Brand awareness is key for the companies that bring products to market for the commercial interiors industry. In the 2014 Contract Brand Report Awareness Survey, conducted by Aspen Media & Market Research, Contract readers were asked: Tell us your top three favorite brands in each of 32 categories.

This online survey utilized a random sample of Contract magazine subscribers, and 410 respondents participated. Due to the breadth of the survey, not all respondents answered every category. As a quality control, respondents were double screened (by list identification and self-reported occupation/company affiliation) to restrict participants to either an architectural or design function in one of four types of companies: architectural firm, design firm, firm providing both architectural and design services, or corporate architectural or design function not affiliated with an industry manufacturing or distribution company.

Respondents were instructed to respond only to categories with which they have familiarity. All responses were unaided. To ensure responses were unbiased, no brand name prompts or lists were provided. Responses were tabulated and reported by each category as a total, and by architect, designer, both, or other.

This survey provides a statistically valid comparison of results for the 2014 Contract Brand Report Awareness Survey with an overall margin of error of +/- 5.0 percent at the 95 percent confidence level.

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2014 Contract Brand Report

How To Become A Millionaire, is the name of the recent book on the American shelves, written by Kaplan, one of the most successful and wealthy business women in America.

According to Australian wealth creation experts Chase Edwards, Kaplan emphasized on various occasions that she didnt write this book to gain any profits, and neither does she need them. She wanted to tell the world about her experience of becoming one of the leading business women in America, while hoping to give valuable advice to her readers.

Kaplan was surprised with a certain theory that claims that some people were born with genes that qualify them to be wealthy. The son of a wealthy businessman should be rich because of the genes inherited from his father, but the famous writer refused to accept this theory entirely.

From her perspective, we should distinguish between two types of people, the first type is the already wealthy person, and the other type is the one that is able to earn money himself. It is not necessary that both types exist in the same person. The first type may have millions, but he does not have the ability to make money on his own, and in some cases he might lose his wealth and fall into the abyss of bankruptcy.

The other type could start from scratch and then become a millionaire, and she considers herself a person of the second type. Her career began as an employee at a bank, but she soon discovered that her career is not matching her ambition and she resigned soon after. She started a special project and achieved great success, which strengthened her beliefs that there is no relationship between genes and being rich or poor, but she still believed that some people have special abilities.

She believes that there are certain capabilities that are present in the person that is capable of creating wealth more than any other, and the first of these capabilities is the ability to see opportunities rather than obstacles.

If you want to become wealthy you should also believe in the importance of investing and not just saving, because saving may create the feeling of security, but will not make you a millionaire. In fact, the value of your savings decline with inflation, and revenues may decline with lower interest rates. It is also her opinion that the person who wants to be rich should not only invest in securities, but also in different economic activities.

And of course, for every action there are some risks. Here it is advised that we should be able to accept losses as we accept the profits, especially at the beginning of any potentially profitable activity. Nonetheless, each and every step should be calculated, as one should never confuse risk with gambling.

Finally, after the success of achieving great wealth and building an economic empire, a successful entrepreneur should not be extravagant in spending, but should always spend wisely whatever the size of his fortune. A millionaire is a normal person that takes advantage of the strengths within himself.

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Commercial and Business News

Aerotek has played an integral role in this evolution and is now one of largest staffing agencies in the U.S. In 1983, Aerotek began as a staffing provider and has continually expanded our workforce solutions. As a leading staffing agency, our philosophy has always been to focus on finding the best candidates for our customers. We believe the most effective way to select the perfect candidate is having the right process to identify, screen, select and retain great employees. With each connection we make between a job seeker and a company, we create the perfect fit.

For job seekers, an employment agency offers options to pursue career opportunities that range from contract to permanent jobs. Temporary staffing is increasing in popularity because of its flexibility and variety of jobs across many industries. Job seekers rely on Aeroteks professional recruiters every day to guide them through the employment process. For the latest tips and advice be sure to check out Aeroteks career advice blog to prepare for your job search.

As the temporary staffing industry continues to grow, more companies are working with staffing agencies to support their hiring needs. Aerotek partners with our customers to deliver staffing services that offer access to qualified employees through a comprehensive screening, selection and performance monitoring process. Organizations that require a more comprehensive contingent workforce program rely on Aerotek to provide all levels of talent and program management support.

