I am thrilled to be working as a Practice Technology Specialist, having transitioned as a Healthcare Interior Designer in 2023, at Corgan!
Although I was welcomed to the company just as COVID began to push working from home (WFH), I have never felt distant or separated from the rest of my team. I have been fortunate to work with a wider range of Corgnites from multiple offices, which has made my responsibilities for providing technical support and expertise to design teams across an international firm easier.
In my new role, I am responsible for developing and implementing new technologies, software, and tools to improve the design process and efficiency. Having a background in interior design, I am hoping to provide resources to our designers to advance and streamline their documentation allowing teams to spend more time designing incredible spaces.
The Practice Technology Specialist in Architecture and Design is responsible for providing technical support and expertise to the design team. The specialist will be responsible for developing and implementing new technologies, software and tools to improve the design process and efficiency.
I currently am the dedicated office resource to the Los Angeles office, the Phoenix office, and the Atlanta office. In each office, I perform a retrospective to understand the needs and goals of the staff and plan the best way to achieve those needs. I am also ready to help answer any immediate questions (and do so in person when I visit each office).
Part of the Profile Group
More info to come.
hPTC (healthcare Practice Technology Committee) hPTC (healthcare Practice Technology Committee) is a group of senior-level staff and nominated Revit power-users.
The BIM Content Liaisons are a group of dedicated individuals who are interested in creating/building Revit families for the firm, with overhead by the Practice Technology group. This is completely voluntary and time spent to develop this is personal time.
Automation
Analysis
Corgan University is a semester of learning for all employees to earn CEU credits and expand their knowledge. These classes are well-attended by individuals working at Corgan, and provide a wide range of topics.
As a DDX Champion, I am tasked to work with Project Managers to help gather project information needed to submit to the AIA 2030 DDX platform. During my volunteer role, I have created an excel spreadsheet to help other healthcare champions track who is responsible for what project, the status of that project on the DDX platform, and seeing visually pleasing graphs for our progress year-to-date as well as the ten years leading up to 2030.
Further goals in this role would be to educate the healthcare sector on simple methods of incorporating sustainable and wellness practices into any project.
As a Mindful Materials Champion, I am currently working to help develop an easy tracking tool within Revit for all healthcare interior designers to implement to understand the percentage of finishes on a project that can be found on the mindful materials database.
Further goals for this role would be to help educate designers on materials of concern and increase the goal of mindful materials percentage on every project.
My role at HED was to work within the Commercial Interiors team at the Chicago office.
Day-to-Day tasks mainly steamed around project documentation within Revit where I would help develop the information needed for presentations and project issuance’s. At times, these included producing test fits for new projects based on programmed data, all the way to completing a Revit model for the client to experience a Virtual Reality (VR) walk through. As part of this production process, I was able to quickly create parametric Revit families for myself and my team (which were typically decorative light fixtures used in renderings that were built only by the information from cutsheets and photos). I also became an avid teacher to my team on the use of smart tagging within Revit where we brought DesignerPages: DP Sync to create Revit Materials that linked to an automatically populated Finish Schedule.
Since so much of my time was within Revit, I also worked on many of the Workplace Teams project renderings using Revit and Enscape. Much of what I had learned (via training or self-taught) were then re-laid back to my co-workers to help stream line processes. Once renderings became an integrated part of our teams day-to-day work flow, I helped introduce the team to utilizing QR codes for panoramas that could be viewed from clients’ phone.
Besides my own work, I made a point to help any person (both within and outside my own project team, as well as across offices) with program questions related to Revit, enscape, Bluebeam, DesignerPages, Teams, etc.
The SDL group was comprised of individuals passionate about sustainability and wellness efforts. As a completely voluntary part of the firm, our group developed a series of initiatives that were directly geared towards the COTE Top 10. As part of this group, I:
Materials + Health considers the health and quality of experience of the user in the built environment through the materials selected for a project. These materials are vetted through the education of staff, tracking materials via established resources, and specifications composed with the integrated team; all aligning with office wide tools and strategies.
