Three Dimensions

Steven Donohoe	Andrew Cupples	Jay Smith

In mid-February, I sat down with three men, all well known in the correctional industry, and hosted a roundtable where topics ranged from the state of the industry, to prototypes, to document quality, to cutting operational costs, and many others. These men, all members of the Jacobs’ team, included Stephen Donohoe, vice president, justice market leader; Andrew Cupples, justice design principal; and Wantland (Jay) Smith, principal, justice design. Stephen Donohoe, who has been with Jacobs for 25 years, has worked on numerous court and correction projects in the East region. Andy Cupples has more than 20 years experience exclusively in the justice facilities field. And, Jay Smith has spent more than 25 years focusing on correctional facility design. These three men are frequent collaborators, but it’s not often that they get the opportunity to sit down together and talk shop.

Jay Schneider: What changes have you seen over the past few years and what is the current state of the correctional industry?

Jay Smith: Over the last 25 years, I’ve seen a move toward a new approach to management, which greatly influences the design response. There is a “yin-yang” relationship between the design of housing units and the effective control of the units. Facility design strongly influences the facility’s manageability and operations. The new approach transforms operations for staff, as well as for inmates, with resulting reduction of incidence of violence, both inmate-on- inmate and inmate-on-staff.

Andy Cupples: Twenty years ago, replacing 100-year-old facilities was the norm. Today we’re working on facilities built in our lifetime. We’re replacing facilities built in the 1960s and 1970s.

Other changes include alternative facilities, such as treatment centers; support facilities, such as education and vocational program space. It used to be that prison industries would make license plates and industrial file cabinets. For today’s inmates, it is high-tech and computer work. It’s about adapting to industry needs.

In the past 15 years we’ve seen the industry doing “cookie cutter” projects, but now they want to do more. Experimenting and seeing new things is key. We talk about providing a quality environment for staff and providing sustainability-these are issues being addressed now.

Stephen Donohoe: We’re seeing fiscal tightness. Clients across the country need to really zero in on operational costs and they’re sensitive to the fact that design drives the cost. Also, we’re seeing over the last three years or so that facilities are starting to take into account the rising costs of utilities, gas, oil, water, and electricity. At Jacobs, we’re hired to assess facilities and make recommendations to improve efficiencies and operations.

Jay Schneider: What are some methods for improving operations?

Andy Cupples: Many facilities have added housing but support facilities and staff haven’t kept up. We’re now working on 10 major renovations that focus on intake. What’s needed are new intake centers based on separating people being booked into a facility with those being released. In order to avoid having to build to capacity, we need a release mechanism to handle the flow of inmates, handle their paperwork, get their personal items, etcetera. Of all the major jails we’ve worked on, intake management is a key element.

Stephen Donohoe: Separation of inmates and those being released eliminates major traffic crossing-people coming in separated from people going out, especially those going into court. We’ve seen that there can be a horrible mix of people at intake and release and we’ve been able to adjust that process.

Jay Schneider: What would prevent Jacobs from going after a project?

Stephen Donohoe: Jacobs is a publicly traded company and therefore we’re obligated to our stockholders. Sometimes we’re challenged by the unrealistic terms and conditions that clients put into contracts. We’ve seen an increase in recent years of one-way clauses that expose stockholders to major issues e.g.: even if a client is negligent, they are not responsible. Even if a client is grossly negligent. As a publicly traded company, we can’t take on that liability.

Jay Schneider: More and more clients are making selections based on fee-what’s your stance?

Stephen Donohoe: It’s difficult to get into a low-fee price shoot-out and deliver quality. Facility and operational costs are key to our decisions. Jacobs is safety oriented. Safety by design makes all of us aware of the people who occupy the facility. We can’t support and put our professional seal on facilities that only accept cost as the criteria.

Jay Schneider: How do you feel about the administration’s current approach to corrections, in terms of budget, leadership, etcetera?

Stephen Donohoe: We’re on the verge of a turnaround and are encouraged by legislative support at the state and community levels. Because of tight budgets, criminal justice systems have not been allowed to expand where they need to and it’s hard for legislators not to support plans that keep staff from unnecessary risk. There are situations where officers get killed or hurt because conditions are so bad, and we hope we don’t get to that point. It’s a good sign when we see planning studies and design getting funded this fiscal year. There’s been a big push for funding, but we’ve seen politicians making promises in order to get elected.

Jay Schneider: What changes do you see happening within the next five years?

