divert his attention elsewhere if there is a peeling opportunity.
• Don’t intentionally try to break an interactive. We have a client in CA who said one of their volunteers witnessed kids hanging on hydraulic flip doors and broke each and every one of them.   In this situation, you would have thought the volunteer would have spoken up, but no, he just sat by and watched the damage be done.

I’m sure there are many more stories to be told.  What have you witnessed people do in a museum or nature center that you couldn’t believe they did?

One of the most often asked questions is how long does a project take to complete. There are many variables that determine the schedule. Here are some to consider.

When Does the Client Want it Done
We just got a request to produce a Bluefin Tuna photo-op model and they needed it installed in New Orleans within 30 days. This is no problem. We can do it. However, we would need to charge more than if we had more time. We are already booked and therefore would have to produce it with over time pay. A rushed project often costs more.

Generally, any project’s schedule can be negotiated to be mutually agreeable.

The Size of The Project
Obviously, a million dollar project takes more resources than a $1,000 project. The larger the project the more time.

How Fast Can The Client get Their Part Done
Client involvement starts right away with getting the contract signed. A few weeks ago we met with a client on a Tuesday and we had a contract signed by Friday. It was a rush project. Design, build and install a donor wall in 60 days. In order to move fast a client must move fast too. Most clients take 30 to 90 days to sign a contract once a project is awarded. This can delay the start of a project.

Often clients underestimate the amount of time they will spend on a project. Clients have to approve many things from design progress, copy, photographs, budgets and fabrication progress. Often clients have committees. Imagine having eight people approve a 200 page design booklet. Most clients commit to a two week review period, yet often struggle to meet these dates. Clients also have to provide details on their resources like their artifacts, collections, building specifications and visitor demographics. If these are not provided on their due dates it can cause large delays in the project. You might consider your own staffing and resources when considering how quickly you would like to produce a project.

If payments, building construction or renovation is behind schedule this can also delay the project.

Most of our projects have these kinds of delays.

What Type of Project
Planning and design generally take longer than fabrication. More decisions and involvement of people takes time. If details are completed in the design phase then production can go quickly. A workshop can be done quickly.

General Project Time Frames
A planning/design/build/install project of $250,000 or more takes an average of 18 months to complete.

A fabrication project of $250,000 or more takes an average of six months to complete.

A planning project takes an average of eight months to complete.

Everything is negotiable, these are some generalizations you can consider.

Price, Quality, Speed – pick two
This is an old saying. It isn’t quite relevant these days as companies can meet all three. However, there is logic in considering these variables and how they are combined.

As we pursue our fortunes in the Chinese market, one of the questions that always pops into my head is, “How do we get the exhibits there?” The easiest answer is air freight, but while that is the fastest and smoothest route, it’s also the most expensive. The other option is ocean freight, which is markedly cheaper, but also much slower. Shipping schedules are set months in advance, and if your company is running late, they will sail without your load.

Before you try to wrap your head around how we get massive ground forms into a semi, let me reveal a little of the magic behind the curtain. Each structure is built knowing that we will be cutting it into chunks. Chunks that can fit through a double door, ideally. The exhibit is a 3D puzzle that comes together amazingly well. So, we know how to fit an exhibit into limited shipping spaces. Packing a shipping container for an ocean transit isn’t too different from packing a short semi-trailer. You don’t want to waste any space, and you want the weight to be well distributed, since the entire container will be moved by some sort of suspension system in the port.

If you don’t live near a port, you might not know that the vast majority of ocean freight is carried within shipping containers. They show up a lot in thrillers on TV whenever there are dark deeds happening in a port, often stacked three to four high. These corrugated steel boxes come in several sizes, but the most common are the 20’ and 40’ lengths. Most of them are made in China, which makes sense, considering how huge the Chinese export market is. The economics of international freight often makes it more expensive to ship an empty container back to China to reuse it than it is to buy a new container in China. This leads to massive numbers of empty shipping containers accumulating in ports where freight came ashore.

More than ten years ago, architects began using empty shipping containers as building elements, since they have standard dimensions and construction. They have been turned into houses, hotels, emergency housing, exhibition spaces, stores, and buildings on military bases. A secondary market has appeared that pre-fits the new containers as various building elements, which avoids some troubling challenges with using old containers. Since the real containers have to be resistant to the elements (including salt water) and insect attack, they are manufactured with tough coatings on the steel and powerful pesticides in the wooden interior floors. No one wants these chemicals in their work or living spaces, so the containers need a bit of work to make them safe to use.

An art center in Seoul, South Korea.

A store in Zurich, Switzerland, for Freitag, a company that makes bags from old truck tarps.

The ‘greenness’ of using shipping containers, either new or old, in architecture will be debated as the trend grows. Keep your eyes open when in cities with major ports and you might spot one of these boxy creations. Have you been inside a shipping container building?

We are often asked this question.  Additionally, explaining budgeting to clients is an educational process.  Our service and product is not an everyday thing to purchase and it can be confusing to know what a Woolly Mammoth model or a workshop might cost.  Here are some tools you can use to think about it logically.