As part of the efforts in the SDL group, each initiative had a captain to work with multiple offices to share and educate. The Materials’ Health initiative was developed as a way to educate all staff (designers, engineers, project managers, etc.) on the importance of the materials that are to be selected on every project. As part of this group, I helped HED:
Participated on the PULSE survey task force.
“Pulse” is HED’s firmwide anonymous annual employee survey about sustainability, design excellence and collective experience. It is a tool to conduct an annual diagnosis of the employees’ knowledge of aforementioned topics along with HED’s systems and processes. The survey also tracks employees’ engagement and satisfaction, helps identify areas of improvement and provides staff with a platform to voice their opinion.
With only three WELL APs in the firm, and the only WELL Faculty, I worked to make the methodology of The WELL Building Standard a part of all projects that came my way. This included aided any RFPs that were seeking additional information on sustainability (which I was able to add elements from WELL), presenting basic WELL information to clients who were interested in the certification, as well as develop and perform an audit on an existing project for a client who expressed interest in the certification late in the project design life.
As part of our small group of WELL APs, we would meet and post short articles to the company intranet on WELL Facts to help other project teams in easy ways of integrating wellness design into their own projects.
Additionally, I developed a WELL V2, 2019 Q2 excel checklist (otherwise only available online with and export option).
My role at HKS started as an intern where I learned the basic knowledge of the Healthcare industry.
As my knowledge of the products used grew, I began to manage the acquisition of the material library and while coordinating industry rep visits and presentations. Part of this endeavor included developing a “Summer of CEUs” program geared towards presentations for summer interns who were looking for educational information as well as professionals seeking CEUs. This program was open to all vendors, but, they had to show they were on the mindful Materials database and would agree not to bring any plastic cutlery, and allowed a group of designers to decide which program they were most interested in, and what schedule made the most sense.
Concurrently, I managed the documentation and production within the architecture team for projects requiring timely and precise completion.
Resource for questions on technology in the office including, but not limited to: Revit, Enscape, Bluebeam, Excel, and Photoshop. This role also allowed me direct access to our Practice Technology team who I meet with on a regular basis. Additionally, I was able to act as a beta tester for many of the programs that were eventually rolled out to the company.
and choice seating environments. As part of this role, I developed a behavior mapping tool using Bluebeam to track the location of workers and the tasks they performed which I was able to export into data for confirming/ challenging the hypothesis of the research study. This unique use of Bluebeam was then given as a presentation at the ChiBUG meeting.
Coordinated efforts to improve the deliverables and Revit standards for all sectors within the company.
Worked closely with the DesignerPages team to help improve synchronization between the online database and Revit. I also provided firm-wide presentations on how and why to use DesignerPages, as well as one-on-one training with designers.
Teamed with coworkers to help coordinate in-office CEU presentations and factory tour
More information coming soon…
Nominator: Steven Stroman
“Since relocating to Chicago from Phoenix last October, Carina has become an integral part of the Healthcare Interiors and entire Chicago / Midwest team. Carina has wonderful enthusiasm and energy, bringing new ideas, techniques and programs to her project teams. Going above and behind Carina paired with Ana Pinto-Alexander, preparing and speaking at NeoCon this year helping HKS to be recognized as an industry leader. Her knowledge and skill on numerous programs makes her a valuable team member, being able to contribute in multiple facets throughout an entire project. Carina takes time to spread her knowledge to other coworkers, helping to benefit multiple teams. Carina actively engages the design community and has been passionately involved with Nancy Hulsey in spreading the word within the Chicago design community about HKS’s Mindful Materials program. She also has been evolved with the pilot launch and implementation of Designer Pages on projects. Again, Carina is a vital and engaged professional and her passion and drive are boundless. It is a true privilege to be able to work with her.”