Andy Cupples: Legislation and laws being reviewed in some states. We’re looking at alternatives to incarceration programs where non-violent offenders don’t become so expensive. Some jurisdictions mandate changes and support is there for a therapeutic community for non-violent drug offenders. Putting non-violent drug offenders in with hardened violent offenders is not seen as efficient or in the inmate’s best interest where the emphasis should be on improving their lives so they can be released as productive members of society.

Jay Schneider: What do you see as some of the industry’s biggest shortcomings?

Jay Smith: Everyone is always looking at costs first. At our client workshops we are encouraging our clients to look at future costs as well as current costs. The approach can raise the project’s initial cost, but if you build a facility with better and more efficient systems, it creates a more cost-effective operation over the life of the facility.

Andy Cupples: What we’re emphasizing is the process of thinking through and providing straightforward answers with regard to materials being used, construction, and design.

Stephen Donohoe: You can pay a little bit of premium to get a lot of reliability.

Jay Smith: Our specifications have to be done with long-term values in mind. There are hundreds of decisions we make as architects and engineers that can add up to more efficient performance-seemingly mundane things like the quality of the bearings in a fan and the selection of stainless steel rather than galvanized steel for the cooling towers.

Andy Cupples: The reason is that these facilities operate on a 24/7 basis. We talk to clients about what they invest at the beginning and what they’re going to pay in the future in terms of construction, materials, and replacement costs. It’s harder, if not impossible, to get what it takes to maintain a facility-their yearly costs are important. For public services in general, investment in the infrastructure tends to get deferred in terms of operational costs.

Jay Smith: In projects I’ve done for several larger counties, they have their mechanical people there from the very first meeting and they are involved in the process all the way through the design phases. They review the plans making sure the completed facility is going to work for them. The client’s project manager and facility administrator should insist on including their mechanical people in the process. They’re the ones who ask the hard questions related to the operations of the building system.

Jay Schneider: Are the majority of your projects integrated?

Stephen Donohoe: We have lots of resources at our disposal. We’re an extension of the clients’ staff, and we’re there to help them through decisions and keep the project on target. We’ve seen that client staff has been reduced and that they don’t have to hire people and then lay them off after the project is finished. On the contractor side, clients will often ask our team for help. We bring a fresh perspective.

Jay Schneider: Is it a challenge to approach projects as both a designer and a construction manager? Is that sending mixed signals?

Stephen Donohoe: It’s a challenge sometimes because we’ve done design-that’s where we’ve really been able to show clients the breath and depth of Jacobs-and construction manager. When it’s time to review documents, we bring in procurement people and the planning group, along with the clients. Programming the facilities gives us the capability of developing realistic project budgets and that’s the number legislators remember. When we’re acting in that role we provide really good numbers.

Andy Cupples: We have the ability to get behind clients, to enhance and serve the client well. In two or three recent projects we provided clients with design as well as integrated engineering. That approach saves the client from being in the middle of disputes and ends with better projects.

Jay Schneider: Are there misconceptions within the industry that need correcting?

Stephen Donohoe: The biggest misconception is in the state of Florida! In Florida, lots of unqualified companies were selling construction management agency services in the 80s and 90s and it hurt the reputation of the business. The state shifted to an adversarial CM at risk. We’re trying to re-educate people and we believe agency work brings a lot of value and we can document that value. But lots of counties in Florida saw bad CM work and it hurt a good process. That is a major misconception.

Andy Cupples: The worst thing is to screw up the clients. You must know about the costs.

Stephen Donohoe: When the scope is well defined, we can price the risk. CM risk has value at the appropriate time. Some clients push it up so far it brings about risk that must be priced.

Jay Schneider: How much of your business is from repeat clients?

Stephen Donohoe: Ninety percent of our work is performed by repeat clients. We were told by clients that we set a high standard of excellence.

Jay Smith: It’s hard to translate that model in municipal and local projects, because they tend to do a project only once every 20 years or so. The way it does translate is that the sheriff in one county tells his counterpart in the next county to talk to Jacobs because they did a great job for him.

Stephen Donohoe: Jacobs has 35,000 employees, but we’re still driven by core values: we’re relationship-based, growth is imperative, and people are our greatest assets. We’re a good fit with small and large counties. A county administrator once told me, “Jacobs is a big company but they treat us like a local company would and have all the resources of a large firm.” That was rewarding. Sometimes we’ll lose jobs because the perception is that we’re too big, and clients are afraid we couldn’t take care of them. The opposite is true. We can serve the small as well as the large.

Jay Schneider: What’s happening in international markets?

Stephen Donohoe: There’s work in Ireland and the United Kingdom. We were just commissioned to do engineering upgrades in the UK. We do a lot of engineering in the UK, France, and Ireland. You’ll find that justice facilities in Italy, France, Ireland, and the UK are in a state of disrepair. Ireland opened a couple of new prisons and juvenile systems and has plans for future expansion.

