Tag Archives: future

Strength and Harmony 

Strength and Harmony 

Understanding specific personal strengths and talents to successfully work with all kinds of people.

By Diane C. Confer, CAPP, CPA

How many different assessments have we all taken to find out who we are, how we lead, Strength and Harmony PDF Article  how we learn, and how we handle situations? I can think of several. Myers-Briggs tells me I am an extrovert who uses my senses to take in information, my feelings when making decisions, and likes a planned and organized approach to life called judging. The Management Team Role Indicator says I prefer to be a coach and a sculptor. The Leadership Effectiveness & Adaptability Description scores me as an S2, which says my leadership style is high on supportive behavior and high on task behavior. Last but not least, the Thomas-Kilmann Instrument ranks my conflict-handling mode as accommodating.

Needless to say, there are countless assessments that can be taken to tell us who we are. It seems the only thing missing is submitting a DNA swab to find out our ancestry! Personally, I’m just waiting on a Groupon for that one. With all these assessments it seems impossible to remember what you are! Are you an ISTJ, S2, or just R2D2? It all can be just too much.

There is one more to add to the mix that is different than the others you know—different because it’s easier to remember, easier to understand, and easier to apply. It’s the Gallup StrengthsFinder assessment, which identifies your natural talents that can grow into strengths. The assessment is powerful because it also gives you the tools to understand the talents and strengths of others, which allows us as leaders to better understand work situations and ensure the right people are in the room to solve the challenges we face every day. Some talents naturally collide—strategic and analytical, for example—but knowing that before the team is assembled makes it easier to anticipate issues.

StrengthsFinder was created by Gallup, Inc. based on the findings of the late Donald O. Clifton (known as the father of strengths psychology). The goal is to support people and groups in understanding and applying their individual and collective talents to improve their relationships and increase their creativity, productivity, and overall happiness.

There is a key clarification: talents and strengths are not interchangeable. A strength is the ability to consistently provide near-perfect performance in a specific activity. Talents are naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior that can be productively applied. Talents, knowledge, and skills—along with the time spent (investment) practicing, developing your skills, and building your knowledge base—combine to create your strengths.

THE TALENTS

Gallup identified 34 talent themes and placed them in four categories:

Executing
Team members who have a dominant strength in the executing domain are those to whom you turn time and again to implement solutions. These are the people who will work tirelessly to get something done. People who are strong in the executing domain have an ability to take an idea and transform it into reality within the organization they lead. Talent themes include achiever, arranger, belief, consistency, deliberative, discipline, focus, responsibility, and restorative.

Influencing
People who are innately good at influencing are always selling the team’s ideas inside and outside the organization. When you need someone to take charge, speak up, and make sure your group is heard, look to someone with the strength to influence. Talent themes include activator, command, communication, competition, maximizer, self-assurance, significance, and woo (winning others over).

Relationship Building
Relationship builders are the glue that holds a team together. Strengths associated with bringing people together—whether by keeping distractions at bay or keeping the collective energy high—transform a group of individuals into a team capable of carrying out complex projects and goals. Talent themes include adaptability, connectedness, developer, empathy, harmony, include, individualization, positivity, and relator.

Strategic Thinking
Strategic thinkers are able to keep people focused on what they could be and are constantly pulling a team and its members into the future. They continually absorb and analyze information and help the team make better decisions. Talent themes include analytical, context, futuristic, ideation, input, intellection, learner, and strategic.
The easiest way to understand talent application is with an example. And since we all have personal relationships, let’s see if we can relate this this one.

The Exercise Bike
A husband and wife purchase an exercise bike that comes in a box and must be assembled. The husband has activator as one of his top five talents. The activator talent is best described as “impatient for action; they are willing to start without knowing all the information or details—they just know they must get started to make things happen.” Activator is not as high on the wife’s talent profile, but her top talents of discipline (highly organized) and strategic (understand the big picture) in conjunction with his activator talent often make mini-projects a lot fun for them.

When the box arrives the husband rips the box open (not opening it by the seams, mind you—he just rips the top and down the edges in any random way so right off the bat, the wife who loves order starts hyperventilating) and lays all the parts out on the floor. Because the bike is for the wife, she has the task of putting it together. Meanwhile the husband sits in the chair and provides commentary.

Because she is organized (that’s the talent of discipline, which is in her top 10) she first gets out the instruction manual and begins to follow the instructions as they are presented. Mr. Backseat Driver over on the couch says things like, “I’d put the seat on first.” But you see, that’s not what the instructions said to do first. Then the husband says, “See that piece fits into that piece over there and slides into the slot.” Meanwhile the wife is trying to keep her focus (and sanity) and follow the instructions!

