Michelle Salyer:                Welcome to Outside the Box with BRPH, where we discuss the most innovative, interesting, and outside-the-box solutions to some of the most exciting and challenging projects in the world of architecture, engineering, design, construction, and mission solutions. You’ll hear directly from the problem solvers at BRPH as we dive deep into the latest news, trends and topics in aerospace, defense, manufacturing, and industrial, commercial, education, entertainment, and hospitality. I’m your host, Michelle Salyer, and I’ll be your guide as we open the lid on these topics and more and invite you for an insider’s look at one of the most successful, fastest-growing employee-owned AEC firms in the United States. Welcome to Outside the Box with BRPH.

Six years ago when Margaret Brock walked into a room to pitch her firm’s services, the name BRPH wasn’t well known in the industry of hospitality and design, her industry contacts wondered why she had gone to work for a firm traditionally known for engineering launch pads and manufacturing facilities. How did this company suddenly earn a seat at the hospitality table? Fast-forward to today, and BRPH’s hospitality business has attracted an enviable list of world-class clients and a roster of world-class talent and what could be considered a master class in sector growth. Margaret explains how she and her team have driven this meteoric rise. Welcome, Margaret. Thanks for joining me today.

Margaret Brock:               Thanks, Michelle. Happy to be here.

Michelle Salyer:                Good, good. Well, you began at BRPH about six years ago and you now serve as vice president and business unit leader for hospitality. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got here.

Margaret Brock:               Well, it was quite a ride myself. In fact, I’m an interior designer by trade and I am Canadian. So I went to school in Canada and came here shortly after graduation and in fact, worked for VOA, one of our competitors as a commercial interior designer, and then actually went to Disney as an Imagineer. Anyone in the interior design, Jay would jump at the opportunity for that and as I did that.

Leaving Disney, I did move into the real estate and development world. So I do understand that nature of the world, which has really supported in fact what we’re doing now unbeknownst to me at the time stayed in that world for about 10 years until I segued back into pure design and in that time was really focused on commercial, but moved to hospitality and then my entire focus was on hospitality from an interior design perspective. BRPH gave me a call and asked for me to come in and have a conversation with them about hospitality in the larger perspective, not just as an interior designer. And over a couple of communications I welcomed the opportunity for a challenge in fact, and I felt the idea of starting something new with the background of BRPH was really inviting.

Michelle Salyer:                Okay, so you were looking for a challenge to build something from the ground up? Sounds like-

Margaret Brock:               I don’t know that I was looking for it. I think the opportunity knocked on the door and it was an opportunity to test the range of information that I knew and to really marry my history in interior design, my background in real estate and development and in business, and bring it all together in one. And BRPH was giving me a really strong mandate to do that.

Michelle Salyer:                Well, that’s amazing and we’re certainly happy that you’re here. How do you feel that the firm’s strengths in engineering are an asset to your side of the business?

Margaret Brock:               So that was the one thing I felt that was unique for us. Typically, in hospitality you’re thinking of a design experience or experiential design, and that is the unique skill that someone brings. But for us to be able to build something here at BRPH with the background and the understanding of coming in with a really strong technical expertise just rounded out the skill sets in such a way that I knew that we would be providing a valuable skill and a toolbox of services to developers of which I had been working with and understand what they need. And I think that was unique.

So I knew that that was the opportunity ahead and our ability to sell and craft and pull a team together that could support that goal was my focus. And I did, I think initially because there was no portfolio for a hospitality here, I leaned into my own reputation and those of our initial hires of interior design and sat on the backs of our reputation within the interior design hospitality industry. I think that’s what really got us through those initial years to showcase what it was we can do.

And the minute I had the opportunity to bring in our architects and our engineers to be able to support that, showcase what it is, what that model looked like, what to be completely integrated, that was the win. So when we got our first couple of those, it was a great deal of fun.

Michelle Salyer:                I can imagine. Wonderful. Now throughout this all you have witnessed the impacts of COVID-19 on the hospitality industry. What changes do you think have surfaced in the industry as a result, and do you think those are necessarily for the better? Any blessings in disguise that you can think of?

Margaret Brock:               Well, I would say the first thing, the shock for us is here we were starting a hospitality division or market, and within two years of a ground up start, we are hit with COVID, which is an unprecedented impact on the hospitality market globally. No one could have anticipated that. We were fortunate that we had positioned ourselves with groups largely within the vacation ownership world where work had continued. So where development work had ground down and just wasn’t an absolute halt. We had the ability to continue to grow and continue to build on the business that we were already… The services we were providing.

