Founder Insights: Julian Warring - Landscape Architect - The TULA Project

Firm & Founder:

Julian Warring is a licensed landscape architect and a co-founder of the TULA project, a landscape architecture and urban design firm based out of Calgary.

TULA was founded in 2020 after Julian spent 6 years working as an intern and then licensed landscape architect in Calgary. He has one co-founder, Kelsi, who he met while working together at their previous firm.

TULA has focused primarily on project work revolving around designing plazas, streetscapes, and public parks. Julian has since emphasized that they are looking to diversify their portfolio with commercial, industrial, and multifamily developments. They are currently a team of 4.

Julian’s Key Takeaways:

• Production tasks are the first to be delegated, allowing the core team to focus on design and collaborative conversations.

• Most work comes from referrals and proposals, particularly in public and municipal projects, which leads to more opportunities.

• The firm is looking to grow beyond its current size and has recently expanded its team, indicating a desire for strategic growth.

• While the firm initially focused on public realm projects, it has actively diversified into commercial, industrial, and multifamily projects to balance its workload.

• The team averages one significant proposal every three weeks, with additional private requests fluctuating based on market conditions.

• As the firm grows, challenges in staffing and delegation become more prominent, impacting the ability to maintain quality work.

• An ideal firm size is 8 to 10 people for a more intimate and manageable work environment, avoiding the complexities of larger firms.

• Emphasis is placed on achieving a healthy work-life balance, advocating for efficient work practices rather than long hours, and prioritizing personal time.

Website & Selected Projects:

Q&A with Julian:

Where's most of your time nowadays kind of directed to? What aspect of the practice are you delegating to others and what are you focusing on?

I would probably say most of our time is spent definitely on the business development side of things, as well as just project management, design is a very small part of kind of like the larger picture.

The first thing that we're kind of looking to, like offload or delegate, is production. It's funny, design is what we all went to school for four years to do. But it probably accounts for maybe, like, five or 10% of what you do in your job, if that, and it's also, like, what you get paid the least to do, it's also the most fun thing.

So depending on the project, I think we start with, you know, it's something that like, definitely Kelsey and I would want to be still kind of having the range with the design and leading the design conversation, and having those collaborative conversations with those of us, like with our employees and who's working with us, and then the first thing is kind of like that technical aspect of being able to say, Okay, here's a sketch, draft it, and starting to get an idea, because I feel like there's a lot of value in drafting.

Where do you get the most of your work from? Is it mostly referrals?

Seems to be, it's definitely a lot of word of mouth. But also a lot of our work is proposal based as well. We've been successful with, you know, with our proposals, and that's how you get in with municipalities and public work is through that, and that type of work kind of just reaps more of that work.

Early on, you likely took projects just to start to build a portfolio while they might not have been your preferred project type. Do you now have a specific type of project you want to focus on in the future? Where do you think you are in that process?

We are actually in a unique scenario where we've been working on the type of work that we've been wanting to work on since we started, which is public realm, plazas, and streetscapes, but also with community associations and public parks. So we actually had to, at the beginning of this year, actually put a lot of effort into diversifying our workload because it was too heavy, like it was all the work we wanted to do, but we needed to diversify into commercial and industrial and multifamily.

So now we are able to do that in the last six to eight months and so I would say that we definitely have, like, a niche work that we want to be doing, and we'll always say yes to it, and we'll always prioritize it, but we won't say no to other work at the detriment of relationships or opportunities. But now we're definitely a lot more strategic about the level of effort that we put into proposals and also the costing as well.

How often do you find yourself kind of going after work, how often are you filling out proposals? And how many kind of projects simultaneously is your practice working on at a time?

So I would say, like, in terms of, like proposal pursuits, like a public call on my BC bids, or APC or bids and tenders we average, probably like one every three weeks, typically. There's, like, usually one big one always being prepared in the background. And then in between that, while one is happening, we usually are sending out one.

It comes in waves. So, like, I got in the last two weeks, like, eight emails for quotes, for jobs. Like, and then I don't get anything for like, four weeks. So it just kind of like those, like, you know, architects reaching out to us, or other, like, developers reaching out to us. It comes in, like, big waves. It seems like, I don't know why it does that, but, you know, usually it is, sometimes is aligned with before, like a quarter ends, or before, you know, like the year end comes, and there's budgets that need to be spent, or allocations that need to happen, or grants that are due that'll dictate it, but so yeah, public calls probably one every Three weeks, and then in the background, just always churning proposals out for, like, private requests.

