In the second episode of Vertical Access, host Michael Kremer is joined by Michael Muñoz, Senior Vice President of Design Services at VDA, who shares how vertical transportation planning shapes the way buildings function, adapt, and hold value over time.

The conversation explores why elevator decisions need to happen early in the design process, especially when today’s building needs may change tomorrow. Michael shares a practical look at core planning, tenant flexibility, local codes, budget tradeoffs, and the real-world factors that help elevator systems stand the test of time.

• Learn why early vertical transportation planning can help owners avoid costly redesigns, protect sellable space, and support better long-term building performance.
• Hear how elevator core size, capacity, tenant mix, and future flexibility can influence leasing potential, tenant satisfaction, and asset value.
• Find out why local codes, market expectations, and cultural differences matter when adapting elevator designs across cities, countries, and building types.
• Get to know Michael in segments like Up or Down and Between Two Floors — including his path into elevator consulting, lessons from complex projects, and perspective on leading VDA’s Design Services team.

Timestamps

[0:00] Intro

[0:30] Michael Munoz’s Career Journey

[2:45] What Design Services Does

[5:30] Getting Involved Early in Building Design

[8:25] Designing for the Future

[12:40] Elevator Experience & Developer Decisions

[17:10] Industry Trends & Technology

[22:30] Budgets & Client Decision-Making

[28:40] Specialized Projects: Hospitals

[32:35] Career Growth & Leadership

[34:20] Looking Ahead

[00:00:00] Michael Kremer: Welcome everybody. My name is Michael Kremer. I’m the host of Vertical Access, VDA’s podcast, where we get a chance to sit down with the decision-makers in the vertical transportation and built environment industry. We get to talk to them, learn what helps them make the decisions that help shape the industry in vertical transportation and in the built environment.
So with that, I want to say thank you to Michael Munoz. Welcome. Great to have you here today. Michael is the Senior Vice President of Design Services here at VDA. And Michael, you had quite a journey with VDA. You started right out of college at VDA and came over to VDA. Tell us a little bit about your history and how you got here.
[00:00:41] Michael Munoz: Sure. Yeah, I started as an engineer, but taking it further back from there I was always really into math and science growing up. I went to a magnet high school for math, science, and technology here in New Jersey. And I guess that worked out pretty well. It was competitive- Yeah.
Yeah … and applied to a bunch of schools, got into a school I really wanted to go to out in Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon.
[00:01:02] Michael Kremer: Yeah, great school.
[00:01:03] Michael Munoz: And in four years, I got my mechanical engineering degree from there. And honestly, I knew I wanted to come back to New Jersey at some point.
[00:01:11] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:01:11] Michael Munoz: But at the time, through all the career fairs and everything that they had on campus, I had committed to a large corporation out in Cincinnati.
[00:01:20] Michael Kremer: Oh, wow.
[00:01:21] Michael Munoz: That was going to be my first job. But as, luck or miss or bad luck would have it, a family member at the time got sick. And I felt I needed to be home sooner, so I told the company sorry.
[00:01:33] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:01:34] Michael Munoz: Sorry to, step back, but I have to, and came back to New Jersey and just started looking.
[00:01:38] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:01:39] Michael Munoz: A recruiter calls me and says, “Hey, there’s a company that does vertical transportation consulting.” And I said “What is that?” “And they like your resume. Would you like to meet with them?” So I went in, interviewed with the original owners, John Van Deusen, Amit Taneja. Yeah. Three rounds of interviews for a company that only had 60 employees at the time, or thereabouts.
[00:01:59] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:01:59] Michael Munoz: And finally they said, “Hey, we like you. We want you to join.” So that was 2006, and I’ve been here ever since.
[00:02:05] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:02:05] Michael Munoz: Held a lot of roles between then and now from just an entry-level engineer to managing an engineering department to VP, and now to SVP overseeing design services.
[00:02:16] Michael Kremer: Yeah. It’s fascinating how people get to where they are and where they start off, and, it’s unfortunate that the family member had that at the time.
Much to VDA’s fortune, though, that worked out well for us, and obviously you’ve been here for a long time, and we’ve benefited from that. And so it’s great to have you sitting down here today and talk about design services. If we can just kick off with what, what does design services in this very niche industry of vertical transportation, what does that equate to?
What does that look like, especially at VDA, per se?
[00:02:42] Michael Munoz: Sure. So typically, the way we look at this is, VDA does everything with elevators.
[00:02:47] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:02:47] Michael Munoz: However, there’s a subset of projects that are using an architectural and engineering design team and following the architectural design process. Any project that is following that process falls [00:03:00] under design services.