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Aerotek Staffing Agency: Industry Leading Recruiting and ...

The drive for public sector organisations to become more citizen-centred with increased flexibility in delivery models must be balanced with the architectural discipline to re-use, share, and consume commoncomponents wherever possible. This as called an open architecture approach.

The application of open, platform-based thinking to the public sector provides a powerful means of underpinning the technological aspects of a modern, digital public service. Service providers adoption of open architectures standardised ways of doing things enables them to take greater advantage of consumption models of downstream service delivery. Such models are usually both cheaper and more flexible, and involve the assembly of user-centred services from increasingly standard components across a common platform based on commonly shared open standards:

A platform is a set of common components, assembly methods or technologies that serve as building blocks for a portfolio of products or services. Platform innovation involves exploiting the power of commonality - using modularity to create a diverse set of derivative offerings more quickly and cheaply than if they were stand-alone items.

Platforms exist in a variety of industries and the notion of a platform has been used in a range of contexts and there has been a typology of platforms proposed.

First, internal platforms, conceived as a set of subsystems and interfaces internal to the organisation that have been intentionally planned and developed to form a common structure from which a stream of derivative products can be efficiently developed and produced for example, Sonys Walkman, HPs modular printer components, Rolls-Royces family of engines - saving fixed costs, benefiting from component re-use, and enabling flexibility.

Second, supply-chain platforms that seek to replicate these benefits across interfaces among different organisations within a supply chain - most notably, the automotive industry. For example, the Renault-Nissan alliance developed a common platform for the Renault Clio and the Nissan Micra.

Third, industry platforms - products, services or technologies that are developed by one or several firms, and which serve as foundations upon which other firms can build complementary products, services or technologies, such as Apples iPad and iPhone, the internet, payment cards, fuel cell automotive technology, and some genomic technologies.

Encouraging new thinking and overcoming entrenched cultural barriers to the emergence and adoption of open platforms within the UK public sector remains a significant challenge. As an illustration of how difficult this can be, consider the differences between the two depictions below of the open stack, developed by one of the authors in 2011 to explain the architectural and cultural change needed to bring about the open platform dynamic. It shows that there are various interrelated aspects that the public sector needs to address simultaneously:

Figure 1 (A and B): open stack: a mix of behaviours underpinned by technology

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Balancing agility and efficiency: Open architecture and platforms in government

Since the early 1990s, there have been multiple initiatives by several UK governments to use IT to modernise public services. For example, in 1996 the UK government was focused on the new possibilities offered by information technology, and it will learn from the way that these are starting to be harnessed by other governments and the private sector. It will change fundamentally and for the better the way that government provides services to citizens and businesses. Services will be more accessible, more convenient, easier to use, quicker in response and less costly to the taxpayer. And they will be delivered electronically.

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, various administrations viewed e-government as an important way of improving public services, increasing the speed of carrying out transactions, and improving convenience, accessibility, flexibility, and hours of service.

These efforts to reform the use of technology in government, and to apply the lessons of the value of open standards as a means of breaking open the proprietary silos of technology - via initiatives such as the e-Government Interoperability Framework, or e-GIF - achieved very limited success. Some promising early progress such as, for example, putting the income tax self-assessment process online, and the process around payment of the vehicle excise duty remained as front-end, cosmetic one-off initiatives that failed to progress into any meaningful modernisation of the overall processes involved: they were on the web, but not of the web.

In retrospect, it is evident that the UK has historically suffered a recurrent mismatch between political aspiration and any meaningful and sustained technical delivery approach on the ground, despite being a pioneer in many policy areas notably the adoption of open standards and the promotion of open source. There are two important contexts from which to consider the UKs digital public services delivery ambitions - political and socio-technical.

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the design and delivery of public services remained in the hands of a small number of dominant external suppliers who used technology mainly to automate previously manual ways of operating public services, rather than using it as a means to re-engineer and improve them around the needs of citizens. In part, this reflects the legacy of an exceedingly complex software real estate derived from a history of inefficient government procurement practices.

However, it also indicates an approach that used technology as a sticking plaster to make public services appear joined-up when in reality they remained fragmented across multiple administrative hierarchies, operational departments, and agencies. In short, there was a focus on technology at the front end, rather than the reform of the often poorly performing organisational structures and processes underlying this shop window.