The husband is a mechanic who spent years assembling and tearing down equipment and was paid by how fast he could do it. So he is hard wired (i.e. it’s his strength) to just jump in and start assembling—he doesn’t even know if there were instructions in the box. But the wife is most comfortable laying out a plan and following it.

Now, you may relate to either the wife or the husband but understand, both approaches are correct. That is what is key about talents. Talents allow us to work in the way that makes us most comfortable—not the other person working on the project. The husband is comfortable just winging it so he can get started; the wife is more comfortable laying out a plan first. The goal is to find a comfortable place where these two talents can coexist.

At Work
The same type of situations can occur at work. What happens when you work with someone who has a natural talent that collides with yours? What if your project has someone who’s a planner and you’re an activator? How do you keep your sanity?
Even if you don’t know your talents, you know who you like working with and who you don’t, right? The key is understanding that it’s not about you—I know, shocker! The other person is not trying to make your life miserable. He or she is working the way that comes naturally. Keeping that in mind, it becomes easier to shift focus on the end goal and have each person contribute in the way that works best for him or her. This is not easy and not for the impatient but developing this skill is what will take you from a contributor or manager to a leader. So next time someone approaches something differently than the way you would, tell yourself that this is your leadership moment. Focus on the end goal and provide the space where each can contribute in the way that comes naturally to them.

My Case Study
My top five talents are harmony, relator, achiever, includer, and positivity. My boss has arranger as one of her top talents. When I create a PowerPoint presentation, I often pass it through her to make sure she agrees with the order of the presentation. It comes naturally to her and, because it’s included in one of her top talents, gives her adrenaline. I, on the other hand, am a people person. Four of my top five talents fall under the category of relationship building. If you want to talk to a group and get everyone on board, I’m your person.

That’s how it works. There are no right or wrong talents. Just because a talent is not in your top five doesn’t mean you don’t have it. It just means it doesn’t come naturally for you. It will be harder, take more time, and zap your energy for you to complete the task. It doesn’t mean you can’t balance the checkbook; it just means some people love to do it and some procrastinate until the bank calls. You know who you are.

Do you want to find out your top talents? Visit gallupstrengthscenter.com for more information or to take the assessment and start matching the talents of your team.
StrengthsFinder is a great tool to leadership. The key is not trying to change people—for example putting the people person in a room by themselves doing data entry. But rather our task as leaders is to fit the right talent fit for the task needed. Don Clifton’s results from his life-long study was that successful companies don’t just tolerate differences in people; they capitalize on them. How you are capitalizing on the talents of your team will be fundamental to the outcome.

TPP-2017-11 Strength and Harmony

DIANE C. CONFER, CAPP, CPA is director of campus services and parking and transportation at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She can be reached at dconfer@mdanderson.org.

Thinking Ahead

Thinking Ahead

By Sanjay Pandya, PE

Facilitating immediate or future adaptive reuse of parking structures. 

Technology and advances in society are affecting current thinking related to mobility and Thinking Ahead PDF Articledirectly affecting traffic, transportation, and parking. What will the future hold? Will parking demands increase, decrease, or simply change? What will become of our current parking structures in the future? Can a parking structure be designed today to be adapted into something different tomorrow?

There have been conversations among parking professionals, structure owners, urban planners, transportation professionals, and architects regarding the current and future effect on parking of technological, mobility, and societal changes such as:

  • The migration of suburbanites to urban centers.
  • Millennials driving less than previous generations and forgoing car ownership.
  • Car-sharing services (Uber, Lyft, Zipcar, etc.).
  • Connected and autonomous vehicles.
  • The drive toward reducing vehicular traffic and making communities more pedestrian-friendly and walkable.

Meeting Needs
Many communities are already taking measures to meet the evolving parking and transportation needs of communities of today and the future. For example, forward-thinking administrators are revising their zoning codes and moving away from minimum parking ratios to maximum parking ratios for selected land uses. In addition, most are recognizing a reduction in parking demand for transit-oriented development (TOD) and shared-use parking.

However, most agree that the need for parking structures is not going to go away anytime soon, even as technology quickly changes. Parking may not be the most glamorous element of a development or community, but many community planners and developers recognize that when it’s done right, parking is key to realizing their vision for an active and vibrant community and a successful development.

The service life of many parking structures being designed now is typically about 50 to 75 years. As a result, these buildings are and will continue to be fixtures of our communities’ urban landscape. However, we are realizing that with time, our mobility options and preferences are going to change. The needs of the urban community are going to change. The last thing anyone wants or needs is to build a structure that will be obsolete or severely underutilized.

What if parking structures could be designed to not only handle current needs but also adapt to better meet the evolving parking and transportation needs of communities in the future? What if we could future-proof the parking structure of today and design it to be adaptable to become a community mobility hub, a community event center, or even some other type of land use? Can this be done physically and economically?

