Join us for an in-depth look at a truly unique healthcare project! In this episode of Laying the Foundation, we sit down with architects Adam Wheelock and Teresa Hebert to discuss the recent renovation and expansion of the OB and Lab facilities at Floyd Valley Healthcare in Le Mars, Iowa. Discover how CMBA Architects tackled the challenge of revitalizing an obstetrics unit facing the nationwide trend of closures, creating comfortable, "hospitality-focused" birthing suites and a much-needed, expanded lab space. Learn about the innovative design solutions, the complexities of working within an active hospital environment, and the rewarding experience of collaborating closely with the hospital staff to deliver a project that significantly benefits the Le Mars community.

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Episode Transcript

(Skyler): Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Laying the Foundation podcast. My name is Skylar. I'm your host. And joining me today to discuss the Floyd Valley Healthcare OB and lab project that we have worked on are the architects behind it. We have Adam Wheelock with me. Adam, welcome to the show.

(Adam): Thank you.

(Skyler): And we have Teresa Hebert.

(Teresa): Hebert.

(Adam): Hebert.

(Skyler): Oh, it's like, like an accented type thing.

(Teresa): The back, it's like Colbert.

(Skyler): Yes.

(Teresa): Except the front's different.

(Skyler): Got it. Okay. Hebert.

(Adam): It's just.

(Teresa): Yeah, it makes like a bad sentence. Like, I become a bear. My mom and I take pictures next to statues of bears. Then it's three bears.

(Skyler): Yeah. That's awesome. Well, fantastic. Well, welcome to the show. Teresa Hebert.

(Teresa): Hebert.

(Skyler): Got it. Okay, perfect. Well, with names and titles out of the way, we're going to talk about the Floyd Valley Healthcare project. Now, Adam, I know you've worked on this one for a while, as a whole. Right? The company, Floyd Valley Healthcare, we’ve done a few different projects for them. Right? In the past.

(Adam): Yeah. We started off with a master plan, and then that turned into several projects with multiple phases, and this just happens to be the current one that we're on now.

(Skyler): Awesome. How far into the master plan are we? Based on where we started and where we hope to get to eventually.

(Adam): The master plan had three major phases, and this is completing phase two.

(Skyler): Oh, awesome. Okay.

(Adam): Phase three might be way off in the future, but we just don't know.

(Skyler): Sure. But it's exciting to have it planned.

(Adam): And know that it's coming, making progress.

(Skyler): Teresa, when did you jump into sort of this whole project?

(Teresa): Right about as this one was starting.

(Skyler): The lab.

(Teresa): Yeah.

(Skyler): Nice. Okay, awesome. So tell me about where this project... how did it come to be this particular element of the OB in the lab? How did that come to fruition? What was the expectation with it? What was the plan, so on and so forth?

(Adam): Sure. So this is actually a really unique project because most rural hospitals have either already closed their obstetrician unit or are closing their obstetrics unit down.

(Teresa): I think they said it was like a quarter. You have to fact-check me on that. But I think they said like a quarter has closed since... I want to say, 2008. I know it's been cited in articles.

(Skyler): Why?

(Adam): It's a really hard unit to staff. because you just never know when your patient population is going to show up. Smaller communities sometimes decide that they want what they believe is a higher level of care, and so they choose to go to larger communities for that care. Not always the case. But they're also not incredibly financially feasible because the patient volume is low, but the requirements to stay up on top of things are very high.

(Skyler): Sure.

(Adam): And so it's just a challenging unit all the way around.

(Skyler): Okay.

(Adam): So Floyd Valley is very unique in the decision that they made not only to keep their obstetrics unit, but to enhance it, make it better.

(Teresa): I think they said they were... They estimated on their population that they think there's about 60 births that they're losing a year to neighboring hospitals.

(Skyler): Oh, they're just traveling to a different hospital and doing...

(Teresa): Based on the number of people they have, the right age, how many they're getting, that's how many they think are leaving the area.