And so members of my team would then be part of a larger architectural and engineering design team that work through the architectural, the AIA, which is Architectural Institute of America. Okay. They have, basically a set process that every project follows, right? There’s phases to the project.
And so we have, set deliverables that tie in with those phases of the project, and we work on it from inception through construction. Okay. So pretty much anything that is tied to an AIA design process would fall under design services.
[00:03:35] Michael Kremer: Yeah. And so you’re very much on that front end of the project ultimately.
Do you get ever pulled in after in, with existing construction of sorts?
[00:03:44] Michael Munoz: Yeah. So I guess ideally we get involved with projects very early on at conceptual level discussions, right? Where we have the opportunity to understand the vision of the project and give early advice.
[00:03:59] Michael Kremer: Sure.
[00:04:00] Michael Munoz: Having said that, there are times where we get pulled in later, and we kind of have to do an expedited review of what’s been done to date, and are we on the right track or do we need to reset here? And then regarding existing buildings, there’s plenty of existing buildings that maybe the original intended use is, maybe it’s not working in that market anymore. Maybe it was an office building but, new office buildings went up-
[00:04:24] Michael Kremer: Yeah …
[00:04:24] Michael Munoz: and the old office building just can’t compete with these new products that are out there.
And an owner is thinking, “Okay, I’ve got vacancy, and I’m still paying taxes on this building.”
[00:04:34] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:04:34] Michael Munoz: What do I do?
[00:04:35] Michael Kremer: Sure.
[00:04:35] Michael Munoz: And so maybe they flip it to another use where they go, “Okay I can’t really lease this as an office space anymore, but what would it take to make this building residential,” for example.
[00:04:43] Michael Kremer: Yeah. For sure.
[00:04:44] Michael Munoz: And so there’s been a lot of that, especially in recent years. Most cities in this country, if you read the headlines, will tell you, “We’ve got a housing shortage.” Yeah. And if you look at it that way and say, “Okay, where is there opportunity to add to the housing supply?” Could be converting an otherwise low occupied building or even vacant building into a residential building.
[00:05:06] Michael Kremer: Yeah. So let’s talk about that, the overall approach to a project. So if I’m an architect, if I’m looking to create a new building, whether it’s residential, commercial, whatever, let’s just talk a little bit about what that process looks like. So for those who may, people who may have never done it, but also people who do it and don’t ever take the chance to step back and necessarily think about it.
What is the process of involving someone like yourself or one of your team members, pulling them in? What’s the right time to do that? What are the considerations that they should be thinking about as they enter into that phase of the project?
[00:05:38] Michael Munoz: Yeah. So there, there’s a lot of nuance there, so I’ll try and keep it, let’s just maybe use like New York City as an example, because every jurisdiction may have some different requirements when someone’s just looking at putting a building somewhere or doing something with an existing building. Typically, the team will already know that there’s zoning laws and this location has to be [00:06:00] residential or has to be commercial. And so there’s some pre-decision already made before we get involved most of the time.
[00:06:07] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:06:07] Michael Munoz: And so it can be very loose though. They can say, “Hey, look, I’ve got this existing lot of said area, and I’m allowed to build X number of square feet on this lot.”
[00:06:20] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:06:21] Michael Munoz: And we want to maximize it and take all the available square footage that we can build to. We would ideally get involved that early because they understand how big of a building they can put up, and ultimately to see if a project is going to pencil out financially, they need to understand what is my, at the end, when everything gets put in, what is my sellable square footage?
[00:06:44] Michael Kremer: Sure.
[00:06:45] Michael Munoz: And one of the things that eats up square footage is the core of the building where the elevators live.
And so very early on, typically we’ll get phone calls and they say, “Hey, this isn’t a real project yet. We’re just thinking about some things, but would you mind, as a courtesy, giving us a cursory review and kind of your thoughts on possibly how big of an elevator core we might need for this use,” right?
So it’s usually pretty early on that we can start adding some, more realistic core sizing and add some value to that thought process.
[00:07:13] Michael Kremer: I was going to say, when you get involved in that early process, are there things that you’re asking questions where they pause and they say, “You know what, we never quite thought about that”?
