Communication Conundrum

The AIA|TEXO Steering Committee was founded with the intent to further communication, understanding, networking, cooperation, friendship and trust between AIA & TEXO members.  With these principals in mind, the committee saw the need to reestablish the Industry Roundtable to encourage an open dialogue amongst its peers in the building industry. In the following paragraphs, we will explain how the process was started, elaborate on the format, and conclude with a recap of the first discussion.  

Getting Started

Topic Advisory Board
To identify the topics to be discussed a group of approximately 20 architects and 20 contractors were asked in 2 sessions to discuss what was on their minds. Specifically, the question was asked “What in the industry keeps you up at night” related to AEC industry.  From these discussions many topics were identified, and each topic was listed on a flip board. At the end of the sessions the attendees were asked to rank the topics in the order of importance. The Industry Roundtable planning committee then met to review the results and found the highest ranked topic was “communications”.  It was decided that communication would be the focus for the first roundtable, and other items noted were going to be main topics for future roundtable discussions

Roundtable Format
The round table discussion will be set up around a specific topic for each event, although the format may vary due to the specific topic and number of attendees. The Roundtable is expected to be held on a quarterly basis, promoted by AIA and TEXO. The intent is for the roundtables to grow organically over time and become an event that brings insight and value from each discussion. Following the discussion, a document will be generated by the Industry Roundtable Sub-Committee to recap the points discussed, to be distributed by AIA & TEXO.  

First Roundtable

The first roundtable titled “The Communication Conundrum” was held in September of 2017, attended by about 30 industry leaders. The discussion was facilitated by industry leaders in the contractor and architectural community: Matt Hunt with McCarthy Construction and Steve Brookover with Omniplan architects. The facilitators spent the initial part of the meeting sharing their perspectives on the topic. This was followed by the facilitators taking questions from the audience about certain situations and sharing their experiences. Notes were taken by the committee to capture the discussions, questions and responses. A complete recap of the Communication Conundrum can be seen in the document attached below the picture in the left column.