(Adam): Yeah, they believe they do. There are about 160 births a year in the community, of which roughly 100 are happening at Floyd Valley. And so they believe they were missing out on about 60 a year.

(Teresa): I mean, it's almost an hour drive to Sioux City, and it's probably farther to Sioux Falls.

(Adam): They made a decision early on that they felt that they provided exceptional care, that they had exceptional staff, and they just felt that the unit that they were doing obstetrics in just didn't reflect that. And so the goal of the project was to showcase the care they provide and the staff that they have to provide that, and to make it so that those community members felt it was an easy choice for them to stay in Floyd Valley and have their baby at Floyd Valley Hospital.

(Skyler): Yeah, absolutely.

(Teresa): I had a double-take when we went into one of the patient rooms because I thought we had stepped into the 90s. Partly because it was the same chair that my mother had when my brothers were born. The same rocking chair. I did literally look back in the hallway to make sure that we were still in the same building because of the contrast to the spaces we had been in previously.

(Adam): Yeah, the OB unit, before we started the project, definitely looked dated. And the hospital felt the same way. And it was their goal to have a really modern OB unit.

(Skyler): Absolutely. And what is the lab portion?

(Adam): So the lab portion is really phase two of this project. And the lab portion is really completely separate from the OB in the sense that it's the hospital's main lab where they do all the testing, and they run all their analyzers in, and their Lab was too small. And the space layout was not conducive to how the lab gets staffed. During the day, the lab probably runs on about five or six employees, and at night it falls down all the way to one.

(Skyler): Oh wow.

(Adam): And so when it is just that one staff person, the lab has to be set up to make it extremely labor efficient so that that one person doesn't get bogged down and behind, so that when the next morning comes, that new staff is ready to go.

(Skyler): So what was it that brought these two parts of the hospital together within the same project?

(Adam): The lab is 24 hours, just like OB is, like many departments in the hospital are. But the lab needed to get bigger, and it was landlocked inside the hospital with departments all the way around it. And the only one they saw as a potential to gain more space for the lab was taking part of the OB. So, in order to get that piece, the OB had to be renovated. And so it was kind of the domino effect. This one had to go, and then it vacated space so that then this one could go, and so on and so forth.

(Skyler): Interesting. So obviously if we're going to do work on one that's going to affect the other, we might as well do the work for both at the same time because things are already going to be in place and things are going to be in motion.

(Adam): And the project title doesn't reflect it, but there are four other departments affected in the project.

(Skyler): Oh wow.

(Teresa): Four included.

(Adam): They're smaller departments. Cardiopulmonary and…

(Teresa): Cardio rehab. Two different departments.

(Adam): Yep. Cardio rehab is a separate one. The pharmacy is one, and the sleep lab is one.

(Skyler): Oh yes.

(Adam): All of those departments, some of them play a much smaller role than OB and lab did, but are integral nonetheless. They had to play their part as well.

(Skyler): What elements were moving? Or what kind of challenges were arising because of all of these pieces that were all moving around?

(Teresa): I think the timing is one of the big ones, and what happens to the lab while we're rebuilding it in place, basically. So, we had to move them, and right now we have a few different options, and one of them is that you can rent these sorts of trailers.

(Adam): Mobile units.

(Teresa): Mobile units.

(Skyler): Interesting. Ok.

(Teresa): And they're really expensive.

(Skyler): Really.

(Teresa): There's like a minimum rent time of six months or something. And that was longer than the duration of the project. And looking at how things were working out, we realized that we could build them a temporary lab after OB had vacated. And so that's where we're at right now, is we demo out some of the OB rooms to be one large room, and then they're sort of between three patients. Old patient rooms that they've broken up. Some of their things that operate independently of the main.

(Adam): Yeah. Department inside the lab. Yeah.

(Teresa): So they're sort of, I've been calling it squatting. They have a bunch of temporary countertops and a whole second equipment. They have like 60 pieces of equipment, including computers.