Jay Schneider: What are your opinions about the overall document quality produced by architecture firms?

Stephen Donohoe: In the last 10 years I’ve seen a downward spiraling of document quality-mostly driven by clients. It used to be, 15 to 20 years ago, that a seven percent architecture fee for major prison or courthouse work was the benchmark. Clients are now pushing fees below five percent. I think that’s a bad thing. Quality was much better. Support was much better. Now, clients are not buying the support.

Jay Smith: The quality of documents is a challenge. The quality of documents we produce is imperative. We have systems in place that require our documents be reviewed by fresh eyes and signed off by a senior manager in the design studio before they’re sent out. Then, to make sure we’re meeting our client’s expectations, we do a formal interview with every client at the beginning of the project and then do a follow up interview with questionnaires every quarter to get a reading of how well we are meeting those expectations. We want to know how the team is doing. We have a reality-based approach that we believe transfers directly to team performance and that shows up in the quality of our documentation.

Stephen Donohoe: More than once, I’ve seen “reviewed by” and “sign-off” documents go un-signed. At Jacobs, they don’t go out the door before being checked and signed-off. We believe in quality. If the documentation needs to be a day late because of signing off, we call the client to let them know because the quality has to be there.

Andy Cupples: The issue of “perception of quality” is created by an expectation that quality and perfection are a reality. Sometimes value judgments get missed and trade-off decisions are being made.

In new car manufacturing, Detroit produces three million new cars, and if they find an error later, they can recall those three million cars. The reality is that a building is only going to be put together once-perfect does not exist in this business.

Jay Schneider: I’ve heard people say “We have a hard time competing against Andy Cupples.” Your reputation precedes you. Why is that?

Andy Cupples: We work in a competitive world. We don’t shy away from competition. We work hard and have lots of repeat clients. One of the reasons I’m at Jacobs is that I’ve always believed in the importance of the client. You do what it takes to please the client and do the right things. Jay [Smith] and I crossed paths many times, we worked together at another firm and ended up here. I wanted to work with these people. I knew Stephen [Donohoe] and wanted to work with Stephen. This business is like baseball, the uniforms may change but the faces stay the same.

Jay Schneider: You three are frequently asked to speak at industry-related events. If I were to ask you to suggest speaking topics, what do you think the industry needs to hear?

Jay Smith: Corrections designers and jail administrators should avail themselves of the tremendous range of resources available to help them do a better job of designing detention and correctional facilities. There is a long list of resources I’ve used and benefited from, including: American Institute of Architects, National Institute of Corrections, American Jail Association, and the National Institute of Justice, among others. The resources are unlimited. Going to the tradeshows, conventions, and seminars put on by these organizations is invaluable, and you can meet with others in the industry who are dealing with the same issues. Face-to-face discussions are important resources.

Stephen Donohoe: It would be the planning process of assessing a total system; coming up with a master plan to allow that court, jail, or prison system to enter the new millennium. So many times clients look at one specific project rather than the project’s total impact on the whole governmental system, which creates a hodge-podge of systems. Clients need to assess the system, find the shortcomings, find what is necessary. People only know what they have-they don’t know what they’re missing or what’s changed since they’re facility was built. People need to give themselves a chance to look outside the box, see what others have done, and select the best of what people are doing and apply that to their needs.

The hard part of the business is knowing what’s going to happen tomorrow. We need to look five years ahead to where things are going to be. It’s hard for clients doing master plans and projections to really forecast how society or the environment is going to change. They have to have the flexibility and adaptability to respond to those future needs.

Jay Smith: The month after 9/11 we had a conference in Phoenix, and after several days of conferring with judges and planners, an Arizona supreme court justice in a panel discussion that was focused on bringing the conference to closure posed the questions of whether the focus should be on the courtroom as opposed to the creation of facilities that foster an open, accessible process of justice. The real question is how to predict the future for the delivery of justice. That’s the kind of thinking outside the box we need-addressing changes in the whole system. The formal courtroom process may last for many years, with more of the justice system delivery shifting to alternative means of dispute resolution outside the traditional courtroom. In the corrections area we have movement toward alternative treatment of drug abusers and the application of technologies as the use of video visitation and video arraignments.

Stephen Donohoe: It is important to educate the new generation of clients as to what works and what doesn’t work and how they can proceed down that path in an organized fashion, allowing them to be fiscally responsible to taxpayers while meeting the community’s needs over the next 20 to 30 years.