Designing to Adapt
I believe it can be done for a new parking structure design, and it may also be possible for an existing structure retrofit. Some would argue that it would be simpler and less costly to demolish an existing parking structure and replace it with a new building more suitable for the new use. But in some circumstances and for many owners taking the long view, this may not be the most environmentally responsible or cost-effective choice. So how do we go about doing this in a creative and economical way? What should we consider and do today to allow parking structures to be multifunctional and adaptable in the future?

The Challenge
Parking structures are unique building types. They are typically open to the environment and are designed to be storage facilities (group S occupancy); they’re generally not conditioned, occupied spaces. They are typically more horizontal than vertical in configuration. The primary focus of parking structure design has been to efficiently move cars in, store them, and then move them back out efficiently. In contrast, buildings for non-parking uses focus on making the occupied space safe, habitable, appealing, and accessible for people. There are a number of design features of a parking structure that don’t lend themselves to non-parking uses:

  • Story heights. Typically, parking structure story heights range between 10 feet and 11 feet, six inches. Those measurements are not suitable for most commercial office/retail or residential uses.
  • Sloped floors. Parking structures require sloped floors to facilitate vehicular circulation between parking levels and for drainage.
  • Size, number, and layout of stairs and elevators. Stairs are a means of egress for life safety and are sized based on code-prescribed occupant load factor associated with an occupancy use classification. For parking structures, the occupant load factor is 200 square feet per person, whereas for an office (Group B) and mercantile (Group M) occupancy it is 100 and 60 square feet per person, respectively, resulting in the requirement for wider stair widths and/or additional stairs. Stairs and accompanying elevators are typically located along the perimeter of a parking structure, whereas in non-parking use buildings, they are typically located within the interior of the building footprint.
  • HVAC systems are not provided for parking floor areas.
  • Many jurisdictions don’t require parking structures to have fire sprinklers for fire protection but do require the systems in other kinds of buildings.
  • The minimum code-prescribed floor live loading for parking structures is 40 pounds per square foot. For other uses such as office, retail, library reading rooms, public meeting space and their corridors, the requirement is between 50 and 100 pounds per square foot.

Possible Solutions
So what can be done differently when planning for and designing the parking structure of the future to compensate for these standard parking structure design features? Plenty:

Increase story heights. We could make the height of the first story a minimum of 15 feet and the height of typical upper stories 12 feet. These heights are more suitable to provide higher clear heights of 12+ feet for ground-level commercial/retail use and 9+ feet for office, community meeting, or possibly residential use. If sufficient site length is not available to provide a parked on-ramp with these story heights or more flat floor area is desired than non-parked-on express ramps (with slope greater than 6.67 percent) could be provided for a portion or the entire length of a ramp. These ramps could be situated near ends of the floor plate or along its sides to provide for more flat floor area.

  • Design the floor framing to allow for the ramped parking bay to be more readily demolished. One way to accomplish this is to provide a double row of columns along the bay with the ramp and expansion/construction joints at the top and bottom of each floor-to-floor ramp segment. This would likely require additional framing elements for lateral load resistance and detailing to facilitate load transfer and accommodate building movement at the expansion/construction joints. While this would add to the initial construction costs, it would also provide an opportunity for modifying each floor to be a complete flat floor plate for future uses.
  • Include 25- to 30-feet-wide light wells between parking bays to provide space for the construction of additional elevator and stair cores and flat-floor construction for corridors within the interior of the building footprint. Foundations for these future pedestrian circulation elements could be constructed as part of the initial construction.
  • The perimeter stair and elevator cores that serve the parking structure could be located outboard to the floor plate. This would allow for easier demolition of these elements if they don’t adequately serve the alternate use.
  • Design floor framing for additional load-carrying capacity by including provisions for adding columns and beams to reduce beam and slab spans or supplement conventional and post-tensioned slab and beam reinforcement to support additional floor loads. This additional load-carrying capacity could accommodate a topping slab to level out the floor drainage slope.
  • The impacts of floor cross slope for drainage could be reduced by providing additional floor drains.
  • Building columns, walls, and foundations could be designed to accept vertical expansion and the addition of a podium level for a public plaza recreational space or a one- or two-story light-framed (type 5 framed wood construction) building structure.
  • Design for either the removal of perimeter vehicle and pedestrian guard rails or detail connection points to accept future installation of building facade elements (e.g., curtain wall/store front system, panelized EIFS, or stucco wall system, etc.), including doors and windows to fully enclose the perimeter of the structure.
  • Provide additional capacity in the electrical service, sanitary sewer, and fire protection systems. Include provisions for electrical and mechanical chases to accommodate duct work and cabling and additional space for mechanical and electrical service and fire protection equipment (fire pumps, emergency generators, etc.).

