Minutes of meeting held on 13th March 2017, commencing at 2 pm in Room 24, Newton,

Nottingham Trent University.

PRESENT: All members

J. Borkowska (JKB), J. Bowen (JHB), S. Dowson (SD), M. Ford (MF), F. Knights (FK)

ACTION

1.0 MATTERS ARISING FROM PREVIOUS MINUTES:

Every member to produce their fictitious CV.
- Starts in 2017, the year when graduated NTU
- Add in everything after then to lead you up to your role within the
practice
Look up how much architecture practices pay themselves when they start
up
BIM level 4 research and what it is about
Behaviours in collaborations, in response to BIM level 4 research
Research technologies in relation to chosen sectors
Create our individual SWOT analysis referring to our individual roles
Create company SWOT analysis
Finish PESTEL analysis
What is the evidence of your directors suitability for their chosen roles
within the firm (modelled partially upon personal career development
plans following graduation)?
What is your firms product? What is the market for this product? What is
your unique selling point (USP)?
What are your firms strengths and weaknesses? What opportunities and
threats may affect its success?
Who are your clientele (and who else might they be in the future)?
How does your business fit into the Nottingham community? Who is
competing with you locally and/or nationally for potential clients?
How will you demonstrate commercial viability? Where will you get set-up
funding, and how much is required?
What will be the capital and running costs of the practice? What profits do
you anticipate and when?
How will you manage your company? Will it be a private or publicly owned
organisation, a partnership or a co-operative? What kind of employer will
you be?
What is your attitude to sustainability and carbon reduction?
How might another economic recession affect your business? How would
you diversify or change course if needed? How might you expand the scope
of your business activities?
How will you market/promote your company?
Researching into ways we can provide a hands on promotion on the stand
Research in more detail PPS
Not just precedent research but the construction process behind it
 Maybe start looking at these precedents in further detail, look on the
company website for construction details
Look how materials get put together
Green roofs do further research on construction details