HOURS = DOLLARS

For some reason, this seems to be a hard concept for people to grasp.  Yet, if staff are traveling, on the phone, writing, designing or building something those hours have to be paid for.  Much of this time seems to confuse people on why it costs money.  Yet a project manager is spending hours when they are budgeting, getting quotes for materials or spending time with a client trying to find a photo.  These seem to be difficult things for people to pay for and it is necessary for a successful project.  Unfortunately, some hours do not always seem tangible even though they add value to the project.  You can logically think about these hours when trying to think about how much something would cost.  The hourly rates of most firms also include a portion to cover overhead expenses like computers, a building, a desk, phone equipment, accountants (yes, doing tax work adds a lot of expense that is frustrating), and human resources.

MATERIALS = DOLLARS

All projects include some material costs, even design and planning.  Most of the time, things like paper and ink are built into the hourly rate.  Yet, that material is necessary to complete a project.  For fabrication there are many potential materials.  The prices of materials fluctuate with the market, like wood and steel.

SHIPPING = DOLLARS

Whether we are FedExing a document or filling a semi with exhibits, this will cost some dollars.

TRAVEL = DOLLARS

There is travel time which has to be paid for as staff does not work for free.  And there are hotels, dining, mileage, flights and rental cars, too.

DELAYS often = MORE DOLLARS

If a project is delayed months or years, prices tend to go up.  We recently budgeted for purchasing many different props for a project.  We created the budget over six months ago and the fabrication portion of the project was delayed.  Props that were priced at $100 over six months ago are now coming in at $115 or more.  Additionally, if subcontractors give quotes to help you create a budget for a client their pricing is often only good for 30 days.  If their capacity books up and the schedule is not lengthened, there is a cost for a rush on the job.  Maybe they have to pay overtime to get it done within schedule.  Sometimes they just can’t fit it in at a later date at all and then you have to get new quotes.  If a project is delayed it messes with a company’s staff availability and planning.  It can cause overtime and much more.  Inflation, changes in material prices and the cost of labor fluctuate and this can cause prices to change as quickly as 30 days.

Industry Pricing Guidelines^[1]

Listed below are general industry pricing guidelines for interpretive exhibit design and fabrication projects. Certain projects are composed of simple exhibit units at a relatively low cost (price/sq. ft.) and other projects are composed of complex multi-media exhibit units at a higher cost. The majority of projects are a mix of both types. The following cost breakdowns serve simply as range indicators:

$200 – $300 Per Square Foot – Conventional cases, pedestals, panels with printed graphics and copy, mounted photographs, and some artifacts. Simple audiovisuals, in the form of slides and auto-repeaters. Simple dioramas and custom artwork.

$300 – $500 Per Square Foot – Walk-in dioramas or replicated environments. May include some electronic exhibits and/or computer interactives, such as games and/or short films. May include creative artwork and custom background murals. Audiovisual is more complex in this price range with custom photography, and special effects. Controlled climate artifact preservation.

$500+ Per Square Foot – Above, plus highly interactive exhibits and complex audiovisual, multimedia presentations, animated figures, and full sensory immersion exhibits.

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[1] Veverka, John A. Interpretive Master Planning. Tustin: Acorn Naturalists, 1998.

Brochu, Lisa. Interpretive Planning. Fort Collins: Interpress, 2003.

What kind of company do you want to work with?  What traits would that company have?  Have you ever hired someone to work on your home and were disappointed in their service, quality or integrity?  I have many of these stories.  I once used a plumber who also did some electrical work.  I worked with this plumber for years, giving him lots of business in running air lines in our fabrication shop to fixing plumbing issues at my home.  Over time I began to hear stories about their lack of integrity.  Then it hit me personally and I was lied to and taken advantage of.  I will never use this plumber again and will encourage others not to.  There was a cost to not doing my due diligence in hiring the right firm.

Then there is the myriad of people I’ve attempted to hire at my farm who don’t show up, who take lots of phone calls to get the work done, who break things and don’t claim it, who throw trash in my woods, etc.  It can be very frustrating to find the right people to work with.  Do you have any of these stories?  Is price more important to you or would you rather have a reputable partner that will probably cost you less in the long run?

Here are the traits we look for when hiring subcontractors or partners.

1. Integrity
2. Quality reputation and portfolio of work – will the company back their work?
3. Experience
4. Good financial practices, including having the proper insurance and accounting practices.
5. Excellent project management practices. Will they be on time?  Do they have good communication practices?  Will they fill out the proper paperwork?
6. It’s an added plus if they are passionate about what they do.
7. And are they fun?  Not a requirement, but sure makes it more pleasurable.

We prequalify all our subcontractors before considering bringing them onto our team.  This is one form we use to decide whether they qualify as someone we would hire.  We now have an excellent group of partners to bring on the team who have these traits.

We also practice what we preach and offer all these things to our clients.  Plus we back our reputation with a five year warranty.  We build unique stuff that often has cranky dos (what I call our mechanical interactives) that will have lots of public interaction.  We don’t have centuries of testing opportunities like your car company.  Therefore, occasionally we have to fix something that didn’t work as planned.  We do this on our dime.  Imagine how much it would cost you if your company charged you to fly across the country to fix what they built?  This could be a savings of tens of thousands of dollars.

What do you look for when hiring a service provider, contractor or designer?