These are just some provisions that would need to be considered and addressed in the design of new parking structures to provide the opportunity for the structures to be adapted for non-parking uses in the future. Additional structural and architectural consideration may need to be identified based on whether the parking structure is constructed of cast-in-place concrete, precast concrete, or steel-framed construction.

I recognize that not all projects will lend themselves to implementing design enhancement for facilitating future adaptive reuse, but for some projects and owners, it may be beneficial to investigate the possibilities during project planning and design development. Parking structures designed in this manner to accommodate future conversion to a different use will cost more initially. The economic decision to proceed in this manner will need to be considered by community leaders and owners to determine the feasibility of such an investment for our environment and communities.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts and feedback—my email address is to the right.

TPP-2017-11 Thinking Ahead

SANJAY PANDYA is a parking practice builder and senior project manager with Kimley-Horn. He can be reached at sanjay.pandya@kimley-horn.com.

 

Case Study: Maintenance Planning

tpp-2016-03-case-study-maintenance-planningBy John Burgan, MS, PE

There was a time when parking structure maintenance was new and somewhat
frightening to municipalities. While no longer new, it continues to strain
medium-sized communities, where a high demand for infrastructure spending
combined with small revenue streams pinches budgets. Today’s discussions turn to
operations, technology, and the future. Yet, communities need to continue funding
maintenance. Can what we’ve learned from experience help guide future maintenance
planning? The City of Racine, Wis., may provide some guidance.

Racine, population 80,000, is located along Lake Michigan in the southeast corner of Wisconsin. Like many cities its size, Racine built several parking ramps in the 1980s and ’90s to support downtown businesses. The city started a regular maintenance program in 1995 that continues today.

Parking in the City

The city’s parking structure inventory includes:

  • McMynn: built in 1981, 236 spaces, 70 percent occupancy.
  • Shoop, built in 1986, 215 spaces, 80 percent occupancy.
  • Lake Avenue, built in 1988, 365 spaces, 20 percent occupancy.
  • Gaslight Pointe, built in 1994, 30 percent occupancy.
  • Civic Centre, built in 2002, 409 spaces, fully occupied.

The McMynn ramp is an early post-tensioned structure, and its mild reinforcing is not epoxy coated. It suffers from ongoing delamination of the top steel in the slabs.

The Shoop and Lake Avenue ramps are typical precast double tees with precast beam and columns and poured-in-place pour strips. The tee-to-tee connectors are not protected. Typical maintenance includes sealant replacement and coating of tee-to-tee connectors.

The Gaslight Pointe and Civic Centre ramps are also precast double tees with precast beam and columns, integral pour strips, and stainless steel tee-to-tee connectors. Typical maintenance is limited to sealant replacement.

Trends
The Shoop, Lake Avenue, Gaslight Pointe, and Civic Centre structures are generally in good shape. We expect only standard maintenance items in the foreseeable future, with easily predictable costs.

The McMynn structure will have a more intensive examination in 2016, with a focus on top-of-slab repairs. If deterioration is accelerating, the city will need to consider three options:

  • Minimal maintenance followed by demolition.
  • Extensive rehabilitation.
  • Minimal maintenance followed by replacement.

Unfortunately, revenue trends are unlikely to change. The north side of downtown has excessive supply on workdays but not during special events, when it is used by attendees of the many festivals and events along the city’s lakefront.

The Future
The city needs to be commended for its commitment to maintaining its structures. Yet, as noted above, the city is faced with an oversupply of structured parking that is not cheap to maintain and limited revenue. The city has many competing needs for its infrastructure
budget, and, at the same time, revenue supplied by the state is decreasing.

As Michael J. Maierle, Racine’s transit and parking system manager, asks, “How does one mesh engineering and economic considerations with community and political values?”

The key to success is continued maintenance coupled with long-range planning founded on accurate condition assessments. Likely questions include:

  • Two structures with the highest maintenance costs have the highest occupancy rates. Can the rates in these structures be raised?
  • The McMynn facility is likely to need a major renovation within the next 10 years. Should the city look to alternative sites to provide the supply, or budget for construction of a new structure?
  • The Shoop, Lake Avenue, and Gaslight Pointe structures are located within a few blocks of each other. Lake Avenue and Gaslight Pointe have low occupancy. Should the city look at the likelihood of future development in the area and, if the likelihood is low, consider reducing maintenance expenditures on one or both facilities?

The team considers how to provide information and options to the city, which in turn will decide how to mesh engineering, economics, community values, and politics with a keen eye on the future.

JOHN BURGAN, MS, PE, is structural business development director with R.A. Smith and a member of IPI’s Consultants Committee. He can be reached at john.burgan@rasmithnational.com.

 

TPP-2016-03 Case Study: Maintenance Planning