Over the years I’ve given more technical presentation on the design and building process than I can count. When giving these presentations I do find myself repeating the same phrase over and over again. And as I get older this phrase makes more sense. I start all my presentation by saying… “We’re all imperfect people, trying to design and build perfect buildings, of which we’ll never accomplish.”

As a people we’re all flawed. We all make mistakes. No one is perfect – therein lies that challenge, to build the perfect building in spite of our flaws. As a bases, if we all just start with that context, it’s easy to accept when others make an honest mistake, then others will be more understanding when you make your next mistake. The challenge becomes not in eliminating our mistakes, but in minimizing and managing the mistakes we will all make. It’s not that we’re not good at what we do, and no we shouldn’t throw up our hands and say, “Oh well, nobody’s perfect.” The fact is, no one’s perfect.

There was a day I used to think that as an industry we’d design and build perfect buildings, free from mistakes and problems. After all, it’s not like we’ve never built an office building, hospital, school or warehouse. For 2,000 years we’ve built these buildings out of steel, concrete, aluminum, glass, etc., materials we’ve used before! So what’s the deal? Can’t we just build the perfect building?

If you want to know the answer as to why we can’t build the perfect building, you guessed it, just in the mirror … and I’m okay with that.