Читать книгу Designing a World-Class Architecture Firm - Patrick MacLeamy - Страница 50

HOK culture played a part in serious times, too. A fire swept through the St. Louis office on Friday evening, November 8, 1974. HOK occupied several floors in the Syndicate Trust Building, a downtown landmark that had formerly been a department store. It took 110 firefighters to bring the fire under control. Finally, at about midnight, officials allowed tenants into the building for a first look at the damage. After wading through the water and burned debris, George Kassabaum told the St. Louis Post Dispatch that he expected most—possibly all—work on current projects would be completely lost.

How would HOK survive? How would HOK respond? Employees heard about the fire from news reports and spontaneously began to call each other. They agreed to meet the next morning at a nearby restaurant and make a plan of attack. Everyone went to the unburned portion of the office on the tenth floor and began to organize. One team went to visit a nearby building, where two floors were empty, and found enough space was available to reestablish an office. By midmorning, the phone company was installing telephones as the team blocked out areas for each department to occupy.

FIGURE 4.1 Humorous announcement listing misspellings of HOK founders' names. c. 1970.

Source: Image courtesy of HOK.

A second team surveyed the staff to find out who had drafting tables and specialized tools at home to replace the ones destroyed by the fire. Other architecture firms pitched in as well, and HOK sent a trucking service around to collect everything. Someone noticed that the old, unused department store cafeteria was still full of oak captain's chairs, and these became temporary desk chairs.

As employees began picking through the charred mess, a minor miracle: someone opened a large, specialized filing cabinet, called a “flat file” used for storing architectural drawings. Their find? The drawings inside were charred at the edges, but salvageable. Only the drawings on the drafting boards were a complete loss. That meant the very latest versions of various projects were gone forever, but HOK would survive. A hum of relief, excitement, and renewed activity surged through the group.

By 11 a.m. Monday morning, HOK employees were back to work. One design team, working on a new Duke University Hospital project, was preparing a presentation they were to make the very next day. Team member Larry Sauer, told the newspaper, “We never considered telling the client not to fly here for the presentation.”¹ Another presentation, for Community Federal Bank, was due that Friday, but the fire had incinerated the model the team planned to show the client. It had taken two weeks to build the elaborate model. The team constructed a new one, complete with miniature landscaping, in four days.

No one ever questioned whether this was part of the job or whether the company would pay them overtime. Staff arrived on their own and did what was needed. HOK was open for business the following Monday morning, and client meetings already on the calendar proceeded without a hitch. “No management people called anyone. No one was asked. They just came,” Obata told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.²

The fire was an unexpected challenge—piled on top of all the expected ones—but the response by HOK people was a testament to the strength of HOK Culture.