I’m sure there’s more value than just the sizing of it. There’s value brought in with the number of occupants and the flow and the timing of those types of things, when people are going to be flowing in and out, and I, if I can even already just say, we all kind of look at 2020 as a change in a lot of our world, right?
Because when COVID hit, there were a lot of people who were going in and out every day. Now there’s more, probably, of a constant flow throughout the day. How are some of those things changing, and what are the things that might catch some other people or make, giving you phone calls off guard?
[00:07:52] Michael Munoz: Yeah, it’s interesting that you bring that up because ultimately when we’re talking about the life of a building, that building is going to stand for 100 years or maybe even more, right?
And you sometimes get the phone call where people are like, “Hey, I want to do this building. I want to be very efficient, and we’re looking at our existing buildings and the occupancy has never, come back to where it was pre-pandemic levels, so we want you to use a reduced maybe occupancy rate because that’s what we’re seeing in all of our existing buildings.”
Sure, and maybe that was the case even two years ago, but as a consultant and making sure that the building is designed to last and to operate properly for the long haul, we have the responsibility to ask the question “Listen, we understand what the last three or four years have looked like, but is that really what we think is going to be the condition over the life 100-year life of this building?”
And interestingly enough, a lot of our commercial clients that we speak to, this is something they’re honed in on.
[00:08:50] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:08:51] Michael Munoz: And they’re using real data from, their turnstiles and security key swipes to figure out how many people are coming into the building each day.
And what [00:09:00] we’re starting to get feedback on is that, in cities like New York, for example, they are seeing pre-pandemic levels of occupancy.
But as you might have guessed, maybe the middle three days of the week and not so much Monday and Friday.
[00:09:12] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:09:13] Michael Munoz: Yeah. So maybe over the week you have still a decreased number of people coming and going.
But on the worst day it’s equivalent in many cases to what we saw pre-pandemic at this point.
And all of that is to say that you wouldn’t want to design for a fad.
[00:09:28] Michael Kremer: Yeah. And then so what are you… I know this is probably going to be a nuanced answer, but are you designing for the worst case scenario knowing that it only happens once or twice? Or is there operational considerations that you might have to pull in to the building owner and say, “Look, we’re shooting the middle here and this is what we think should happen.”
Like where does that kind of start and stop with what you bring to the table?
[00:09:47] Michael Munoz: Yeah, the old engineering credo is design for the worst case, and then refine. So we’re always going to take the conservative approach for our initial look.
[00:09:59] Michael Kremer: Yep.
[00:09:59] Michael Munoz: And we’re going to say, “Look this is the tried and true…this is what this building type should be designed to, this is the expected population,” yada, yada, yada, right? You give that first pass. But to your point, every single building is unique. There’s rules of thumb, but they all need to be verified.
[00:10:16] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:10:17] Michael Munoz: And that’s a conversation.
[00:10:18] Michael Kremer: Sure.
[00:10:18] Michael Munoz: So let’s say I design for a tried and true occupancy level and demand, and we think this many people are going to come in at 9:00 AM.
Great. And it means the core is this big client may come back and say, “Look we’re not really trying to market this for certain types of tenants. We want this to be exclusively for somebody who’s lower density, maybe a law firm or people who have bigger offices and not a ton of cubicles.”
[00:10:45] Michael Kremer: Sure.
[00:10:46] Michael Munoz: And if they’re willing to tell us that’s our competitive set- … that’s what we’re benchmarking-
[00:10:50] Michael Kremer: Yep …
[00:10:51] Michael Munoz: then we will look at the analysis based on what the client is asking, and of course say, “Look, if that’s really how we want to go, certainly there’s efficiency to be gained. We can do a smaller quantity of elevators.”
[00:11:04] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:11:05] Michael Munoz: But let’s also make sure that you fully understand what that means in terms of flexibility for the future.
[00:11:12] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:11:12] Michael Munoz: It means that you’re saying, “If I get 10-year leases when the building opens and it’s all law firms, great,” but if the neighborhood changes and 10 years from now those leases expire and somebody wants to put cubicles in there, people might be waiting a little bit when they arrive in the morning, right? And is that okay?
[00:11:31] Michael Kremer: Yeah, is
[00:11:32] Michael Munoz: that
[00:11:32] Michael Kremer: okay, yeah.
[00:11:32] Michael Munoz: Because if they’re okay with that, they’re making a fully informed decision, and then we’ve done our job as a consultant to give them the proper information to make an educated choice.
[00:11:42] Michael Kremer: If I might jump in, there’s that idea of this comes down to a…almost like a creature comfort of some sort, right?
