Clients
Our main purpose in being a mid-sized practice is so that we can form strong personal relationships with our clients. Every project is directly led by either Jayson Blight or Michael Rayner, under whom one of our Senior Associates will be the Project Architect. Our focus is on involving our clients in the whole design process rather than us merely responding to a brief. As a result we have many repeat clients, we have strategies to help clients immerse in their projects, imparting confidence in the design response as well as for continuous cost and program monitoring.
Staff
It goes without saying that staff are the backbone of any practice. Our directors’ reputation has been seminal in attracting skilled and talented staff. About 1/3 came with us from our previous practice with others through rigorous selection process. Through our university roles, we employ at least one of the top graduates each year. We nurture all by continuous training, programs in design, technologies, and processes. We hold weekly sessions keeping staff abreast of all the practice’s projects, their issues, and strategies. We promote and value new ideas from everyone no matter how early they are in their careers.
Technology
Blight Rayner works entirely on Revit with additional programs applied as required. They include Revizto for builder-consultant coordination (enabling all team members to view processes concurrently), Navisworks for ‘clash’ detection, and Rhino and Grasshopper for sophisticated 3D modelling. We typically work to LOD 350 for coordination through to shop drawings, and extend above that applicable, and typically employ Aconex or Procore for whole-of-team drawing transfer and communication. We maintain an extensive and continually updated library of materials and fabrication processes with assessments of their performance.
Design
Our design process has been honed over many years. It always begins with connection of the mind to the hand. We don’t employ technologies until concepts are robustly expressed by hand so as to embed experiential tactility. We explore first in plan and section, and then 3-dimensionally with our visualisation artists generating realistic modelling over which we hand sketch, repeating this method over again from multiple external and internal viewpoints. This process enables clients (and stakeholders and consultants) to contribute progressively, with the 3D modelling being concurrently evaluated by cost and other consultants.
Collaboration
This is an overused word we realise. Our focus is not only on collaborating with our clients but with our consultants and with project managers when applicable. Knowledge from consultant planners, engineers, and other specialists is invaluable in broadening design possibilities and maximising cost-benefit to a project. We have particular consultants that we liaise with regularly, some for over 25 years. This gives us innate structural, services, and environmental design knowledge and enables us to evolve comprehensive solutions rapidly. We also have special relationships with builders, fabricators, craftspeople, suppliers, designers and artist that in varied ways enrich our resources to optimise solutions from outset to outcome.
Quality Assurance
Quality Assurance (QA) is a systematic process of ensuring that risk across every aspect of a project is minimised and managed, and that the completed project fulfils the client’s objectives to their optimum. Blight Rayner has 3rd party accredited Quality Assurance accreditation to PQC Level 3 Queensland Government rating. We apply QA standards consistently to all our projects, customising Project Management Plans for each project that enables clients and project managers to monitor our efficiency, effectiveness and progress at any stage. As importantly, our QA system facilitates coordination between our team members’ work and between our and our consultants’ work.