Ones to Watch for 2016: Construction – Visioneering Studios

We are a national ‘Envision-Design-Build’ firm with four offices across the United States – in Irvine, Denver, Nashville, and Charlotte – in addition to a presence in the Seattle and Boston markets.  We provide turn-key solution services through our family of affiliated companies. Visioneering Studios was originally formed as a division of the Church Development Fund – now know as CDF Capital. Our founder had learned many lessons about spatial storytelling from his days at The Walt Disney Company, and this heritage has shaped our company’s direction since inception.

The vision was to provide an advisory and master-planning service to non-profit clients with the long-term goal of providing architecture and construction services. Over 12 years ago, Visioneering Studios was launched as a separate entity. Over the years, the vision was realized to include professional architecture and interior design services in additional to general construction, which allowed the firm to employ an integrated design-build delivery approach.

We are a relationship-based firm. Most of our work is negotiated, less of our work is bid or in response to RFQ’s or RFP’s. It is very important to us that there is an alignment between our firm and a prospective client. Being that we employ an ‘open-book’ bid process with our clients, it is important that there is a high degree of collaboration and communication. Many conversations happen even before we submit a proposal to make sure that both of our organizations have alignment in values, expectations, and outcomes.

Our teams do not begin a project with preconceptions. Initially, we take on the role of a cultural anthropologist to hear, observe, and experience the ethos and DNA of the organization, as well as the cultural context, and location of the client. This is what we call an understanding of People, Place, and Passions. Through questionnaires, reconnaissance sessions, and workshops, we uncover the true story of the organization which serves to inform our ‘Big Idea’. This ‘Big Idea’ will be the thread that courses through the entire design.

In addition, we provide real estate brokerage, development advisory, and strategic feasibility which helps our clients assess very strategic questions about the viability of the project. We encourage our clients to engage us as early in the process as possible to help them avoid making the wrong assumptions about what is possible.

Once the BIG idea is developed, the team moves into the stages of architecture and interior design. We also incorporate our strategic partners to provide their input and design which can include branding, environmental graphics, engineering, and audio/video/lighting.

Throughout the entire process, our construction team is working in tandem with our real estate, development, and design team in the form of preconstruction services which includes value engineering, constructability, estimating, and scheduling. Once permitting is completed, we act as the general contractor to lead the team of subcontractors to complete the build.

As such, our entire process, from start to finish, can be described in four main stages: alignment, envisioning, designing, and finally building. This suite of services allows us to stand alongside our clients from ‘dream to dedication’.

Our story-driven process is very unique. It allows us to uncover, rather than contrive, the ‘Big Idea’. We believe that the inspiration for the design is already imbedded in the story of the unique people, place, and passion of the client. We have to be good at asking questions, listening, and interpreting.

For faith-based clients, it is important to know that we are part of a family of faith-based organizations called the Provision Ministry Group. This family includes six non-profit organizations including Visioneering Studios, CDF Capital, Slingshot Group, Stadia, Co:Mission and Kairos Legacy. Our partnerships with denominations and organizations such as LifeWay, the Southern Baptist Convention, Assemblies of God, and Association of Related Churches reflect national voice in this space.

In our work with churches, we have had to adapt to market fluctuations. In fact, in the most recent recession, while most firms were shrinking, our firm saw moderate growth. We have seen the need to employ the design-build approach as a way of better controlling the outcomes of projects. In the space of church architecture, our firm has been at the forefront of story-driven design; our thought leadership has been widely accepted if not adopted by other competing firms. We have seen that the innovator can fall into the danger of becoming the status quo, so our challenge has been to constantly work at the front edge of innovative processes and design.

Our holistic approach is unmatched. We see ourselves as a collective of professionals from which a world-class team can be built in a way that is best for the client and the project. Whether the process requires real estate brokers, developers, writers, designers, engineers, builders, or videographers, we have the capacity to build the right team to deliver a world class project.

Seeing that the majority of our projects are in the faith-based space, we can fall into the danger of investing heavily into a single market segment. Working with churches incurs a long life-cycle from a business development perspective. This will require diversifying into both the non-profit and commercial sectors.

The best way to overcome compartmentalization into one industry is to develop relationships in the commercial and non-profit sectors. The clients that seek us out have a deep appreciation for creating environments that can help shape organizational and community culture. We will be investing heavily to share our thoughts in writing and speaking.

Visioneering Studios is excited about our future plans to expand into Texas, Chicago, and the San Francisco Bay area. Our future strategies may include increasing our areas of service to include experience architecture, place-branding, and research and development divisions.

Company: Visioneering Studios, Inc.       

Email: [email protected]    

Phone: 888.539.1957

Web Address: visioneeringstudios.com

Address: 2050 Main St., Suite 400, Irvine, CA 92614