If you’re living there, you don’t want to have to wait for minutes, sometimes, just depending on the day, you don’t even want to wait for 30 seconds for the elevator. And if that’s your day-to-day and it gets frustrating and it gets people to actually pack up and leave or [00:12:00] not want to be there, that just doesn’t turn into creature comfort.
That turns into money or lack thereof for these owners. And how serious are they taking that into… I know that they consider, but do they recognize the gravity of it when you’re sitting down and discussing it with them, or does it kind of have to be lead them down that path a little?
[00:12:15] Michael Munoz: Sophisticated developers are definitely aware of that. Sure. Buildings get a reputation, like marquee buildings get a reputation just like a person.
[00:12:23] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:12:24] Michael Munoz: And if a building opens with, there’s a lot of publicity around it, and, high-end tenants are taking space, and there starts to be word of mouth of complaints or like people are stuck in the lobby and can’t get up to their office space in a quick time, that’s not good, right? And there’s not an easy fix when it’s built, by the way.
[00:12:46] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:12:46] Michael Munoz: You can’t just say, “Oh, we’ll add two el-” No, the building is built. You can’t really just squeeze two new elevators in. I guess you could find ways to shoehorn it. We’ve done it.
[00:12:52] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:12:53] Michael Munoz: But it’s not ideal.
[00:12:54] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:12:54] Michael Munoz: And really, I guess the point I’m trying to make is the development world is aware of this.
[00:13:00] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:13:00] Michael Munoz: They take it very serious and they typically are asking those sorts of questions through the design process.
[00:13:07] Michael Kremer: Yeah. And I have a hard enough time making decisions what I’m going to eat for dinner that night, let alone 100-year decisions based off of…that’s really what you’re looking at.
You’re looking at the date, and you’re saying, “All right, add a 1 to the 100 spot,” and say “I got to be thinking about that far out.” And there’s so much that we didn’t… 2019, we didn’t predict 2020, so how can we predict, anything 5, 10, 15 … 50 years out? So that’s a, that’s a-
[00:13:26] Michael Munoz: And then there’s an interesting dilemma … and then there’s flexibility within reason. Like we started the conversa- at the beginning of this conversation, we talked a little bit about buildings that were office and being converted to residential.
[00:13:36] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:13:37] Michael Munoz: At the time, those were Class A office buildings.
And they were designed for what people said, “Oh, this is going to stand the test of time.” The point is the goal line moves over time.
[00:13:45] Michael Kremer: Sure.
[00:13:47] Michael Munoz: If you want to design a building to be future-proof, you might, it might not be financially feasible, not just from an elevator system standpoint, but all your systems. You could say, “Oh, the climate might change and the air conditioning system isn’t enough to, the temperature where we wanted it originally.” Yeah. Okay. But how much future planning can you do? So there’s a balancing act during design where, you’re basically setting goalposts, minimum, maximum, and making sure the owner is comfort- comfortable with that range of flexibility.
[00:14:15] Michael Kremer: That’s what Michael Munoz as a professional is. I, I do have a few questions I’d like to ask you. Sure. This segment is called Up or Down.
[00:14:23] Michael Munoz: Okay.
[00:14:24] Michael Kremer: And all you get to do is up or down, yes or no. That’s what we’re adding. So you don’t really get to describe because this isn’t about your reasoning. That’s what all the professionals do. I just want to know a little bit more on the inside of you.
So you prefer the beach over the mountains? Beach. Okay. Call that an up. Pineapple belongs on a pizza?
[00:14:42] Michael Munoz: Up.
[00:14:42] Michael Kremer: Yeah. That actually is the correct answer.
[00:14:44] Michael Munoz: With ham.
[00:14:45] Michael Kremer: Yeah. Of course. Yeah. There’s caveats to everything. You don’t want to be a psychopath and just have just pineapple pizza.
That’s ridiculous. Dog people are better than cat people?
[00:14:54] Michael Munoz: Up. Yeah. I have two dogs.
[00:14:56] Michael Kremer: Yeah. And I have zero cats. And- It is yeah
[00:14:58] Michael Munoz: Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
[00:14:59] Michael Kremer: Not [00:15:00] there’s anything wrong with that. Yeah. I think that’s actually our second Seinfeld reference in this podcast.
That’s the- Oh … you had a yada earlier, and I don’t know-
[00:15:05] Michael Munoz: Did I? I didn’t even notice.
[00:15:06] Michael Kremer: It’s just in your DNA now. There you go. That’s pretty good. Yeah. That’s good. You get impatient when elevator doors take too long to close?
[00:15:12] Michael Munoz: Up. Yeah.
[00:15:14] Michael Kremer: You’ve critiqued an elevator out loud in public?
[00:15:17] Michael Munoz: Up. Ask my wife. She’ll tell you.
[00:15:20] Michael Kremer: Glass elevators make the ride better?
[00:15:26] Michael Munoz: Tough one. Up if done right.
[00:15:28] Michael Kremer: If done right. Okay. Okay, let’s ask you one more here. You could eat the same food every week forever.