(Adam): I mean it definitely; it looks like a lab when you walk in. You’d never know that it was old patient rooms and whatnot. One of the biggest challenges is this hospital has no empty shell space, and so there's no temporary location for somebody to go somewhere else. So, it's been a real complicated shell game from the beginning of who moves when, then who moves next. And so it was a complex process.

(Teresa): Cardiopulmonary went somewhere else. Well, we rebuilt their space, and they came back in. It really has been a shell game.

(Skyler): And of course, these are all things that have to continue being operational.

(Adam): Exactly.

(Skyler): So that the community is getting the help and the healthcare that they need.

(Teresa): And it's not like they can just go somewhere else.

(Skyler): Right, exactly.

(Teresa): They're quite a ways away from, I mean, there's Orange City, but even as a patient, saying, "Oh, hey, you have to go to the other hospital." That's not great.

(Skyler): No, absolutely not.

(Adam): No.

(Skyler): I mean, a hospital is so integral to a community that it is able to provide emergency care. I can't necessarily just go all the way out to wherever, 15, 20 plus minutes.

(Teresa): It's like cardio rehab. They're coming every week. They've been with them for months.

(Skyler): Exactly. And they can't uproot their whole schedule that they've put into place, and everything else in their life, to be able to go do it at another facility, and such like that.

(Adam): Oh, the complexities of working in a hospital.

(Skyler): I can only imagine. Yeah, and designing in a hospital. Okay, so let's start with, we know that they wanted to bring it to a more, into a modern facility. What other things, what other goals were they looking for?

(Adam): So there are two typical models when you're looking at OB care. The first, more Traditional model, is a specific labor and delivery room.

(Skyler): Ok.

(Adam): And then once the delivery has happened, mom and baby move to a different room called a postpartum room, where they recover from the delivery and then get prepared to move home and carry through with that process. I guess the, not necessarily newer, but less traditional model is called LDRP. It's labor, delivery, and postpartum in the same room.

(Skyler): Okay.

(Adam): So now every patient room has to be set up to deliver a baby and then be able to quickly transition into a postpartum room which looks much more like a long-term care, typical hospital space because that's somewhere where a family is spending probably at least one night, if not two to three, depending on birth complications and things of that nature. So that was a challenge from the beginning. There wasn't a complete consensus amongst the staff on which was the route to go. And so we did actually plan for a backup delivery room in the event that a situation arose where there wasn't enough room and someone came in emergently and they had to deliver. And so we planned that, so that was still possible. The other big one was a goal from the very beginning set forth by the owner, that they did not want these rooms to appear to be clinical in any way.

(Skyler): Okay.

(Adam): So you have to kind of visualize a nice hotel room.

(Skyler): Yeah.

(Teresa): The hospitality is the word they said a lot.

(Skyler): Yeah.

(Adam): Hospitality is what they were after. And the hospital is definitely an institution. But probably for at least the last 20 years, hospitals have identified that they have to compete.

(Skyler): Right.

(Adam): And so they have definitely transitioned, or attempted to transition, from the institution to hospitality. And so lots of hospitals, especially modern hospitals that you go into now, have much more of a hospitality feel when you first arrive.

(Skyler): Absolutely.

(Adam): Because they are competing for patient visits. So, the OB is a big one, and I think we really knocked it out of the park. I think they're super happy. These turned out to be really great rooms.

(Skyler): Yeah, absolutely. And I wholeheartedly agree with the whole focus on more of a hospitality feel, as someone who, only nine months ago, as of the recording of this episode, was in one of those very rooms as my wife was having a baby. It was tough, and it can be.

(Teresa): One of the most stressful days in your life. And the space really does feel calming.

(Skyler): Yeah. Yep. And that's what you want. So they did end up doing it in a way that everything was within the one room, and then the room itself would kind of transition with the needs, which is great. I wish that's how they had done it for us.

(Teresa): I really like the linen cabinets that are on the inside, and inside the room, they look like normal cabinets. But they actually have a door into the hallway.

(Skyler): Oh, interesting.

