From The Quarterly, Issue 2: How an Employee Giving Notice Inspired a New Expansion Strategy
By Kathryn O’Shea Evans
There’s one thing better than a flexible WFH job, and that’s a flexible WFA (work from anywhere) one. Some in-the-know designers and architects are launching outposts wherever they — or their employees — want to live, thereby keeping their staff happy while expanding their client base in the process. “We can do what we do anywhere,” says Bill Bickford, founding partner of Northworks Architects & Planners. The firm launched in Chicago and now has 72 employees at seven brick and mortar offices spanning the nation, including in Jackson, Wyoming; Aspen, Colo.; and Palm Beach, Florida. “The beauty of our practice is that we don’t have just one style, we don’t have just one context,” he says. “And the more that we grow in these different regions of our country, the more styles we take on.”
While Northworks has retained its deep Midwestern roots, expanding has also allowed the veritable family tree of their business to grow lush. “The mountain west has been a great growth area for us,” Bill says. “We started an office in Bozeman, Montana, based on one project that a Chicago client took us to. But then we realized that Montana State’s architecture program is very strong, so we’ve hired a few people out of MSU. Bozeman’s been great.” The firm tries to own all of their real estate, too: “We try to invest in these areas and be our own landlord … it helps with long term planning.”
And to think it all started with an employee — Rachel Wray Thompson, AIA — who had one foot out the door. “We had this great employee, now a Partner, who joined us a long time ago, and her husband is a doctor who was transferred from Chicago to a hospital in Philadelphia,” Bill recalls. “We said, ‘Let’s just keep working! Keep your projects, we’ll figure it out.’ We found a small studio in Old City, and now Philadelphia is a really great market for not just projects, but for amazing people. We’ve hired out of Penn, Drexel, Temple. Philadelphia has a great work ethic, just like Chicago.”
As a Partner, Rachel heads their Philadelphia office, which now has 12 employees — many of whom work remotely for the firm’s other sweet spots. “The Philadelphia team helps Jackson, and our small office in Aspen. It’s really hard to hire people in these resort towns,” says Bill. And yet hanging a shingle in such illustrious destinations — like the Northworks sign in the heart of Palm Beach — can be a boon for business. Advertising in the local design magazines gets the word out that you have boots on the ground, but Bill has also found that word spreads very fast. “Once you get into projects and you’re working with a few teams and consultant groups, you really start to meet anyone you should meet,” he says.
But above all, employees are very happy with the WFA flexibility. “The relocation to Philadelphia has been impactful beyond what we all could’ve imagined,” Rachel says. “The original proposition allowed me to continue practicing at a firm I loved and did not want to part from. What was initially an experiment in remote work turned out to be so successful that we were able to have the confidence to expand our practice to a national level.” Call it the new and improved version of the old: location, location, location.’