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Dietz & Company Architects Values Relationships

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Architecture

Personal Touch

Lee Morrissette says it’s rewarding to see the impact the firm’s completed projects have on the community.

Lee Morrissette says it’s rewarding to see the impact the firm’s completed projects have on the community.

 

As Kerry Dietz planned her transition away from day-to-day leadership of the architecture firm she launched four decades ago, she was on a site visit to one of the firm’s Boston-area projects with Lee Morrissette — now one of the company’s four principals — and he asked her about her vision for the firm after she steps away.

“She said, ‘well, I’ve always envisioned the firm as a place for people to have a career in architecture.’ I thought that was a really interesting perspective,” Morrissette told BusinessWest. “It’s wasn’t ‘we want to build this building’ or ‘we want to get that award or make a lot of money from this particular type of project,’ but rather, ‘we want to be a place for people to have a career, to be part of a community,’ which I think is really rewarding.

“That, for me, has really resonated. Since becoming a principal over the past five years, I’ve realized that, even though I do interviews with clients and try to get new work and take on that competitive process we do for public work — which is great — it’s occurred to me that clients hire architects as people, not really as companies.”

And that’s important, Morrissette added, considering the relationship aspect of this work.

“You get the company, with all the breadth of experience. But you’re really hiring an architect, a person, to work with,” he explained. “The fastest projects barely get done in a year, and the really big, complex ones go three, five, seven, sometimes 10 years. You’re building a long-term relationship with somebody, so it needs to be somebody you can actually work with, someone who has your back. It’s like having a friend with special expertise you can really tap into. Perhaps friend isn’t the right word, but it’s building a relationship.”

Those relationships have grown over the years, and so has the firm, which now boasts a team of 30, completely filling the space in Springfield Union Station it has occupied since 2017. It has also opened a second office in Cambridge.

“Architects don’t build anything; contractors build things. We just provide all of what they need to be able to do that. And over that year of construction, 18 months, whatever it is, it slowly comes to life for us.”

“The bread and butter for our firm has always been affordable public housing, and there are a lot more housing authorities in the eastern part of the state than in the western part of the state, so we found ourselves getting more work in Eastern Massachusetts,” Morrissette said, noting that three team members work at that satellite.

But staff growth isn’t the only goal, he noted. Professional development is critical, as evidenced by the company’s designation, since 2018, as an Emerging Professional Friendly Firm by the New England Components of the American Institute of Architects. That program acknowledges architecture firms that promote the advancement of emerging talent through professional development and personal growth opportunities.

“It’s like a stamp of approval that we have an established professional-development program that includes mentorship and study materials and support of emerging professionals on a regular basis,” he said.

But it’s not just younger team members who are immersed in a culture of learning. Morrissette spent several recent weekends studying for an exam to become a certified passive house consultant, a cutting-edge type of sustainable design that dramatically reduces the amount of energy a building consumes.

“I’ve taken 56 hours of training to do this. And I’m really lucky that I can participate in that lifelong learning, just like the new grads that join our office,” he told BusinessWest. “We’re all learning together, and I think it’s a cool profession to be in. There’s a lot of variety in what we do, and there’s a lot to explore.”

 

Market Diversification

Dietz, like many large, well-established firms, designs projects in a range of sectors, including commercial, education, housing, senior living, hospitality, municipal work, and more.

“It sounds kind of like investment strategy, but it’s very similar. We have our hospitality industry, which is fairly market-driven, and then we have our publicly funded work,” Morrissette said, noting that publicly funded projects tend to land in a few buckets, from schools to housing authorities to municipalities. “They all have different budget cycles and money sources, but we’re working with public money from the very local level all the way to the feds, and that’s a nice balance to have.”

The principals at the firm — architects Morrissette, Jason Newman, and Kevin Riordan and chief financial officer Tina Gloster — regularly strategize on what projects to pursue or types of work to emphasize, and each brings different experiences and expertise.

Dietz & Company designed the new Richard E. Neal Cybersecurity Center of Excellence in Springfield.

Dietz & Company designed the new Richard E. Neal Cybersecurity Center of Excellence in Springfield.

“The business side, for architects, can be challenging. We don’t go to business school; we go to design school. But when you’re a really good designer, you get a lot of work, and you find yourself running a company, and you find yourself having to make business decisions,” Morrissette said.

One of them is Dietz’s continued evolution as a leader in sustainable design, with one recent example being the Wilmington Senior Center, the firm’s first exposed mass timber project.