The switch and the change. I think when everyone receded and cocooned at home to be safe and so on, huge shifts within the hospitality environment, certainly from maintaining rooms where people felt safe in terms of materiality and things that could be cleaned where you felt you weren’t in a safe environment. That was the one thing that was immediate. And we saw even our vendors and materiality change so that it could be very easily cleaned and so on. So that was the tactile, and that was an immediate one for interior design, or the other thing was to draw people back out of their cocoons. How do you bring people back? And that affected hotels, travel, workplace, anything else. And from a hospitality perspective, that’s really providing a place for them to have an experience or want to go or commune or gather or visit new places. And so there was a focus now on how you combine that safety aspect with an experience so guests can come and stay? So there was a change. I mean, you saw a real growth in amenities within the properties.

Michelle Salyer:                What do you mean by that?

Margaret Brock:               So if someone is coming and typically say they will go on a vacation and they’ll hop from this hotel and then they’ll drive three hours away, they’ll go to another hotel. Now the idea is, well, no, they want to stay in one place where they feel safe, unload, and they take day trips from there. So now you’ve got longer stays. And then our owners are looking to capture those people and have them stay at their properties a little longer, spend a little more money at their properties. So what do you do? Do you bring in, say new amenities and as in pickleball courts, or do you enhance the pool activities? Do you start to create experiences, give them excursions from their location? Anything you can to capture their imagination, give them more of an experience rather than just to stay to put their head down at night.

Michelle Salyer:                Okay. So with all the change in the market and the fact that you’re incredibly entrenched in some major hospitality brands, what do you think BRPH is bringing to the marketplace that’s unique and uncommon?

Margaret Brock:               So that might be twofold. As the brands are extremely important to us in terms of delivering against their product and giving aspirational product and meeting, whether it is their prototypical requirements or just their general requirements. We do work and are contracted for our owners and our developers. What we do do often, and again, there’s a couple ways to look at this, but speed to market is certainly one for a developer. Time is money. Well, if you have the entire team sitting in one office so to speak, where you can turn around and you very quickly have discussions and move things forward at a rapid pace, you are delivering ahead of schedule. And we can compress our schedules to be able to meet the need because of our technical expertise, very easy to do so within our market.

So from an owner’s perspective, I think that’s been really valuable. The one-stop shop, however, to consider one-stop shop, often when you think of that, you think of very generic or diluted design. That we don’t have because what we did do was very much focus on the fact if we are technically very strong, we wanted to be equally as strong creatively. And we’ve hired to that end to make sure that we have the very best who are delivering and exceeding the expectations of our owners.

Michelle Salyer:                Okay. So the goal is for BRPH’s design capabilities to be on par, if not exceed our technical capability?

Margaret Brock:               Without question. And that I think is rare. So as you see very strong design focused and recognized companies, they don’t necessarily share our expertise in delivering on a technical expertise or a technical delivery. And I think we’ve proven that we can and we have the depth of experience in-house. I think the other thing that our owners certainly rely on is because of our client base and our NASA base and everything else in our aerospace and manufacturing, is that our QA/QC is unmatched. And so it was really important for me and our group that is translated and occurs on the interior design too from a specification standpoint. So our QA/QC and the processes in place at BRPH. We’ve moved them into the creative process too. I think we’re delivering across with a strong QA/QC. I’ll put our documents up, get just about anybody.

Michelle Salyer:                Okay. Yeah. And I imagine you’ve got a whole nother layer of that with custom furnishings that you’re designing as well. So it’s not just the specs of the space itself or the walls, the floors, it’s all of those interiors or tables or chairs or all the custom.

Margaret Brock:               So correct and out of the gate. So we very early, Pam Morton joined me, and Pam arguably is one of the strongest, has the best reputations in terms of specification writing for custom furniture. Pam’s understanding and just seasoned reputation in the industry, I knew that that would bring our specifier… She’s bringing that element to the table. We’ve got QA/QC from a technical side. Our delivery, again is strong across the technical and the expertise on the FF&E side. So she brought that to us. And again, the focus was making sure we were building the team with the right people to make sure that we were just delivering across both.

Michelle Salyer:                Okay. And I understand she’s training the next generation now as well.

Margaret Brock:               Pam is invaluable. So making sure that any of our new staff really are working with her and understanding her process and understanding… I think you could speak to any one of our partners, and they would say that without question, our FF&E specifications are tight specifications and there’s very little wiggle room for error. And it’s certainly benefits any of our owners from a cost estimating understanding because we’ve already vetted it several ways, but they are going to meet the specifications and the requirements by any one of our brands.

