I am an expert coordinator. In addition to having started to design buildings at the age of ten, I designed, cities, cars, drew cartoons, even copied Leonardo da Vinci drawings. Once I copied a sixteenth century silverpoint drawing by Albrecht Durer, so yes, design, drawing, and ultimately and much latter, fully detailed highly technical buildings and projects became by forte. I had color theory, life or nude drawing (the hardest drawing their is, since the figure cannot lie), welding, plastics, casting, photography, film, calculus, art and architect history, physics, poetry, on and on. That was just for starters.
The first time I ran a project, I fell flat on my face. Fear not. We are talking 1985. So that when I got my next real chance to run a project, I decided that I would read and respond to ever letter, file every document, check all fabrications. And cut my teeth on a multi-million dollar, state of the art physics laboratory, for a leading Ivy League university. From start to finish from feasibility, design mock ups, design development, production, working drawings–aka as blueprints, plans and specs. Then we put it out for competitive bidding, which I was lead on, then construction, approvals, project closeout. From a sketch, to drawings, to contracts, construction, assembly and occupancy. I like to say, some go to DC and did law for six months in their twenties, and forever thereafter say that they are lawyers, long after leaving. No. I am a REAL architect, from birth. Again. That was just for starters.
On Wall Street, it was much the same. In the beginning, I faltered. Just as I combined the rare dual of designer and manager, in my financial career, I was the rare person who could both sell and manage. Not only did I make ten upons tens of thousands of calls, but went out and did IN PERSON PROSPECTING. Knocking on doors in a double breasted suite. Then I refined my ability, to handicap market prices, using Excel data which I elaborated myself, and learned to manage contacts using using Excel.
In a way, projects are not hard. It is PAYING ATTENTION, and knowing what to do… and in what order.
Many years latter, in a soft Seattle job market in 2009, where the old 40 and 50k per year jobs were all but impossible to find, I was applying for $15.00 per hour jobs. Some Microsoft manager said to me, ‘Looks like you have five years of experience on projects, if that. Seems like you had four years, three times’. Are you kidding me. Its all about perception. Similarly, around that time, I never got a response from the University of Washington, aka The UW, on many construction administration jobs, so asked the hiring people, why? My experience there was proven and I did it for real. Their response, ‘You have not done this for ten years…’ or such.
So now here we are, 2017, and ask yourself, what project experience do I have, what do you need, and lets start. My rates are reasonable. My focus is clear: help others. Plain and simple.
David Korn Special Projects 