“Instead of the old timber — huge trees cut into big pieces, like the interior of mill buildings with huge timber frames and brick exteriors — mass timber is when you take a whole bunch of small pieces of wood and glue them together to make either columns or beams or floor blocks or wall blocks,” Morrissette explained.

“It’s a good sustainability story because it’s wood that’s pretty quickly grown because you’re growing little trees instead of big trees. It’s fairly renewable and reasonably fast-growing. It helps manage the forests. It also sequesters carbon into the building.”

But despite the excitement of new designs and industry innovations, the most gratifying part of any project is watching the final product emerge — and the impact it has on clients.

“Architects don’t build anything; contractors build things. We just provide all of what they need to be able to do that. And over that year of construction, 18 months, whatever it is, it slowly comes to life for us,” Morrissette told BusinessWest, using the senior center as an example. “Nothing is more rewarding than walking an owner or a client through a building and saying, ‘over here, remember we talked about what that café was going to be like? This is where the coffee is going to be. This is where that beautiful tile you picked out is going to go.’

“And then you get to the ribbon cutting, and they say, ‘I can’t believe we’re here.’ To see the building full of its occupants — not contractors or architects, but to actually see it full of its occupants, enjoying the space, playing pool in the rec room and doing yoga in the fitness studio and sitting down for a meal — yeah, that’s pretty cool.”

 

Handing It Over

Still president and board chairman of the firm, Dietz can take a lot of pride in the company and culture she has built, which also includes an employee ownership model launched in 2021. Morrissette is proud of the work, too, but it goes deeper than that.

“In truth, there’s something a little bit zen about it. We spend all this time in this building. We argue and collaborate with the contractors and the owners about details and budget. We advocate for it like it’s our baby. And then we just give to the owner — because it’s not our building. You have to get used to giving it up and walking away.

“But it’s very rewarding,” he added. “It is incredibly challenging and nuanced, and I’m always tested, but I’m really lucky that I get to do this on a daily basis.”

Dietz & Company Helps Its Young Team Members Advance

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Clockwise from top: CFO Tina Gloster and Principals Kevin Riordon, Lee Morrissette, and Jason Newman
Architecture Special Coverage

Professional Development — by Design

Clockwise from top: CFO Tina Gloster and Principals Kevin Riordon, Lee Morrissette, and Jason Newman

Clockwise from top: CFO Tina Gloster and Principals Kevin Riordon, Lee Morrissette, and Jason Newman (Photo by Paul Schnaittacher)

To explain what it means to be named an Emerging Professional Friendly Firm, Jason Newman offered some background on what it’s like to be an aspiring architect.

‘Aspiring,’ because simply earning a degree and going to work at an architecture firm doesn’t make one an architect; other requirements are experience — a certain number of hours worked in the field — and a series of examinations.

“Part of the experience piece is the hours worked in this office, and those hours are not just a lump-sum number of hours worked — it’s a number of hours worked in specific categories of the profession, like drawings, construction administration, and practice management,” said Newman, a principal at Dietz & Company Architects in Springfield.

“One of the things we pay attention to, very thoughtfully for every employee, is that, if you’ve got all your drawing hours satisfied, we’re not going to make you do drawing for another two years,” he went on. “That’s not going to move you forward to your license. So you won’t come to the end of the road here at Dietz and feel, ‘I’m just getting drawing. I have to go somewhere else where I can get construction-management experience.’

“If you’ve got all your drawing hours satisfied, we’re not going to make you do drawing for another two years. That’s not going to move you forward to your license.”

“This is not Boston, where 100 qualified architect candidates are at our door. We have to take care of the people here because we want them to stay,” he went on. “We want to make sure that they feel growth opportunities are here.”

That’s precisely the philosophy behind the Emerging Professional Friendly Firm program overseen by the New England components of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). A handful of firms in each New England state are so recognized each year — Dietz among them for several years running — for promoting the advancement of young team members through professional development and personal growth opportunities.

“A few years back, AIA New England came out with programs to encourage companies to adopt policies and procedures and training and internal education programs that would further develop the younger generation of architects fresh out of school, to take them in and help them grow professionally toward architecture licensure, which is what everyone refers to as the ‘stamp.’ That’s when you officially call yourself an architect,” Newman explained.

“This is a program to encourage firms to get away from the old methods of pigeonholing, where, in many cases, your first experience on an architecture job was drawing bathrooms for three years, being tucked into one thing because you’re brand new,” he went on. “The goal of this program was to incentivize firms to be more supportive, to promote emerging professional development.”

Lee Morrissette, another principal, spent more than a decade in Boston before coming to Dietz, and said he has always appreciated its emphasis on mentorship, continuing education, and lifelong investigation of the profession. “It’s a much more transparent firm, in the way the business goes on, than anywhere I’ve been.”