(Teresa): When they come to replace linen, the hospital staff doesn't have to come in and wake someone up. Those doors were a little bit tricky. We initially designed a door that actually had two doors. The bottom is for the dirty linens, and clean in the top. But then we went with a single door, which was less complicated and a little piece of rubber to get it to seal nicely.

(Skyler): That was great planning because that was one of the biggest complaints that I had when we had our baby. People are coming in at all hours, and my poor wife is like, she just had a baby, she's exhausted, she just wants to sleep. And they're like, "Hey, we got to wake you up, here's some new blankets here, pop this pill or whatever." So yeah, no, I think that's fantastic. Good planning on your guys' part for sure.

(Adam): Another big challenge in making this room focused on hospitality and not clinical was that there are guidelines and requirements for if something terrible happens in this room and we have to go into a much more complicated medical situation. For example, unexpected twins.

(Teresa): Unexpected triplets.

(Adam): Or unexpected complications with birth, either with the baby or with mom.

(Skyler): Right.

(Adam): And so, one of the clinical things is what is called the head wall, which is the wall at the patient's head where medical gases, emergency power, other outlets, and other equipment can be quickly plugged in. It looks very clinical, and it all has to be there. And we're at the very minimum of what the code requires. But that's still a lot of stuff.

(Teresa): For the infant, one has to have two backup medical gas lines; there are double backups, everything, and then have backups doubled again because there could be twins.

(Adam): Right.

(Teresa): So these are like four or five times as much as you'd expect in a regular hospital.

(Adam): Even if a rural hospital says we're not really going to entertain pregnancies like that, we're going to turf them off to a larger community. It doesn't matter. Because if they go emergent, they have to be ready because they're right there in the community.

(Skyler): Absolutely.

(Adam): And so it was a huge challenge to be able to hide all that stuff when there wasn't an emergency, but have it instantly available when there was.

(Skyler): Absolutely.

(Adam): So, we went through many, many coordination processes with the owner, the builders, the staff on the ground, our design teams, and then the people who would fabricate it all. It was complex, but man, we really nailed it in the end.

(Teresa): These really awesome cabinets where it's like a box about halfway up, and then the panel actually slides up because we have about three. Most rooms have three. And so you can't do a sideways slider.

(Adam): Because they would cover each other up.

(Skyler): Right.

(Teresa): And then the upward sliding. There are very few hardware companies that make hardware that does that that are the size of cabinets we were looking for. Many of them were like two Inches too big. And you had to just narrow, narrow, narrow.

(Adam): There's that one company that still makes M across all those boxes.

(Teresa): The first one we went with was not cheap. It was $1,700 per cabinet, right?

(Adam): Yeah. So they ended up being expensive, but man, they look fabulous. The operation is super smooth. The owner is super happy. They're very safe, no pinched fingers or anything like that. So in the end, I think everybody was really pleased with how it turned out.

(Skyler): Awesome. So let me ask you, one of the things that you had mentioned at the beginning was that a lot of the rural hospitals that offer this kind of service struggle with and it's part of the reason why they close them down is with staffing. Were there any elements to this design that really focused on staff retention or just making things easier and more pleasant for the staff?

(Adam): Yeah, absolutely. Anytime that you can address the staff's needs, listen to what their challenges are in the space in which they're in, and then attempt to help solve those with the new unit and the new layout. I think it really goes a long way to making staff feel heard and making their job easier, and therefore contributing to wanting to be there, wanting to help the community, wanting to show up for work.

(Teresa): I think one big thing for the staff is that they actually have a nurse station now because they didn't really have one before, so we were kind of...

(Adam): Caught working out of office.

(Teresa): Yep, then you had the manager's office, which was far away. So now they're all together, and the nurses' station is set on a corner, and the nursery is directly across from there, and there's a large window that they can see directly into the nurses' station. Also, the sink that they have in the nursery is sort of an angled, sloped sink for baby washing.

(Adam): Shaped like a baby!

(Teresa): Yeah.

(Adam): For babies’ baths and stuff like that.

(Skyler): Just to make things a little bit easier and a little bit more convenient for the staff.

(Teresa): They're all together, and they can see into all the rooms, and they can see into the nursery.