We don't delegate our proposal time, we do it, we write the proposals, and that takes away from our project work, especially like when I'm writing like I usually do the proposal, writing the bulk of it, and then Kelsey steps in and does like the detailed fine review, and ties any like narratives together, fills any gaps that we need to strengthen and that. So it's probably the last 20%. So when I'm doing one of those larger proposals, it eats up a lot, like, it eats up like probably 60 to 70% of my time during the week, which is project work that's not getting done, that hopefully other members can be doing. So right now we probably have like, 17 projects on the go. And then, like, also, just like legacy projects that are like, Oh, you need to just do this coordination piece, or we need to do a substantial completion. Or, you know, so like, in terms of, like, this year alone, there's been 17 projects plus, like, the history of all the other projects that are still going, that are active as well. So there's not really any downtime.

What have been some issues or risky situations you ran into early on?

We've been lucky in the sense that we're pretty like, we're relatively transparent with our work plan and our expectations with our clients. If people are beating us down on the fee, then we say, okay, we'll adjust our work plan, but then when you want to render then we'll tell you it's extra. We're very clear with that conversation.

There's a few projects that are, like, you know, a few $1,000 that I'm never going to see from a certain developer and I can send the invoice but you kind of just gage your risk and understand, you know, okay, are they going to pay, or what's the vibe, or what's the feeling around this project?

I think the bigger risk is mostly just the length of time it can take to get paid. You know, sometimes it's like they pay your invoice immediately. Sometimes it's like, three to five months waiting for an invoice to get paid. And then that kind of relates just back to cash flow and I think the hardest piece to manage it’s not the risk of not getting paid, but just the risk of how long it takes to get paid.

What is your current biggest challenge?

I think our biggest challenge, because we've kind of entered this new area, is probably staffing and delegation and just figuring out what can be delegated, and how to be useful with people's time challenge that I'm seeing. I'm not worried about our project work or getting getting more work, at least right now, just because I feel we have a decent amount, and we're getting more.

But just being able to do all that work and be able to say yes to the work we want to say yes to, and make sure that we're producing high quality, good designs and deliverables for our clients that we're proud of and having time to do that.

What is one unique process or piece of technology you use?

Lots of hand drawing, I've been integrating the iPad into like digital drawing and workflow for some portfolio trace to kind of transition those hand sketches into a digital format, versus trying to scan them in to the computer. It helps for digitizing them into AutoCAD.

Do you have like, an ideal number in mind for team size? Is there like, a sweet spot you think you might want to hit?

Our goal has never been to be like a 25-person multi X firm and be this, oh, we started and we immediately have an office space with a whole bunch of desks and, like, that was never who we were, yeah.

Yeah, I think we would be pretty happy with like eight to 10 people. Because I feel like eight to 10 people you still like casual, you can still randomly go out for lunch without, like, having to make a reservation a week in advance. It's more intimate, it's more personal. You are not having to hire someone to manage, just solely people. When you have that many people (8-10), I feel like that's kind of the sweet spot.

Are there any personal habits or routines that have helped contribute to success in business?

I think there's always this thing about work life balance. When you start your own firm, I think you're kind of, you're kind of accepting that that's gonna go, go out the window a little bit at the beginning, and just to be flexible with knowing that you're gonna work long hours. But also people like to brag about their 80-hour weeks. I think if you can get everything done in a shorter amount of time and still get work, then don't work 80 hours, if you can be successful and run your business and still have a personal life, then do it. Unless there's some people who don't want to do that, and that is their work life balance and that's fine, but that's not what we're really interested in. We're interested in having a successful firm that can support a few different employees, and we want to work on things that we find interesting and inspiring, and we'll put in the required amount of work to do that, but we still want to have our weekend.

I think framing that up in your mind, it's like, how can I do this without sacrificing everything, and then also just finding a way to make sure that you're able to have balance and if that means you have to get up at 5:30 in the morning so that you can work out in the morning because you know that you might work till eight o'clock at night, do it, or like, go for a run during the day. I can't just sit down and work for 15 hours straight. I need to have breaks. I need to have moments.

I'm the most productive I am in the morning. I can get a lot of work done, and so I often I do my best to not book meetings in the morning, or I do my best to start early. Stuff that requires less attention, I push to the afternoon, even though it needs to get done, and I want to get it off my list I still push it to the afternoon, because that's probably a better time to do it.