Equally problematic was the progressive de-skilling of the public sector and its outsourcing of in-house technological expertise to a handful of large external suppliers. These long-term, exclusive contracts meant that even where departments or local authorities had the desire and ability to drive a re-engineering of their services, they were often unable to do so due to a lack of in-house capabilities as well as restrictive contracts that impeded attempts at innovation and reform. Instead of becoming the means to deliver reform and improvement, technology became the biggest blocker; even where the same external supplier provided the solutions, every system was separately built and maintained, often using proprietary and closely-coupled technologies. This siloed architecture cut across the desire to redesign and optimise services around the needs of service users.

In 2011 a cross-party House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee published the results of their investigation into the state of the use of IT in government and was highly critical of the approach, referring to it as a recipe for rip-offs. In response, the current UK government has renewed its focus on digitally-enabled public services but has been pursuing a very different architectural and commercial route for its achievement. The result is that although technology-based initiatives have been around for some time in public services, the current use of the term digital carries a more specific meaning than earlier online and e-government programmes.

Understanding and interpretation of the term digital public service delivery has evolved significantly in the past decade. Effectively, digital is now considered an umbrella for organisational values and practices. While technology is typically the enabler for these opportunities, digital is not principally seen as limited to technology. Successful digital organisations have customer-centric operating models clustered around speed and adaptability, exemplified by maxims such as show dont tell and good enough is better than perfect.

Digital organisations also seek to address the use of mobile devices as the new norm for staying connected across every aspect of our lives. Through the likes of smartphones and tablets, a growing number of people interact with friends, review various news feeds, check availability of local business services, collaborate with colleagues, communicate with vendors and suppliers, and much more. Successful organisations embrace this mobile-first world, and the expectations of an increasingly digitally literate population.

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Toward digital government whats new?

(PRWEB) November 18, 2014

Global commercial real estate services firm, Savills Studley represented Klein and Hoffman, Inc. in a full-floor 16,600 square foot lease renewal at 150 S. Wacker Drive.

Klein and Hoffman is a leader in architectural restoration and structural engineering solutions headquartered in Chicago, IL. Klein and Hoffman offers an interdisciplinary portfolio of building services including assessment, evaluation & planning, building envelope, existing structures, new structures, historic preservation and building enclosure commissioning. The company works with in wide array of markets including, residential, commercial, mixed-use, healthcare, education, government, parking structures, religious, institutional and industrial facilities.

Greg Gerber and Jake Ehrenberg of Savills Studleys Chicago office represented Klein and Hoffman in the transaction and Joe Alberts represented the landlord, Fulcrum Asset Advisors, LLC and Lincoln Property Company.

About Klein and Hoffman, Inc. With offices in Chicago and Philadelphia, Klein and Hoffman offers over 60 years of creative solutions in the investigation, design, renewal, and preservation of the built environment. Our reputation as a client-focused organization is reflected in the number of returning clients and referrals we receive from partnerships established with owners, architects, developers, and other engineering firms.

About Savills Studley Savills Studley is the leading commercial real estate services firm specializing in tenant representation. Founded in 1954, the firm pioneered the conflict-free business model of representing only tenants in their commercial real estate transactions. Today, supported by high quality market research and in-depth analysis, Savills Studley provides strategic real estate solutions to organizations across all industries. The firms comprehensive commercial real estate platform includes brokerage, project management, capital markets, consulting and corporate services. With 25 offices in the U.S. and a heritage of innovation, Savills Studley is well known for tenacious client advocacy and exceptional service.

The firm is part of London-headquartered Savills plc, the premier global real estate service provider with over 27,000 professionals and over 600 locations around the world. Savills plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange (SVS.L).

For more information, please visit http://www.savills-studley.com and follow us on Twitter @SavillsStudley and LinkedIn.

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Klein and Hoffman Renews Lease at 150 South Wacker Drive

FAIRFIELD, N.J., Nov. 18, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Honored as a complete family of architectural slim-line recessed and pendant mounted luminaires common in quality, efficiency and aperture size, the LINEA 1.5" pendant and the GRUV 1.5" recessed LED linear luminaire family from Amerlux has received a Product Innovation Award from Architectural Products magazine, according to Amerlux President/CEO Chuck Campagna.