Michelle Salyer:                Okay. So let’s talk a little bit more about the interior design side of hospitality. Last year, BRPH brought in Cristi Moore as a national practice leader for interior design. How has Cristi helped to impact the hospitality world in terms of interiors?

Margaret Brock:               So she’s impacted BRPH in a tremendous way. For us, it was a required strategy for organizational growth honestly. When we started this, I was leading both the hospitality interiors and growing the business. However, once you get to a point where everyone’s at 120% and you have the room and certainly the support of BRPH to grow the hospitality market, and they saw the success that we were having, the only way for us to really expand and do more was to organizationally grow. And with that, we required a head of interior design that was focused solely on that because we had really captured a great market there, and we had done tremendous things to bring Cristi in with her national recognition and her skill set level with luxury product and so on. That was instrumental for us. And what that did was give that team that we have in place the next level to grow. So it also gave me the opportunity from a market leader to sell against product that we did not have expertise in. Not only did she bring-

Michelle Salyer:                Meaning the luxury high end [inaudible 00:13:19].

Margaret Brock:               Exactly. Not only did she bring that luxury level of expertise, Cristi also brings a very strong branding expertise. So now if you consider that each of our moves was about servicing our client, which is very much a BRPH mission, we were lessening the gaps at every hire. And so Cristi now, rather than have to go out of house for a branding component, we had Cristi in place. We can service a client no matter the sub-market they are in, whether it is a hotel, a lifestyle, a hotel, vacation ownership, or a resort or a community-based clubhouse, we had the full gamut and the expertise in house to be able to support that and we were able to brand it as well.

And so she has opened the doors tremendously where we can help develop new product for some of our partners where there are things that we can do that we didn’t have the expertise before. So we are now set up to continue the growth because organizationally we needed to do that.

Michelle Salyer:                That gives you a little breathing room as well.

Margaret Brock:               A little bit.

Michelle Salyer:                A little bit. Okay. And I understand that BRPH has also brought in a master planner in the last year or so, Tim Campbell. Tell me more about that decision and why that’s been impactful to hospitality in particular.

Margaret Brock:               So similarly, in terms of organizational growth, we were doing a great job meeting our clients with what they needed and servicing them within architecture and in design and with the branding. However, a gap was when we would like to start with dirt, quite frankly. And so when you approach someone with land, we immediately had to bring in a partner to support the master planning or the site development or any of those. And we do have civil in-house, but the expertise very specifically for hospitality we did not have on land. And by bringing someone in, like Tim, we are plugging the holes again of how do we best serve our clients?

So now I can take their dirt and I can master plan it. I can design a hotel specific to whichever brand flag, lifestyle, full service, limited service, and I can brand it and I can design it all in-house. So it was that desire to make sure that we were servicing the clients with the team members that they needed from start to finish. And both Christian and Tim have made huge impacts on what we’ve been able to do. And of course, each one of them brings with them a cache client base that we’re able to get out in front of equally and share with them what we’re doing at BRPH.

Michelle Salyer:                Tell me about some of the other members of your team in terms of architecture and branding.

Margaret Brock:               I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about the architectural team. Carlos Ontivero came to us early. Carlos expertise is he is a creative architectural lead for us. He leads all hospitality, creative architecture. His entire focus is on hospitality, and he’s a true designer.

He has been invaluable to the team. He can manipulate a box into a very beautiful structure all while teaching, quite frankly, and guiding a team to cross-diversify at BRPH so that we can have numbers of architects that can swing over or move between the entertainment and the hospitality.

Rick Sconyers was another strategic hire for us. Rick has a long history with Hard Rock Hotels, and he is a seasoned architect and project manager is coming in, really giving the team perspective from the owner’s side whereas most of us are coming from the consultant side where we are working for the owner, working for the brands. That is Rick’s strength, and he can come in and really bolster a branded product, understanding what a branded product looks like from start to finish, and again, understanding that he and Cristi, there’s a natural conversation between those two also. So we feel across the top or organizationally, we have the key people in place to be able to grow and really jumpstart a strong five-year plan ahead.

Michelle Salyer:                Okay. So we talked about the unexpected technical excellence that comes with our strong design skills in the hospitality world. Tell me about some of the technology tools that your team is using that pull from that engineering world, but are also useful for hospitality.

Margaret Brock:               So there are two things that would come to mind immediately, and then our QA/QC process, and that would be unique or independent, and we’ve talked about that. But the Matterport scanning that we do is just as a standard course of protocol when we go and visit properties, and our interior design team uses it extensively when we go into properties where we are doing site visits and reviewing rooms. Even our ownership I think sees the value in that, where we have essentially a living document of those spaces. It reduces the amount of time or how often we might have to return to the site. Our owners have the ability to use it.

