Manley Architects at One Year

This month, October of 2008, Manley Architects reaches its first anniversary of significance marking one year since incorporation. We are delighted and proud to be at this first milestone for our young company, and grateful to the wonderful clients we have been so fortunate to serve this past year.

During this year, we’ve seen our share of accomplishments; we’ve been able to meet or beat projected fees to clients on hourly projects and have performed fixed fee work with no un-anticipated additional charges to clients. We have expanded our staff (see May 2008 Blog entry) – a staff addition that is growing into a full time position. Our largest project currently under construction – Columbia Adventist Academy replacement classroom building, a private high school in Southwest Washington State – is on track for +/- 1% project growth. This despite unknowns buried by 104 years of history as a school and tie-ins with aged systems in existing campus buildings (much credit goes to General Contractor Erwin Construction for this). We’ve also had the pleasure of working with clients Educational Opportunities for Children and Families, State Pipe & Supply/Schlecht Construction, Star Olico, Orchard Hills Country Club, collaborative work on other projects with Kevin Cooley Architects of Vancouver and Meng Analysis of Seattle. We are expanding our corporate licensure to include the state of Oregon and, with the necessary NCARB certification in place, are poised to include other states. We have counseled not-for-profit efforts such as Bio Trekker / Sol Trekker and assisted in design consultation and construction of community improvements such as a new monument sign for the Vancouver School for Arts and Academics. It’s been a good first year.

With economic uncertainty the word of the day, Manley Architects is looking ahead to our second year with – as our political leaders are wont to say “cautious optimism”. Manley Architects is well suited to thrive in the current bumpy environment. We are “right sized” for most project owners and offer flexibility in fee structure and a high degree of personal service. Manley Architects is a high value/high quality service oriented alternative that is attractive to both our existing and new clients.

The coming year will be another “building” year for Manley Architects. Among our goals for the coming year will be to better define and sharpen focus on our core mission, to continue to find ways to better serve existing clients and seek to expand our capability to service new clients to our high standard. We plan to formalize our commitment to sustainable design through acquisition of accepted certifications such as LEEDSTM. We will continue creating Blog entries of general interest to our clients with articles planned to cover topics such as Collaboration between Artists and Architects in Public and Private Buildings and a series on Design for Education.

We are fortunate to have worked with and for exceptional clients, general contractors, consultants, friends and associates in the construction industry .We look forward to another excellent year of building on the foundation these associations have provided and discovering one by one the brick and mortar of new associations that will carry us into the future.