Jason Newman

Jason Newman

“A lot of the junior staff see when we get praise for our designs — or criticized for our designs. It gives them a fuller perspective on what’s happening beyond the drawings.”

It certainly made an impression on Newman, who came to Dietz as a student intern 13 years ago and “never found a reason to leave,” as he put it. “So I’m an example of someone to wants to stay with this firm because they feel this is a good, long-term place for them.”

 

Drawing Up a Strategy

According to AIA New England, the Emerging Professional Friendly Firm program “has an ability to attract and retain employees by sending a message to current employees, future employees, and other regional firms that the firm has evaluated their policies from an emerging professional lens, the firm recognizes emerging professionals at their firm, and the firm values emerging professionals’ development to sustain the future growth of their practice.”

That resonates with Newman, who noted that the aim is for young professionals to think, “that’s a great place for me to be. That’s a great place for me to grow. I know, when I go to other firms, my development will be of value not only to me, but to the company and the people I’m working with.”

To earn that designation year after year has involved a series of proactive steps, Morrissette said, including that emphasis on diverse experiences that move staff toward licensure more quickly.

“Many larger firms get a bad reputation for being the kind of firm where you get stuck in a position, doing that function for a long time, falling between the cracks,” he noted. “We call ourselves a mid-sized firm — at 25 people, we’re the largest in Western Mass., but still a mid-sized firm for the country — so we get a lot of face time with the staff. It’s hard for someone to fall through the cracks here.”

In addition, Newman said, “we make sure entry-level people are getting the whole experience. We include the whole team in project meetings. I’ve been in the industry 13 years, and back then, the architect and the project manager went to the meeting, and they came back and told you what happened.”

Lee Morrissette

Lee Morrissette

“Over the past two years, we’ve spent more time doing creative designs. That’s what makes us happy as professionals — being able to stretch our creative muscles and push ourselves.”

But the rise of remote meetings made it more common to include everyone, and now it’s simply firm policy at Dietz.

“A lot of the junior staff see when we get praise for our designs — or criticized for our designs. It gives them a fuller perspective on what’s happening beyond the drawings,” Newman explained. “Twenty to 30% of what we do as architects is management of expectations, helping people pull their own creativity into the designs, helping them express ideas that they don’t know quite how to express. Well, this gives the junior staff exposure to that earlier than what they have been given traditionally.”

All staff members are also given a stipend each year, called an educational allowance, which can be used for anything they feel will better their professional development.

“Architecture is a mixture of art and science, and we want to create buildings that are beautiful and people want to look at, but also stand up and are good, strong structures,” Newman noted. “So we allow a very broad interpretation of what is an activity or class or training someone might feel would better their professional growth. It might be as simple as a painting class, targeting the artistic side, or a business of architecture class, or project management class, or they might want to buy books because they’re studying for an exam. People use it in very creative and interesting ways.”

Morrissette and Newman also value the culture of mentorship they’ve seen — and helped cultivate — at Dietz & Company.

“We both love teaching. We both participated in university reviews of student works in a volunteer way,” Morrissette said, adding that he has taught at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston as adjunct faculty. “I loved being involved. But we’ve found, with this focus on teaching and mentoring in the office, we can do that teaching here. For me, it satisfies the reward I get from teaching and mentoring professional staff, and I get to do it as part of my job.”

 

Something to Build On

That job has expanded since Newman, Morrissette, Principal Kevin Riordon, and Chief Financial Officer Tina Gloster began easing into leadership roles last year as part of the firm’s transition from a single owner — President and Trustee Kerry Dietz — to one with an employee stock-ownership plan, or ESOP. Meanwhile, the firm has continued to expand its footprint, including more work outside the 413.

“It’s been a really great year. We’ve had a tremendous amount of work,” Newman said, adding that, while not every project is exciting from a creative perspective, he’s gratified to work on anything that benefits a community or a client. But some of this past year’s work has, indeed, been on the “cool” side. “We’ve shown we can get in with the Boston guys and compete. It’s really encouraging. It shows our model is working and we’re getting better and better every day.”

Morrissette agreed. “As an architecture firm, we’re always looking for more work. You want to do everything; the company wants to pay the bills. But over the past two years, we’ve spent more time doing creative designs. That’s what makes us happy as professionals — being able to stretch our creative muscles and push ourselves.

“You know, we feel creative success at the end of a project that no one knows about for a year or two until it’s built. Then they say, ‘that’s a great project.’ We have projects we’re proud of, and we can’t wait for the public to see them.”