(Adam): Yeah. A lot of elements came together that I think the staff were really pleased about.

(Teresa): And then their security is easier to control, which is a big deal.

(Skyler): Absolutely. I remember I every time I left the room, I had to buzz back in and get ahold of somebody and everything. So yeah, security has got to be a big thing, of course, for the staff and of course minimizing a lot of that transportation between the different spaces and having, like you said, that central space for the nurses to create a hub at. Awesome. And I'm sure the same thing kind of goes for the lab. I mean, you guys were expanding the lab, so adding more space for the staff there.

(Teresa): They get a real break room.

(Adam): They get a real break room instead of an office that was converted into a break room.

(Skyler): Yeah.

(Teresa): And they're a little farther from the lab than they were before. But, you know, they have a stat board.

(Adam): Yep. It's all internally connected, so it facilitates a better staff flow for sure.

(Teresa): They have so much more room to work in.

(Skyler): Oh yeah, it's much larger.

(Adam): They're not working on top of each other. You have a little bit more room for newer equipment, which is nice as well. A real revamp of how they serve patients. They do a lot of drug testing and blood testing for patients.

(Skyler): Sure.

(Adam): Revamped that. It's safer for the staff and more convenient for the patients as well. So, a lot of initial goals that we were able to achieve on that project as well.

(Teresa): Did they have a drug testing toilet, bathroom before?

(Adam): They did, but it was shared.

(Teresa): Oh.

(Adam): Okay.

(Teresa): Yeah.

(Adam): So now they have it independent.

(Skyler): A shared toilet.

(Adam): Yep.

(Teresa): Well, the drug toilet has some special valves to keep it off.

(Skyler): Yeah, absolutely. It's an interesting process hearing about the back end of the restrooms that they usually use, or rooms that they use for drug testing. It's very interesting the extent to which they have to go.

(Adam): Agreed. To ensure things aren't tampered with.

(Skyler):  I'm always intrigued by that, for sure.

(Teresa): I learned a lot of new medical words with this one. Like, I'm not sure I'm saying it right. Ph... Phle...

(Adam): Phlebotomy.

(Skyler): Phlebotomy.

(Teresa): Because we were talking about different, I would call them "stations" and they held hematology, hematology, blood bank, microbiology, urology.

(Adam): All sorts of good stuff.

(Skyler): Well, and actually, going with that. I remember when you did your presentation talking about this project, and you showed some of the pictures. I mean, there was an extensive amount of technological things that were in that room that had to be moved appropriately and had certain types of plugins that they worked with. How do you organize all that? How do you do that when it comes to a project?

(Adam): Yeah. We started off with an actual laser scan of the existing lab. From that, we used both the laser scan and photos taken in the lab, and we documented every piece of equipment. We cataloged every piece of equipment, including computers, monitors, and such..

(Teresa): We had about 60 pieces of equipment. That includes fridges, analyzers the size of a chest freezer, down to little, tiny analyzers.

(Adam): Centrifuges.

(Teresa): It's like six or seven centrifuges at least, yeah.

(Adam): Lots of specialized equipment. Once it was all cataloged, we reviewed it with the owner. The layout of the lab was really critical to the on-the-ground staff. And so we did what's called a 3P. It's a mini 3P. We set out and taped on the floor where the new walls would be in their conference center in the lower level of the hospital, and then we cut each piece of equipment out of a piece of cardboard.

(Skyler): Oh, wow.

(Adam): Labeled it and then gave that to the hospital staff and said, "Here's how big the new room is going to be. You put all the equipment where you think it should go." They spent four days doing that.

(Teresa): I think they touched every piece of cardboard.

(Adam): Right.

(Teresa): Cut some and added a few new ones.

(Adam): More stuff that they had remembered that they were going to add back to the lab. And then we went back after the four days, documented what they had done, and then integrated all that into our documents, which are additional pages, not above and beyond what the regular construction documents would have.

(Teresa): Well, partially, because the new countertops are...

(Adam): Specialized power, specialized water.

