Developing Laboratories of the Future—High-Performance Teamwork for High-Performance Laboratories
David Allen, Allen Consulting, LLC
Rick Norman, Strategyn
The work environments where innovation happens can help or hinder the performance of R&D scientists and engineers. Laboratory spaces typically consume many times the amount of energy of other buildings due to their traditionally high ventilation rates. For the sake of our nation’s air, its security, and its economy, this consumption must change. At the same time, the work environments can be made to greatly enhance innovative work. The laboratory of the future requires those of us who conceive, design, build, and operate these buildings to work differently to create these environments in the first place.
The need for change in laboratory development practices is the same as the need for changes in U.S. manufacturing when global competition began. The same loss of tolerance for mediocre U.S. products compared to imports in the 1980s is now happening to the building industry as people demand that buildings perform better while consuming much less energy. Zero net energy use is the goal.
This presentation will explain what can be learned from proven product development practices and used effectively to develop laboratories of the future. Specifically, it will focus on two practices. The first will be breaking down the traditional functional silos of architecture, engineering, and construction to form cross-functional teams that can accomplish more with less. The other will be how these teams can learn what high-performance means from the people who will occupy and pay for the R&D buildings they develop, and use that knowledge to set measurable performance criteria that balance building performance benefits with life cycle costs. The team will be committed to these criteria and focus on them for success.
Citing case histories of the application of state-of-the-art customer-focused needs gathering methods, along with strategy-formulation and "product development" practices, this paper will reveal how the laboratory building industry can transform itself into a high-performance team.
Biographies:
David Allen began his career over 30 years ago in the Plant Engineering Department of a heavy industrial manufacturing plant for Ingersoll-Rand. He was soon promoted to plant engineer for a new plant, where he oversaw the plant's construction and operation and co-developed one of the first computerized maintenance management systems (LUMAS) with the plant IT manager. During the next eight years he was credited with having the best-run department in the plant, and his responsibilities expanded to managing manufacturing process improvement projects. In that work he learned to apply what are called six sigma techniques, moved on to various roles for Ingersoll-Rand, NTN-Toyo, and Becton-Dickinson leading manufacturing process engineering to improve and develop manufacturing processes. At Becton-Dickinson, he took on leadership of product development project management and design engineering. Here his skills expanded to include best practices in product development management. In 2000, Mr. Allen returned to his roots in facilities work and founded Allen Consulting, bringing skills in product and process engineering to the world of building performance. His firm provides leadership in project management and engineering to make buildings work, like the fine-tuned products they can be, for the businesses they shelter. His mission is to save the world from bad buildings.
Mr. Allen has a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering degree from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and a Master of Business Administration degree from the Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina. He is an active member of ASHRAE GPC-32 and TC7.1.
Rick Norman has product development experience in engineering, design, design-manufacturing automation, marketing, sales, and consulting. Before joining Strategyn in 2006, he owned and managed a successful consulting business, assisting organizations in implementing customer-integration technologies using cross-functional teams.
Mr. Norman has served as a trainer, team facilitator, and consultant, helping companies use voice-of-the-customer techniques to drive strategy. Some of his clients are Cadence Design Systems, PG&E Corporation, Vantus Energy Corporation, Navigation Technologies Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Company, Sun Microsystems, Raychem, Becton Dickinson and Company, AT&T/NCR, LifeScan, Bose Corporation, GE Lighting, Boston Scientific Corporation, Varian, Lockheed, Harley-Davidson, Baxter Healthcare, the Clorox Company, B. Braun Medical, Inficon, and FEI Company.
Mr. Norman co-authored Customer Integration: The Quality Function Deployment (QFD) Leader's Guide for Decision Making. A certified level III organizational engineer, he also pioneered a practical application of organizational engineering technology that enabled teams to revamp their innovation and product development processes.
Prior to embarking on his consulting career, Mr. Norman worked as an engineer for GE Aircraft Engines, a design manager for NuTone and Johnson & Johnson, sales and marketing manager for International TechneGroup Incorporated, and a quality function deployment (QFD) consultant for Leemak Training Systems. He has a bachelor’s degree in systems engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point and has completed graduate studies in marketing at Xavier University.