[00:15:34] Michael Munoz: Down.
[00:15:34] Michael Kremer: Down? If you had to eat one food, if you had to, what would it be, though?
[00:15:39] Michael Munoz: Probably a nice medium rare steak. Yeah.
[00:15:41] Michael Kremer: Another good answer. All your subjective answers were objectively correct.
That was very good.
[00:15:46] Michael Munoz: Oh. I’m pleased that you agree.
[00:15:47] Michael Kremer: Thank you. All right. So we kind of left the last portion of that just talk, but talking about some trends, right? Trends that you’re seeing in the industry. So you’ve had 20-some years here in the industry going down that path, and you’ve seen a lot in that 20 years.
But most recently, what are you starting to see over the last, ten, five, two years, and kind of leading into the near future here? What are you seeing there?
[00:16:11] Michael Munoz: Ah, there’s a lot of ways to go there. Codes are always changing, right?
[00:16:14] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:16:15] Michael Munoz: So everything we do is governed by code.
And so when you think about what’s changing over time, we constantly have to be looking at the codes and what those new versions have changed and what those implications are, and then be prepared to explain that to our clients.
[00:16:32] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
How often does that catch clients off-guard? Even the big developers, they often rely on folks like ourselves to tell them that it…
Are there ever ones that just kind of catch them up? And you work a, not only just across the country, but across the world. Do they ever get caught off-guard on some changes from the left to the right side of the country, or on the other side of the pond or anything like that?
[00:16:49] Michael Munoz: Yeah, sure. If you’ve got a global developer or even an architect who does work globally, we tend to do a lot of repeat work with architects, and maybe they’ve got an office in New York, an office in London.
[00:17:01] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:17:01] Michael Munoz: And they cross-pollinate with their teams for major projects sometimes. And they may say, “Hey, Michael, we want to do something very similar to what we did in New York, and this project’s in London,” or, “This project’s in Dubai.”
[00:17:14] Michael Kremer: Sure.
[00:17:14] Michael Munoz: Sometimes I have to burst the bubble and say, “I would love to, but here’s the local code, and here’s where it explicitly does not allow for that.”
[00:17:22] Michael Kremer: Sure. Yeah.
[00:17:23] Michael Munoz: Yeah there’s a lot to juggle there. You have to kind of be aware of all these different specific regulations in each jurisdiction that you may do a project in.
But it’s not always just code too. Yeah. Sometimes there’s cultural differences for what’s accepted.
[00:17:36] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:17:37] Michael Munoz: What comes to mind there is in New York, you ride the subway, it’s crowded. People have no problem getting into an elevator and really packing it in.
You’ve just got off the subway, or same experience.
I’ll crowd the elevator.
[00:17:49] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:17:50] Michael Munoz: You go to different parts of the United States in the South, people like a little more space.
[00:17:54] Michael Kremer: Sure. Yeah.
[00:17:55] Michael Munoz: And so when you’re modeling this, and you’re actually trying to do this and design the [00:18:00] building, you got to be cognizant of that as well.
[00:18:01] Michael Kremer: Oh, absolutely.
[00:18:02] Michael Munoz: Yeah. I’m not going to tell people in Alabama or elsewhere that they need to pack an elevator, because they’re not going to do it. They’re going to look at it, say, “That’s full enough, and I’ll wait for the next one.”
[00:18:14] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:18:14] Michael Munoz: But that little difference could make the difference in how many elevators you need for a building.
[00:18:19] Michael Kremer: Yeah. The nuance is from place to place, across country, across the world. Now, how do we, how does your team specifically manage all of that, keeping all of that… we only got so much room in our head computer here , like, how else are we kind of managing that across the world and as we continue to grow and leveraging past projects?
[00:18:38] Michael Munoz: Yeah. So there’s a couple things I’d touch on there. One is just keeping up with what’s going on in the industry.
[00:18:43] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:18:44] Michael Munoz: You mentioned like elevator manufacturing companies.
[00:18:46] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:18:46] Michael Munoz: We try to maintain high-level relationships where they are happy to share with us their newest technology and kind of spitball it with us and say, “This is what we’re going to be bringing to market and would you guys have any concerns with this product? Is it something that, you would take issue with?” Or, “Does it pass the sniff test on your end?”
[00:19:06] Michael Kremer: Sure.
[00:19:07] Michael Munoz: And so that’s very important. And then- Using the past to guide the future. We’ve got 40 years of project history in this company, and what we’ve been doing for the last 15 or so is we’ve been aggregating all of our projects, and when we draw the elevators, we’re using a database and a system in-house that we call Vector.
