Backstage

Written by RACE on 18 January 2014.

We carefully choose our projects. The long-term health of our firm is not depending on the volume of business we do, but the type of work we do. Any business is good business, is patently false.

Client work can fall anywhere along a spectrum of ‘asset milking’ to ‘asset building’. At Race 125% of our profits are made from 80% of our engagements and that 20% of our engagements lose 25% of our profits.

Our two key assets:

Our inventory of skills, talents, knowledge and ability.
The strength of our client relations, reputation, and the trust of our clients.

Design Thinking & Scrum

Written by RACE on 18 January 2014.

Design Thinking & Scrum

Design Thinking is the ideal framework for us to use, because it focuses on developing deep empathy for clients and creating solutions that will match their needs - as opposed to just dreaming up and delivering transportation designs for designs’ sake.

Design thinking is a formal method for practical, creative resolution of problems and creation of solutions, with the intent of an improved future result. In this regard it is a form of solution-based or solution-focused thinking – starting with a goal (a better future situation) instead of solving a specific problem.

Design thinking identifies and investigates with known and ambiguous aspects of the current situation to discover hidden parameters and open alternative paths that may lead to the goal.

Scrum is a framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value. Scrum is lightweight, simple to understand, difficult to master.

Scrum emphasizes creative and adaptive teamwork in solving complex problems; Lean development focuses on the continual elimination of waste; Kanban concentrates on reducing lead times and the amount of work in process (lead time = the total time the client is waiting for an item to be delivered).

Observance

Written by RACE on 18 January 2014.

Observance

Sharing our expertise helps not only our market but also our firm since it engrains what we know and also expands what we know. Nothing helps deepen knowledge as effectively as sharing it.

There’s a thin line between employees “sort of doing stuff” and those that have a sense of purpose. In Race we have created an environment where people feel like their knowledge makes a difference and they clearly see how their work fits in the bigger mission of the organization. Work without purpose is no work at all.

Site

Written by RACE on 18 January 2014.

Site

Map is not the territory. Design drawings are not reality. We are navigating projects’ complexity together with our clients and site visits help us to understand better construction reality. In Race it is our responsibility to determine together with our clients “how” to build our designs.