Activity

I work on residential and small commercial sites – most are less than two acres. I try to keep things as simple for me as possible, but I also try to be easier to work with than some others because it helps with referrals (some other professionals are more concerned with how easy or difficult you make their work and refer their clients based on…[Read more]

I feel like there are a few different ways to handle this, and it really depends on how much information you’re trying to bring together into a single model. For instance, you may have a few individual cad files from various sources, like survey points and contours, civil roadway alignments, deep utility alignments, an architectural floorplan,…[Read more]

Clarification:
There is a big difference between thinking like an owner and acting like an owner. The last thing any principal wants is an inexperienced person trying to tell them how things should be done by acting like they own the place.
Thinking like an owner is to try to understand their perspective and then try to execute your own job in…[Read more]

Don’t know the intricate details of hiring practices for LA firms in SF, but in this economy ninety days is not an abnormally long time to not be able to land a job. Between 2009 and 2012 I couldn’t find an LA position to save my life. Granted, I lived in one of the areas hit hardest by the downturn and was also in a very small market, but thr…[Read more]

What I’ve read above and putting my career path against it I find that it is full of similarities.
Take it, you are not alone. You are at a point where you need to prove to yourself that what you want to do and what you are doing is are satisfying your professional believes as well as feeding your commitments outside of work.
Here a brief of my v…[Read more]

As usual, love andrews response.
‘Start thinking like an owner…’ I think this came naturally to me as before I even set out on a formal education in la i knew I wanted to own  a business. I think this attitude, if you can call it that, both earned me opportunites while simultaneously closing doors in other areas. An candidate employee with an…[Read more]

I can empathize with you as someone who did not have an easy path in landscape architecture. I was unable to get a traditional LA career off the ground – partly due to geography and partly due to “not being a good fit” (I don’t hand draw well), and partly having gone to school in Idaho and living in the shadows of Harvard, RISD, URI, and UMass.…[Read more]

when I was in design build we used gator bags all the time. (we had I think over 500)
they are time consuming to fill and can have a tendency to get holes in them.

I wholeheartedly agree – there seems to be a disconnect at Autodesk around where Landscape Architects discipline lies. I am in the process of trying to integrate Revit into our practice as well as Civil3D. These two softwares lie at the proverbial ends of the spectrum when talking about rapid prototyping site design. Revit can do basic site work,…[Read more]

Hi Tom … I agree with you, but also felt that the Landscape Institute fees were a touch out of balance. RE no Spanish Institute there ‘is’, I was a member from 2003 – 2011 http://www.aepaisajistas.org/ … I’ve just stumbled across this post as (since moving here and becoming a legal citizen) I’m now trying to join the Brasilian Institute for LA…[Read more]

And the latest
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/04/arts/design/congressional-report-faults-eisenhower-memorial-delays.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSumSmallMediaHigh&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

I worked there for a short ‘extern’ (glorified week long office visit).  I had met Kongjian on his visit to our school and inquired about spending some time in his office at that time.  There aren’t very many english speakers overall, but enough that I could contribute to some extent – worked on a couple of parks and helped crit a charette for a n…[Read more]

To offer a counter point, many of the firms (LA/Planning/Engineering) around here had a very high percentage of private clients. The ‘crash’ happened, and of course places started closing left and right. As things began to recover, I spoke with several different firms and noticed a common trend. Those that were still in business either had one or…[Read more]

Could not agree more.

I could get behind the idea of reducing credit hours in exchange for internship hours (for essentially all professions), but ours seems very applicable.
As a small business owner I’m more apt to hire an entry level with 2-3 years of part/full time experience over someone with 4-5 years full time schooling upon graduation. 
This is not to devalue…[Read more]

I stopped by thinking this was a weird topic, and discovered envirobidnet..Thanks Mark.

Thank you! Just what I needed. I am assuming that a person can get good at this process?  I want to move out of residential work and into the public realm.  I do have a good Civil Engineer that will team with me, and it will be good for the relationship to bring these to him.  Thanks again. Curtis

If you’re looking for local work most cities have a bid opportunities page that lists RFPs under the ‘Business’ menu on their website. ‘Find RFP’ and ‘Bid Contract’ are two of many websites that list LA RFP work across the nation. Note that many listings are categorized as civil engineering projects so even though they contain landscape…[Read more]