Q&A with Architectural Laboratory Designer Cody Ferguson
You have spent much of your career at casework vendor companies, detailing and modeling architectural drawings for design, submittal, fabrication and installation purposes. How did you find that field?
I went to Murray State University and part of the curriculum was to have an internship my senior year. I can’t tell you how many places I applied at. It was very competitive in architecture and design, and in my geographic area the firms are small, and they don’t take on a lot of interns – paid or unpaid. I had a friend at Institutional Casework, Inc (ICI) and that opened a door for me. It was all who you know; that’s how I found it. It appealed to me because my degree is in interior design, and I had an interest in kitchen and bath design. I remember thinking a cabinet is a cabinet (newsflash it is not), so this would be a great way to get my foot in the door. I started as a drafter, drawing floorplans and elevations of the labs and it blossomed from there into something that turned into a career. But to start out it was just a lot of job hunting and networking.
You have tremendous knowledge of laboratory casework. How does all that knowledge come into play with the HERA projects you’re working on?
Every position I’ve had has required some form of computer aided drawing. I know how to draw, and I’ve done all phases of a project so I understand what can go from concept to paper to actually being built. Many architectural classes focus on the building exterior but not interiors, and we at HERA have to think about interiors. Understanding clearances, cabinet sizes and more, all that helps me. The real benefit of my knowledge to our clients is that when they have questions about casework, I already know the manufacturers and what they can produce. For example, on one of my projects they wanted under-counter microscope cabinets, and I was able to calculate the minimum cabinet dimensions they needed on the fly due to my knowledge of construction. Another benefit is that so many people in architecture are artistic and focus a lot on aesthetics. My background helps temper our designs into that intersection of beautiful and functional.
Much of your work at HERA is behind the scenes, creating BIM models and setting firmwide BIM standards. How does that work impact the final product that our architectural partners and end users see?
I’m on the Revit standards committee. Much of what we focus on are things like templates, Revit content and streamlining processes. Revit is a full system and we only touch the surface of it, but there’s more things it can do that would help us be more accurate and more competitive. One thing we’re trying to do more of is sending users a Revit link so they can walk through a 3D model in real time and better understand their space. This is a huge benefit to people who have a hard time reading and fully comprehending floorplans. Another update I’ve helped with is to automate our schedules to reduce human error. Hand typed door, hardware or casework schedules introduce errors, and Revit allows us to be mostly automated if the drawings have the appropriate information in them.
Everyone has different levels of Revit competency. I’m self-taught at Revit. I took some basic classes, like 101 and 102, in college, but you don’t learn about all the tools and buttons. I started really learning it at H2I Group and when I hit a roadblock I would click around or look through forums until I found a solution. I like to train and onboard the staff at HERA. I am able to be a resource for everyone, so they don’t hit a roadblock and sit in the dark, frustrated. Something about it just clicks for me and it just works.
Do you have a favorite or most challenging project you’ve worked on at HERA that you’re particularly proud of?
Sierra College Science Building Phase 1, which is still ongoing, was my first HERA project and has been complicated because it is in California and has additional seismic requirements that aren’t included for many projects. The Auburn University at Montgomery Science and Technology Complex Renovation was fun, and Williams Blackstock Architects was great to work with. I am also excited to have worked on the Alfond Center for the Roux Institute at Northeastern University. It’s going to be a cutting-edge building and I’m excited to see it completed. Other than that, I’ve recently started working on a lot of newer projects in the MEO/crime lab sector that are in the schematic design phase, so I’m getting to explore new laboratory types and design phases. It took a while for me to get involved with schematic because of my background and being more experienced in construction documentation and construction administration. It’s great to see what happens with planning the labs, adjacencies and considering the building overall. It’s been fun to get back into space planning and flex that muscle in my brain. I like doing the blocking diagrams and putting together the puzzle pieces.