[00:19:29] Michael Kremer: Okay.
[00:19:29] Michael Munoz: What that entails is we have a data file that basically lists out all of the major decisions that you need on an elevator: Capacity, speed, number of stops. We’ve also embedded current code logic into that, right? And so when we’re drawing elevator systems we’re bouncing the code requirements off.
There’s flags in the system if you’re trying to do something that’s not compliant. And that 15 years of project history that are in Vector allow us to quickly query similar project types.
[00:19:59] Michael Kremer: Okay.
[00:19:59] Michael Munoz: So if you say to me, “Michael, 80-story office building, can you tell me just quickly core sizes or what you’ve needed to do- specific for those elevators?”
[00:20:08] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:20:09] Michael Munoz: I can go in and put those parameters in and find all of the projects that meet those parameters, and these are projects that have been built.
[00:20:16] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:20:16] Michael Munoz: So we know it works. And so we’re drawing in an organized way off of our project history and using that on current projects.
[00:20:24] Michael Kremer: Okay.
[00:20:24] Michael Munoz: Yeah.
[00:20:25] Michael Kremer: Yeah, it’s like a, our little intel inside of sorts, right? Where we’re kind of driving and pulling from that. That’s interesting. One of the things that comes up a lot with projects, and we hear about it, and it’s a hard part to talk about sometimes, but it’s also, if it’s safe to say, maybe the things that drives a lot of projects.
It’s the budget, right? And you’re part of that. All of it costs money at some point in time. People know that it costs money. But can you talk about the budgeting process, what it looks like, considerations maybe even situations where you’ve seen it go awry or come in under budget?
There’s certainly situations for all of them. What are you seeing with budgets and [00:21:00] considerations people should have entering into projects?
[00:21:02] Michael Munoz: Yeah. I guess the first piece to that is understanding what the client is ultimately trying to achieve with their building.
[00:21:10] Michael Kremer: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:21:10] Michael Munoz: You can have two 30-story residential buildings- of similar size, and you would think, “Okay, we’re going to design the same elevator system for those two buildings.” But maybe one client is saying, “Hey, I’m an owner/operator. This is a family business and portfolio of buildings and this is my family legacy. We hold onto it forever, and I want everything to be designed to last as long as possible of the highest quality.”
And you may have another client who says, “Look my motto is different and I need to get this thing done. It needs to meet code, and after that, I’m going to sell the building and somebody else is going to operate it.”
[00:21:47] Michael Kremer: Sure.
[00:21:47] Michael Munoz: And both are popular approaches in this industry.
[00:21:50] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:21:51] Michael Munoz: Having said that, the budget for the elevator is where somebody says, “I want you to design it to last as long as possible of the highest quality on every single component.”
[00:21:59] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:22:00] Michael Munoz: There’s a cost associated with that. So understanding what the client is trying to achieve and working within that is important.
So that’s step one. And then from that, there are decisions throughout the design process that can either add or reduce cost of the elevator system. An easy one that’s obvious is what people get in and out of elevators, all they see is the finish inside.
[00:22:21] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:22:22] Michael Munoz: It’s like fitting out a bathroom or a kitchen in your house. If you want more exotic materials, it’s going to cost more. But the unseen part to that is marble and stone and back painted glass…those are all way more than, they’ve got a heavier weight than other materials, and so there’s the upfront cost of just, “Okay, these are nicer materials. They’re going to cost me a penny.”
But then what happens, you’re making the whole system heavier. There might be an additional cost now. The machine needs to be designed for that. Other components need to be able to accept that weight, and so that cost can be more than meets the eye.
[00:22:54] Michael Kremer: Okay.
[00:22:54] Michael Munoz: And we would be the person making sure that whoever’s asking for these things understands all of those unseen costs that could show up at the bid table.
I think those are the two most obvious, that jump out at me when you’re talking about budget during the design process.
[00:23:11] Michael Kremer: ‘Cause when things run into money, things can get all sorts of things. They can get emotional, they can get– they can just throw people…and you, as a consultant, have a role, right? You’re there to consult. But sometimes you, as a consultant, can get directed by your customer, maybe in some ways that are more challenging than others.
Do you ever run into those situations where you just want to talk to the customer and say, “Listen I know what you’re trying to do, but you have some other things to think about”? How are those addressed? How do you handle those situations?
[00:23:38] Michael Munoz: Yeah. It’s a little delicate. It does get emotional sometimes.