In one instance, we were the interior designers and we went in and we were contracted in a historic hotel to do the full scanning of the building prior to any renovations. Now we have a recorded history of everything in the building and the condition of the building completely invaluable. So not only did we use it. We shared it with the contractor, the owner used it. The contractor was to be able to go in and cross-check things without ever having to be on site in the pre-qualifications and construction services and so on. So that was invaluable.

The corner cave is one that we’ve been jumping on most recently, which is a great deal of fun. We had a corner cave in the Melbourne office, and now we’ve moved one into the Orlando office. And for those who may not know, I’ll explain what that is. So the corner cave is essentially a projection. In a layman terms it’s a projection of three-dimensional space in a scalable form on the walls of a room, and you feel very much it is at scale. So we bring our owners in and we’ll have modeled perhaps say a guest room unit. And if they’re sitting in the middle of the room, there’s typically a sweet spot. But if they’re standing there, they feel they’re in the room to scale. They can see their viewpoints, they can see where furniture sits. They can feel, almost feel that there’s a pinch in furniture here, or if they want to shift the door, we can shift the door in real time so they can see what those amendments are made.

Michelle Salyer:                So a virtual walkthrough, in other words.

Margaret Brock:               It’s an absolute virtual walkthrough. It is wonderful when you have volumes of space that is difficult for them to visualize what 20 feet or 30 feet volumes would be. By standing in that space they start to begin to understand the scale and we can minute [inaudible 00:19:53] for them then. The other thing that we have done is from a materiality. We have several that are completely done where they could really see how a finished interior design space will feel from a lighting perspective and from the spatial. So it’s been a great deal of fun for those. I think it’s fun for them to see, and our owners then realize the tool that it is for either their development partners or any investment partners that may want to see or have a better understanding of what it is they’re doing.

Michelle Salyer:                Okay. So you may not know this, but I did a little homework and found out that 70% of BRPH’s business in 2024 was brought in by business unit leaders who are women. So what does that mean to you, and what do you think it means to your team in terms of seeing female leadership excelling at BRPH?

Margaret Brock:               So I will certainly not take the full credit by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m happy to participate and contribute. That’s important to me in terms from a measure of success. But I think the bigger measure of success is seeing diversity in our offices and seeing women in the workplace know that they have a path forward. As an interior designer by trade, it is unusual for me to sit at the head of a market in an A&E firm, which has really led strongly by architects and engineers.

So if that inspires any one of the tier design team members or any female at the firm, that the doors are open regardless, I am thrilled by that. It was something that was important to me when I started. Of course, my job was to create a hospitality market, but I did want to promote and show visibility to females in the industry in A&E and let them know that there is really no limitation as to where they can go and what is they can do.

Michelle Salyer:                Wonderful. I love it. And by being here today, you helped to spread that message, so thank you.

Margaret Brock:               You’re welcome.

Michelle Salyer:                We’re not done yet. A few more questions for you before I let you go. So with some of the leaders that you spoke about in the hospitality area, tell me what you’re looking forward to in the future, what your goals are, where you see this business unit going.

Margaret Brock:               So with the investment of the organization, the people in the organization, each one of them, number one, they’ve all come understanding that this is very much an entrepreneurial effort, and BRPH is certainly backing us. So this is, we’re really a growth market, and they’re all coming in with the energy and excitement of, “Oh my gosh, we’re growing something.” So we’ve got the people in place, and I’m excited to see where that certainly is going in terms of growth. But also, I get excited when I see… I’m excited every time a project comes in, even if I’m not directly responsible for design anymore, because I want to make sure that the next generation and those that are coming in, they’re coming in knowing that we’re a growth market, have the opportunity to move forward too.

So excited about the relationships that we’ve put in place. I’m excited about the execution and the reputation of the team that we have as a group. We all came in with individual, not expectations, but certainly measures of where we were in the market, but collectively, we’re delivering and we’re delivering a premium product and couldn’t be more proud of that. So each year that grows, we are growing, we are doing bigger and better things and leaning on each other to do so. The teamwork’s impressive.

Michelle Salyer:                Wonderful. Well, Margaret Brock, thank you so much for joining me today.

Margaret Brock:               You’re welcome. It’s been a pleasure. Thanks, Michelle.

Michelle Salyer:                Thanks for joining us today for Outside the Box with BRPH. We hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode as we explored some of the most innovative and challenging projects and the most pressing issues and trends in the AEC world. Learn more about us at brph.com. Email us at [email protected] and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and X. You’ll find this podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Be sure to subscribe so you’ll be notified when new episodes are posted. See you next time on Outside the Box with BRPH.