2.0 BUSINESS CARDS

JHB printed out in print shop and cut down to size
3.0 NAME BADGES
Bought 5 for 50p each
JHB to design a name tag to put inside the badges
4.0 EXHIBITION
FK to try to get hold of an ipad to use in the presentation
5.0 EXHIBITION INTERACTION
Litre of Light
- Way to show how we work in the community with children
- An example of a project we have done
- Box look through
- Not really interaction
Lucky Dip
- Have a bad that holds bricks
- Pick bricks out the bag
- Place bricks onto the table to build a little city / building
- Could even use lego for (Does Lego use recycled plastic?)
- Can have a digitally interactive version rather than
6.0 SWOT ANALYSIS INTERNAL (THE PRACTICE)
Strengths and weaknesses (possibly put into a table)
- Yourselves and your backgrounds (your strengths things that you
have)
- A strength could be that one of the directors is a qualified Structural
Engineer (then dont need to hire anyone in but we may be lacking in
other areas)
- MF could have a skill in people management (if not good at it you
action is.)
- SD strength as Admin could be that she is able to offer course in CAD to
not only the company but externally (would prove to be another source
of income)
- Weaknesses (things you dont have so you have to hire in external
people eg. A Structural Engineer)
- One of the directors could not be up to date on their CAD so require
training up to a particular level
S.W.O.T analysis includes the skills you have rather than what you do which
is influenced by the PESTEL analysis
7.0 WEBSITE DESIGN
Marketing page contains S.W.O.T And PESTEL analysis diagrams with some
conclusions in response to them
S.W.O.T analysis includes strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities
- Example of threat lots of robots in the future who are taking peoples
jobs
Marketing page is a summary of what is on all the other pages
- Add the changes in the market to this page
- Can't find marketing page easily
Need to have links between the person and the page for their sector
- eg. Marketing page and Marketing Director
- Technology page and Technology Director
- Also you might say about robots in the S.W.O.T and then link that to
the Technology page which then their use in the world then links to
marketing and also they have financial implications which links to
finance page (changes in the future)
Any laws that are coming in that will make us do things differently will go
on the marketing page
Start with looking at the context first on all directors pages
Publications / Awards / Clients might go under marketing or admin
Website needs to be more connected up
References reference information up till 2017 and after that make it up
Eg. say source: the office of national security
Concentrate on the website first before we do the panels for the exhibition
Rest of pages seem to be easily navigable
PESTEL
How far out you go depends on what you are going to do
Only include what is relevant when looking at the world
- Add plastic research to it as this is relevant to our construction
processes in 5 years time
- Eg. We are going to go into an economic recession in 2024 so as a result
of this we need to diversify and have different projects of varying sizes
- Building schools for the future program got scrapped
- Could say that BREXIT doesnt affect us as we dont get materials from
the EU, we source them locally so this is one of our strengths as a
practice
- Have half a dozen strengths as a minimum
Do PESTEL before the SWOT analysis
- Write down things that pop into your head throughout that time period
- Is there anything political that will affect your business during that
period?
- Opportunities and threats around the world that will affect your
business
- Could say there has been a law that has been passed that we have to
build with 80% recycled material
- CLT wood
BUSINESS PLAN
Business Plan not be a page within itself
Move business plan page to one of the main page headings
Business Plan what does the Context page refer to? Financial Context,
Social Context or Marketing Context etc
 Business Plan What does the analysis page refer to? Analysis of what?
Market or technology etc
Parts of the Business Action Plan will appear all over the website on each
directors page. But the whole table will be gathered together and put on
the finance page
Put financial context on finance page
POSITIONING STATEMENT
Positioning statement needs to be added onto Home Page (ESSENTIAL)
Remove the words positioning statement that are copied twice
Positioning statement is too long so we could shrink this down and have a
mini statement that is put before the longer one
ETHOS
Ethos section to come under the positioning statement
Our Ethos
- three strands to this (three branches for the community)
- what you believe in as a practice
Our ethos may change if our ethos changes we have more of a business
plan
COPING WITH EXPANSION AND FACILITIES WE PROVIDE
If we aim to expand over the next few years across both the UK and
internationally, how do we need to change how we operate in order to still
be able to do community projects? We would need to employ different
people and divide them up to be on different sites as well as us directors
Does our office have a kitchen to house facilities to make tea and coffee
and snacks to provide within client meetings
- Eg. Tea parties
- This has financial implications so goes within the finance and image
sections
PORTFOLIO
Text on portfolio page needs to reflect a change in image or how it reflects
our image. What is our plan for the future? Move from community to
education? Say this is the community projects we did in the past and we
are moving forward into education
Name image page portfolio as they mean the same thing
Introduce colour into the different section headings on the website
- Each heading to use a different colour
CPD
One RIBA member could go to all the different CPD sessions and then come
back to the office to feed the information back to the practice. We could
have a budget for CPD for the year for every person. This gives everyone
the chance to choose what they spend their own CPD budget on. The ideas
about the CPD go on the admin page but the costings of this would go on
the finance page
We could give lectures at local schools to class as part of our CPD hours
If looking at CPD policies we can look at other practices websites
- We can copy their policies on our website
- If we do so we need to reference them
CPD could be free
- We could attend conferences
8.0 ACTIONS TO BE COMPLETED
MF to upload PESTEL analysis to the blog
MF to write out personal profiles
FK to finish doing graphs to do with the population in Nottingham, East
Midlands and England age range back up compare to rest of population
Research about sustainability in communities and schools such as case
studies, government directives, success stories
Have links on statements that we say that link with to research or another
part of the site
Eg. Talked to older people within the .. project participatory design
link this back to another session
SD to turn world sustainability research into section on the PESTEL analysis
and read through booklets uploaded on blog for Market Research of the
world - what has happened in the world
MF to type up the practice page, ethos page look at information on
minutes about the ethos
MF to improve how the surfaces page is written (RIBA Stages) and add
images
JHB to write the publications and awards page writing
SD to complete minutes
JKB to complete finance spreadsheet
JKB to put together break-even chart

10.0 EXHIBITION
Can do 3 A1 boards
- keep simple
- use information from the website
Bring refreshments (for not only the public but ourselves)
Want whole presentation to be interactive and enable people to engage
with the stall linking to our ethos and emphasis on participatory design
Presentation could be printed on recycled paper
- Fits in with our ethos of being sustainable
- Recycled paper could be sourced from the Nottingham area
- Printed using natural dyes
- Add this information onto the back of the booklets
- Make the information about our sustainability on the back of the
booklets bigger as this is a big part of our practice and we need to make
it stand out
- Add on FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified to the back of our
publications
Invite people to see our work but only the answers of those who have been
around all groups have their feedback to count
ENGAGING STALL ELEMENT
Picture Frame
- The practice name and logo written on
- Instagram, Facebook and Twitter feeds
- Get people to come and have the photo taken with the frame and be
put on instagram
MDF Brick Wall (Similar to that for IWD (International Womens Day)
- People instead of bricks
 - Get people to write on the people
- Draw around peoples hands
UK Map get people to add on pins of where they are from
All about emphasising interaction and the community

9.0 DATE OF NEXT MEETING:

We will be meeting at 10am on both Saturday 18th March and Sunday 19th March
2017 to complete all work and to check we have everything