More than 50 independent industry professionals served as judges and reviewed 300-plus architectural products that were submitted by manufacturers. The award program recognizes innovation in the development, manufacturing and refinement of building-related products and submissions included basic product information, sustainable features of product materials and production, case studies illustrating product applications, and comments from architects, builders and contractors who have used the products.

"We are proud to accept a Product Innovation Award for our LINEA 1.5 and GRUV 1.5 family, which has been praised for providing robust illumination while offering clean, understated aesthetics and design continuity from discreet linear profiles," explained Mr. Campagna. "This special combination of unobtrusive light sourcing is available with flexible mounting capabilities, solid performance, high-quality extruded materials and superior LED technology and drivers."

The LINEA 1.5" and GRUV 1.5" share equal components and a miniature aperture that allows designers to create recessed patterns running on walls and over ceilings, then transition nicely to open ceilings. Available at 5w or 10w per foot, the luminaires deliver a high output with up to 650 lumens per foot and a significant efficacy at 73 lumens per watt. Custom sized lengths are available to meet designers' exact specifications.

GRUV 1.5" is available with flanged or trimless styles and can be recessed in ceilings or walls while performing at high levels in gypsum board, Armstrong TechZone, USG Logix, Slot and T-grid ceilings, or J-mold for all configurations. The fixtures can be individual or continuous row-mounted using a drawer latching system that provides easy and precise joining of units for straight runs, wall runs for longer runs with J channels, or in T or L shaped patterns.

LINEA 1.5" is perfect for direct, indirect or both direct/indirect illumination and can be cable mounted for open ceiling applications, over desks or over a conference table, with or without a louver, or as architectural decorative lighting above a reception counter. The system offers the industry's first linear LED fixture designed for use with a louver, for optimal glare control, light diffusion and sight line reduction. Full range dimming capabilities are offered, as well as the option to operate with Lutron EcoSystem.

Other options include a broad array of accessories and more than 200 durable powder coat painted finishes to complement nearly any design scheme. GRUV is also available in 4-, 6- and 12-inch apertures and with a fluorescent light source, while LINEA is offered in other sizes using fluorescent.

Click on http://www.amerlux.com/awards to see all of the Amerlux products that have won Product Innovation Awards from Architectural Products magazine.

About the Product Innovation Awards by Architectural Products MagazineArchitectural Products magazine's Product Innovation Awards, or the PIAs, represent an effort to impartially review and present to readers --architects, specifiers, interior designers and building owners/operators --a wide-range of innovative building-related products as judged worthy of distinction by industry insiders. The PIAs bring innovative concepts, products and systems into the architectural space. Of the thousands of new and improved product ideas brought to market each year, the PIA winners are representative of the very finest.

About Amerlux LLCAmerlux speaks the language of light for design and construction professionals around the world by manufacturing a broad array of optically superior, energy efficient lighting solutions for the retail, supermarket, hospitality, commercial and exterior lighting markets. Amerlux products and services include track lighting, recessed downlighting and multiples, pendants, linear fluorescents, and custom lighting systems, as well as support for energy reduction plans that can be used as a guide to state, city and local utility rebate programs for maximum energy savings and utility incentives. The company's domestic and international clients receive the support of Amerlux's highly trained specification sales force, as well as expert service from initial design to on-time delivery made possible by strategically located manufacturing, warehousing and shipping locations.

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Amerlux LINEA 1.5 and GRUV 1.5 Architectural LED Linear Lighting Family Wins Product Innovation Award from ...

Lakeview Village Anders and Ollala Roads

West Kelowna council approved a Commercial Development Permit to facilitate the demolition and phased redevelopment of a new shopping centre and 17-unit multiple family residential building at 851 Anders Rd. at its regular council meeting Nov. 4.

The regular council meeting, held Nov. 4, heard the existing shopping centre on the site is located approximately 300 metres east of the intersection of Boucherie and Anders Road and 90 metres from the Lakeview Heights Community Hall.

The application is generally consistent with the Commercial Development Permit guidelines contained in the District's Official Community Plan and the design is responsive to feedback received from both District of West Kelowna staff and Lakeview Heights residents. The development includes demolition of existing buildings, phased construction of four commercial buildings with a total combined floor area of 49,900 square feet and construction of a new 17-unit multiple family residential building.

The building design includes a variety of architectural detailing and pedestrian-oriented elements and is reflective of the neighbourhood character of Lakeview Heights.