And people really want to achieve the project, but they also have a budget to work within, and the two sometimes are not eye to eye. At the end of the day, like when I’m speaking with a client, I say, “Look, if this was Michael Munoz’s building, I know what I would do.”
[00:23:56] Michael Kremer: Yep.
[00:23:57] Michael Munoz: But at the end of the day, I’m not the one writing the check.
You [00:24:00] hired me to give you sound advice.
[00:24:03] Michael Kremer: Yep.
[00:24:04] Michael Munoz: The decision is ultimately the client’s to make, and we have to remember that.
[00:24:07] Michael Kremer: Yep.
[00:24:08] Michael Munoz: We’re not the ones spending the money, and so while we may say “It’s got to be this elevator, it’s got to be this speed, and this is the best way to do it, if the funds are not there to achieve that, we then need to be able to pivot, understand that the client is opting to make a decision as the owner.
[00:24:25] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:24:25] Michael Munoz: And we then need to support that decision the best way possible.
[00:24:28] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:24:29] Michael Munoz: We’ve already made them aware of any drawbacks. They understand it.
They’re going in eyes wide open.
[00:24:34] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:24:35] Michael Munoz: Our role now pivots to supporting them as our client to see through what it is they’ve directed us to do.
[00:24:41] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:24:42] Michael Munoz: Even if we don’t agree with it wholeheartedly it is a little bit of a balancing act there.
But if we’ve made them aware of everything that we consider a potential drawback, and they’ve said, “I understand, but I need you to go ahead and do this,” then that’s what we need to do.
[00:24:58] Michael Kremer: That can happen on anything. You can go into Best Buy and try to buy a TV, and you want this, and they’re going to guide you one way. But this is obviously a little bit more of significance because you are talking about a building and people, where people live, and their creature comforts.
And that, those all tie into what that building owner would deem is from their peace of mind all the way to the amount of tenants that they have and the happiness of their tenants as well.
[00:25:21] Michael Munoz: Yeah. There are extreme cases of this where we have looked at a conceptual design, and they’re asking us if we want to partner on the project and be a team member. And through giving initial feedback where we have some concerns and we know it’s going to be a high-profile project, if they tell us our concerns in no way, shape can be heard or that we can help better what we see as flaws we in very few cases have opted to say, “No, thank you. We would prefer not to be part of this project.”
[00:25:51] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:25:51] Michael Munoz: And it’s nothing personal.
[00:25:53] Michael Kremer: Sure.
[00:25:53] Michael Munoz: It’s about, our name gets associated with that project as well, and we do have to be a little careful, you have to be logical about decisions, and sometimes it’s better to say, “No, thank you.”
[00:26:05] Michael Kremer: We’re a business, too. It’s hard to walk away from any sort of business, right? But, if it’s the right thing to do it’s the right thing to do, sure. Yeah. Now one of the things I’ve always enjoyed talking to you about is just some of the different projects because you have the opportunity to do things around the world.
That is as especially with, as VDA has grown over the years you’ve seen projects. Now we have international arms which have opened up a lot of different things to us. But you have some really cool projects. One I wanted to bring to light that you were mentioning earlier was with regards to some hospitality.
You mentioned a hospital and some of the design considerations that go there. I try to visit hospitals… not being in the medical profession, I try to visit hospitals the least amount as possible and so I don’t necessarily think about these all the time. But you mentioned some really interesting things about some of the dynamics, the things that you have to consider that maybe you don’t always have to consider on other things.
Talk to us about that, and maybe we can just, we’ll expand upon it from there.
[00:26:55] Michael Munoz: Yeah, hospitals are always a challenge. Every building is unique, but [00:27:00] hospitals are specifically unique because they’re typically part of a campus. There may be a new building going up, but they’re going to connect it to existing buildings and people are coming from all different places. And then you’ve got all the end user groups. There’s different departments. There’s nurses. There’s facilities. There’s maybe imaging. And all of… if you sit with these user groups, which is typically part of a hospital design process you get to sit with all the user groups, and they tell you their grievances. “The elevators in this existing building are no good because of X, Y, and Z and we wait too long,” or, “This is too small. I can’t fit the equipment that I need to fit in.”
And so it can be, if you sit through this, and it’s usually several days in a row of different user groups, you’re taking all these notes, you’re like, “How do I bring all this together?”
