Client Development: A Unique Intern Opportunity
I am not sure how many people out there this will reach. I hope at least a few fellow architecture students trying to make their way in today’s depressing market. If you happen to be searching firms for architecture internships, I want to let you know about a very special opportunity I had this summer.
I applied to BNIM Inc, hoping to be a normal architecture intern, doing redline rewrites and making graphics for presentations. However, I was sorely disappointed when I received my rejection letter from them. However, not long after, I was contacted again and told about another opportunity for an internship. They stated that they needed someone to work as a client development intern for the marketing department. The actual description was vague, but I gave it a go in any case. I had worked in IT for years by this point, and have had plenty of time dealing with clients.
As it turned out, I was just what they were looking for. They needed a tech-savy architecture student to update their database of projects and their photo library with a keen eye. I got the internship, though still slightly disappointed that I would not be going for architecture. I was soon shown that I was mistaken, and my entire internship has been chock-full of architecture and more.
To begin with, my exposure in this internship has been far more than what I would have normally had. Where a normal intern would get exposure to one or two projects in a summer, I was exposed to all of them. The job required that I go through old files and update records so that when they transitioned to a new intranet system, everything would be up to date. This meant analyzing contracts, digging through emails, budget reports, floor plans, sections, etc. Now, while it is not the most exciting thing to do, I did have a great amount of time to learn building systems and understand the way a project proceeds through different phases, from RFQs to contract signing to design to construction. I was able to view how this occurred for a number of project types, from institutional and educational to private and commercial.
While also working for the business development team, I was able to understand the finer workings of a firm. It is interesting to see how much work is done to simply get projects to work on. The marketing team works tirelessly at keeping up to date on new ways to bring in projects as well as working on answering any and all RFQs that the firm might be able to bid for. They have to manage deadlines and communications that are vital to the company’s survival. On top of that, I have seen that they provide a multitude of services for architect in the office, including creating and updating resumes.
As the name stated, I also worked on understanding how a client access information and becomes familiar with a firm. There is a lot of information about a single building that could be given to a potential client. How to select what information might be valuable to them and package it in a way that is inviting and understandable is quite a process. Keeping all that information up to date? Nigh impossible. So much information gets lost in any transition that it eventually gets boiled down to cost, date and team.
On top of all this, the marketing team allowed other teams to borrow me when deadlines were coming up, and so in the end, I got little bit of the normal exposure as well. I was able to do some redlining and some model work, which helped balance out my IDP hours a little bit.
Overall, I think that this is one of the more intriguing and diversified internships I could have gotten. It has not been by any means a normal internship, but I have been very thankful to have had the opportunity to work for a firm in such a unique way.