(Teresa): And so we put all of those into a furniture plan, sort of a specialized furniture plan that had all of their equipment so that they could know where all of it goes. So they make sure that they all have the outlets they need and all that. And some of them have this Osmosis line.

(Adam): Oh, yeah.

(Teresa): A couple of special ones need drains, which there are six or seven increases of equipment that...

(Adam): Need that drain out.

(Teresa): Four drains, but then also coordinate all of that specialty casework as well.

(Adam): Right. A lot of additional coordination, lots of extra meetings, lots of extra team members being involved. But in the end, that's the service we provide as coordination.

(Skyler): Absolutely. Yeah. That's what we're here for. Right? To get the best and most accurate design put together that we possibly can to help the staff do everything that they do. The 3P stuff that we've done. I mean, we've talked about that in the past. There have been previous episodes, quite a few previous episodes. Especially when we first started Laying the Foundation, where we talked about that process. And I, thankfully, have gotten to see the more basic version, like the one you guys were working on. It was both of you, actually, for a pharmacy setup in a hospital. I believe it was over at Western Iowa Tech.

(Adam): Yeah.

(Skyler): And that was really cool. And I was there when they had the staff come in. So they were walking through and looking at all this stuff.

(Teresa): We did months of meetings back and forth with them, and then they showed up at the 3P, and they're like, "Oh yeah, we need a bench in this room that is like 3ft by 3ft." That's exaggerating. It was a really tiny room. But they put their gowns on and then sit down on the bench and swing around, and then put on shoe covers. That's a critical thing that happens in that tiny room that might not have happened. So, because we set up the space and they mimed going through their process, and they're like, "Oh, we need a bench. We need to sit down here."

(Adam): Usually, after we build that temporary environment out of either cardboard or taped-out walls, we have the user groups come through, and then we specifically say, "Run through your typical processes. Run situations. What if this happens? What if this happens?" And we try to get as many of the people who will work in the unit on site to do that, and then have all their input captured because it's challenging. These people do health care as their full-time job, and they don't read drawings or look at specifications, and those are what we use to then communicate what we need built. So the ability to bring them into a temporarily built environment really opens their eyes to say, "Oh, I didn't realize this room was going to be so little, all this stuff's not going to fit. We need to fix this now, rather than down the road when it's too hard to do or too expensive to do."

(Teresa): And we did lots of 3D renderings of the lab to help. Here's what equipment is here. But being physically in the space is so much more valuable. Being able to really get to feel it. Do this process, and then I turn around and take two steps over here to the next process.

(Adam): Or that's too far to walk, or this isn't going to fit, or it just gets all those things out right away. It's very powerful.

(Skyler): That's awesome. And to be able to have the ability to set something like that up, I mean, we've gone really complex with it. I've seen pictures from some of the full...

(Adam): Sometimes, we do build full walls out of cardboard. Full-height walls so you can't see to the next room, and you literally have to open that door and go around. Yep, those are the most powerful. Not every project warrants that, but those are probably the most powerful tools.

(Skyler): Absolutely. Either way, again, like you guys both just said, it’s great to be able to put them into that space.

(Teresa): Well, I think it also helped us when we got to the temp lab because they had gone through that process, and they knew the process really well. And so when we were doing the temp phase, remember we added that window towards the end because we were working with some existing spaces, and we were trying to do the least amount of demo possible. They’re like we actually need to see that other station to monitor, not necessarily get to it quickly, but we need to monitor it. So we put a small hole in that wall so that they could see through that. But I think because they knew their process so well.

(Skyler): Interesting. So, it's the little innovative things that you realize partway through. With that being said, what would you guys say was probably either your biggest takeaway from the project? Maybe some key thing that was either a lesson or something that you just felt was really satisfying about the project, that really made you feel like this was something particularly special, and you really enjoyed it.

(Adam): For me, it's when the project is completely done and the people you built the project with on the owner's side come up and say, "We're super happy with this. It's so much better than what we had when we started," and that's super rewarding. For me, it's what keeps me coming back and doing more projects.

