Workplace Structure
I was able to sit in with a meeting with managing principal Kevin Minster, who described to us externs how HDR is structured. This was one of the central questions I had before coming to this firm: how does the organization operate with multiple disciplines, in both architecture and engineering, across all of North America?
Kevin briefly drew out how typically each office has a managing principal in charge of the architecture side of things, with one principal for each group (health, transportation, civic, etc) reporting to them. A similar, but distinct version of this structure exists for the engineering side of the business, and both the managing principal for architecture and their counterpart in engineering report to operations, making up a larger part of the organization.
There was also an extended discussion about how different firms have different views on company culture. Kevin shared how HDR and the previous firm he worked at were both employee owned, and how this aspect created a sense of camaraderie between different offices, rather than a competitive and perhaps even antagonistic relationship between offices that may exist in other firms.