Improvements would include full urban upgrades to Anders and Olalla Roads and would trigger an upgrade to an existing water main from Skyline Road to the subject property.

Hillside Development Standards

Council gave first three readings to a Works and Services Amendment Bylaw to add Hillside Development Standards. The standards provide design criteria and requirements to promote sustainable hillside development in order to reduce impacts to the natural environment. The draft bylaw will now be scheduled for adoption at a future West Kelowna council meeting.

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Notes from West Kelowna Nov. 4 council meeting

Commercial builder Anthony Leighs

Commercial builder Anthony Leighs is on the way to Auckland with advertisements placed to attract new staff and eyes wide open to work opportunities.

The Christchurch rebuild entrepreneur will spend more time on flights north as he looks to win commercial education and health projects and considers whether larger residential developments are a new source of revenues.

While the Queen City juts out of the horizon, Leighs is keeping a good chunk of his business heart in in the Garden City.

The growth in Auckland will be organic, with 20-30 staff to be added in the next 12 months and hopes that new projects will get under way in the new financial year from April and May.

"I'm working on growth up [in Auckland] that in 12-18 months will probably have a quarter of what we've got [in Christchurch] by way of revenue size . . . in four years there will probably be more of a 50/50 split between the two," he says.

His family trust-owned Leighs Construction has been in business for nearly 20 years. Its annual revenue is in the order of $150 million and expects revenue in the $200-$300m range within four years.

It has four directors including Paul Young, Peter Young (chairman), Brian Nightingale and Leighs, still aged in his early 40s. It is looking for a fifth Auckland-based board member.

"I'll probably see myself in Auckland and couple of days a week going forward," Leighs says.

The managing director is making the most of existing Canterbury clients in getting Auckland work lined up.

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Building a future part of the plan

Shares of Apogee Enterprises, Inc. ( APOG ) reached a new 52-week high of $45.16 on Nov 11 and eventually closed trade at $44.94. The stock price appreciation continues to be fueled by Apogee's robust backlog and strength in architectural markets that has set the momentum for improved results in 2015.

Apogee has delivered a solid one-year return of about 36.2% and year-to-date return of 26.7%, outperforming the S&P 500. Average volume of shares traded over the last three months is approximately 225K.

This Minneapolis-based leader in technologies for design and development of value-added glass products, services and systems has a market cap of $1.29 billion and long-term estimated earnings per share growth rate of 10%.

Strengths of Apogee

Shares of Apogee have started gaining since the company reported second-quarter fiscal 2015 results on Sep 16. Apogee's earnings per share in the quarter improved 67% year over year to 35 cents aided by a strong architectural market. Earnings also benefitted from an IRS 48C energy-efficiency investment tax credit, with startup and commercial production of coatings on the new architectural glass coater.

Backlog increased across the board and was at the highest level in the last 6 years at $480 million. Approximately 59% of the backlog or $285 million, is expected to be delivered in fiscal 2015 and the balance 41% or around $195 million in fiscal 2016 and beyond.

Apogee's architectural businesses are gaining share as revenues for all of them increased 34%. Organic growth at 25% was well above the expected 10% market growth this year. Moreover, based on the robust bidding activity, the company guided revenue growth of 20% (up from the previous 15% to 20% range) and earnings per share in the range of $1.62 to $1.72, for fiscal 2015.

Apogee has reopened its Architectural Glass facility in Utah. The facility, which has been closed since Apr 2013, will resume operations by Jan 2015. This will help the company to meet the growing demand for Architectural Glass. Apogee will also expand its Architectural Finishing facility in Wausau, WI by the second half of fiscal 2016. This will add more than 50% capacity to a critical growth operation.

The Viracon architectural glass fabrication business, in its Architectural Glass segment, continues to benefit from the U.S. tall-building sector, which is at its peak since 2007. The segment has also been gaining from improved operating leverage and pricing.

In the Architectural Framing Systems segment, the U.S. storefront business will benefit from price increases and will continue to be a profit driver for Apogee moving forward. Despite delivering a decline in revenues and profits in the second quarter, demand for the Large-Scale Optical segment is expected to pick up in the third quarter for holiday picture framing glass and acrylic requirements.

Link:
Apogee Hits 52-Week High on Strong Architectural Markets - Analyst Blog