(Skyler): Absolutely. Teresa?

(Teresa): That’s a hard one.

(Skyler): Yeah, it is a tough one. It's true, it's true. There are a lot of different elements about it.

(Teresa): It still blows my mind every time I walk into a project and the thing that I drew is really there.

(Skyler): Oh, yeah.

(Teresa): I'm a little over six years out of school, but even when we went to the urgent care the other day, I'm like, that looks how we drew it. We did the renderings. It looks just like the renderings. I still haven't really wrapped my head around that. There's a part of my head that's like, the corridor in the OB looks just like we rendered it. It looks phenomenal.

(Skyler): That's awesome.

(Adam): The specialized lighting. It's the little stuff, little details have really come to life and it's super, super fun to take a digital image of the rendering and then take the, when it's done, the photo taken from the same angle and put them side by side and be like, "Wow, look at that. It really worked out!" You know, it all came together.

(Teresa): I think the other big thing was just that process with the hospital staff and the user groups was really valuable to me. Getting really into the details of that.

(Skyler): Yeah, I'm getting to kind of see things from their end and getting to take their feedback.

(Teresa): How we integrated that.

(Skyler): Yeah, absolutely. We should do a whole thing, and I come up with a random marketing idea, and then I pitch it on the podcast for some reason. But one thing that would be kind of cool to do, based on what you were just describing, is print out renderings and then go and have a camera behind the person. And then have them hold the rendering up so that all you can see is the render, and then they lower the rendering, and then you see the space behind it looking exactly like it.

(Teresa): One of the reasons I really like Endscape is that you can adjust the focal length.

(Skyler): Oh.

(Teresa): You can adjust the focal length and other camera settings to match your camera.

(Skyler): Right.

(Teresa): I can tell you exactly where in space that angle is taken from. And we can measure...

(Skyler): We'd just line it. We'd get it just right. That’d be cool. We should do that.

(Teresa): I would love that. I kind of did that on a previous project where we were trying to render an outdoor patio. I think we also did it with one of the apartment units, trying to show off the view for prospective people renting. And so we took a 360 camera in that space. And then when we went back, I took that image that we made and used that to make the background for the rendering. The skybox, the one that I did for the Benson building. It was a little bit of cheating, because I had to crop a different sky because the sky was not right. And compared it to photos. And the one rooftop photo looks really good, because the neighboring buildings are taller.

(Adam): Sure, and it's like they're really there.

(Teresa): And it looks really good.

(Skyler): That's awesome.

(Teresa): I spent a lot of time on that one, but it's one of the best renderings I've ever done.

(Skyler): Well, it's definitely giving me some inspiration for something I'll have to pitch to Kristi and see where we can go with that, because that would be really fun.

(Adam): It would be. It'd be fun.

(Skyler): Awesome. Well, thank you both so much for being on the show and for sharing about this project that was, I'm sure, tons and tons of planning, over a ton of time and a ton of meetings.

(Teresa): I've worked on this project literally the entire time I've worked here.

(Skyler): Whole time that you've been here.

(Teresa): And we're not done.

(Skyler): No, no. Because now it's phase three. Right?

(Adam): Right!

(Skyler): All right! That's exciting.

(Adam): More to come.

(Skyler): That's right. And that'd be exciting, to hear about. We'll obviously be posting about that on our social media as things come to fruition, so be sure to keep on the lookout for that. But whatever the case, thank you both seriously, again, for taking the time to chat with me, to chat with the audience about this awesome project.

(Adam): Yeah, thanks for having us here.

(Skyler): If you'd like to find out more about the Laying the Foundation podcast, you can head over to any podcast streaming platform, such as Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, and others. You can also find out more about CMBA architects through social media, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Additionally, you can head over to the CMBA website at CMBAarchitects.com. If you're an architecture or design professional or an intern looking for an internship within those fields, please be sure to check out our website and click on the career tab to find out more about what opportunities we offer. This has been another episode of the Laying the Foundation podcast. We'll see you next time.