[00:27:46] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:27:47] Michael Munoz: And ultimately, we, a lot of times end up going to another one of their existing buildings to put eyes on what they’re saying is happening to understand. Sometimes what they’re experiencing and they’re saying is an elevator issue, we put eyes on it, and we watch how people are using the elevators, and it’s sometimes maybe, the building has expanded and there’s more people than intended, and so maybe there’s some strain on the elevator system, but a lot of it is self-induced pain. And what I mean by that is, from an operational standpoint, there are people misusing elevators.
[00:28:20] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:28:20] Michael Munoz: You think of all these different departments, somebody at some point decides, “Oh, I’m going to give the head of the department a key that allows them to turn this elevator on to independent service,” which means it’s not responding to the hall calls
[00:28:33] Michael Kremer: Yeah. Interesting.
[00:28:33] Michael Munoz: And now you hand out a few of those keys and people are saying, “Ugh, I don’t want to wait for the elevators ’cause all these other people are using them. I’m going to lock this one out just for me,” And then “I’m going to go on lunch and I’m going to forget to put it back in service.”
[00:28:46] Michael Kremer: Oh.
[00:28:47] Michael Munoz: So now you’ve got maybe one or two elevators out of a six-car group that are sitting parked somewhere, not responding to the general traffic, and that’s where I say operations can actually cause or maybe exacerbate some issues that were already there. And so we get to play referee sometimes.
[00:29:04] Michael Kremer: I was going to say I bet in that situations or situations that you’re seeing, that… And I’m guessing it’s probably not even just in hospitals. Just the natural ins and out of a building the things that you have a chance to see and maybe bring to light to them can be almost surprising.
[00:29:17] Michael Munoz: Yeah. It’s we can do all of the number crunching and simulation and say, “This is what an ideal medical facility would look like.” But the truth is, there’s nuance to all of them ’cause they all operate a little differently, and understanding how one hospital operator maybe has different needs than another, and then refining what it is that we do with numbers based on a true understanding of that end user that’s where we can really have the engineering meet reality and marry it up for a successful project.
[00:29:47] Michael Kremer: Yeah. All right, Michael, so now we’re getting into one of my favorite segments of the podcast, and this one is called Between Two Floors.
[00:29:54] Michael Munoz: Okay.
[00:29:54] Michael Kremer: All right? Now, this is a chance for you to tell us about a time in your personal life or in your career [00:30:00] where maybe you felt stuck, right? Again, personal or professional, and how did you make that decision and what was the result of the decision that you made?
[00:30:09] Michael Munoz: Interesting. I don’t know. I think what first comes to mind is remembering that I’ve been with VDA for 20 years, and for the first 14 or 15 years, I was promoted a few times- engineer associate, senior associate, VP, so on. But in some cases I did start to feel like regardless of the new title, the role was just more of the same.
[00:30:32] Michael Kremer: Sure. Yeah.
[00:30:32] Michael Munoz: And while I knew I loved what I was doing, I started to feel like there might be more, like maybe I need something new.
And it was timely with when we really started to accelerate our growth here. And with growth comes opportunities, that I was given the opportunity to take a more executive role. And while I still do love to get my hands dirty with some consulting work, as you can tell from some of the things we’ve talked about, it’s been a breath of fresh air to look at the business from a higher level, more strategic and think about it from what is our overall plan for design services, not just here in the States, but as we continue to expand into new markets.
[00:31:09] Michael Kremer: Yeah.
[00:31:09] Michael Munoz: So I would say I felt stuck maybe for a little bit there, and I didn’t have to make too hard of a decision because when the opportunity was given, for me, it was a no-brainer.
[00:31:18] Michael Kremer: Yeah. As we have seen, VDA has expanded internationally. We started with Canada, we’ve always done some projects internationally, but now with some larger family members across the sea and as that continues to grow that has opened up the opportunities for you too.
And I know that we’re lucky to have you doing that. I’m actually going to say thank you to Michael right now. We’re going to extend this into another version of the podcast. It’s a little bit longer where we’re going to dive in just a little bit more into the international side of new design and design services that we and other organizations like us offer.
So Michael, if I can get you to stick around we’ll talk a little bit more about that. You got some time there?
[00:31:54] Michael Munoz: I can make it work for- Perfect … but for you.
[00:31:55] Michael Kremer: But for you. Thank you. I appreciate that. If this is your exit point, I wanna say thank you for listening to Vertical Access VDA’s podcast.
Again, my name is Michael Kramer. And Michael, I’ll say thank you in this, but we’ll talk to you in just a moment.
[00:32:06] Michael Munoz: Thank you.
[00:32:06] Michael Kremer: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you very much