Case study · Operations
Helping the firm see where people were needed.
As Director of Visualization at Hacker, I worked across design tools, training, and technology, and built a staffing tool that made the weekly question of who works on what much easier to answer.
The problem
Staffing by feel.
Staffing in architecture changes fast. Projects pause, come back, or suddenly need more people after a client decision or a city review. At a firm of more than 70 people, the weekly staffing meeting ran on feel: "I could use somebody."
The tool
Capacity anyone could see.
I built a tool that showed who was overbooked and who had room, and how each project's hours compared with what it needed, broken out by role: project managers, designers, and interns. The staffing meeting got a shared picture to start from, and people could see the gaps and decide from the same information.
The bridge
The most technical architect in the building.
Alongside staffing, I led visualization quality and training, managed outside rendering partners, and served on the IT committee. I helped pick hardware and software that fit the firm's work and budget, cut software licensing costs by 30%, introduced Enscape and VR, and wrote generative design tools in MaxScript. A lot of the job was translating between architects and IT: understanding what the designers needed, then finding a practical way to give it to them.
Feasibility
Renderings that helped win work.
I also produced the images for early feasibility studies, the ones the firm used to go after and win new projects.