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OUR SERVICES OUR APPROACH CASE STUDIES HIGHER EDUCATION INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS MUSEUMS LIBRARIES HEALTH CARE OTHER QUESTIONS | ABOUT US CONTACT US © 2008 Synthesis Partnership. All Rights Reserved. |
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Child Development Center
Corning Incorporated has been a corporate leader in the area of work / life balance. An understanding of the needs of a changing workforce led to sponsorship in the late seventies of a day-care operation that spent the next decade and a half in a succession of church basements. Finally, in 1991, the champions of stronger corporate commitment to child care won approval for a dedicated facility to provide day-care for 140 children and training for providers of home day-care and students at the local community college. In January of 1992, a steering committee had been considering a new home for the Corning Children’s Center for several months. On it were represented: corporate human resources; corporate facilities; the non-profit community development subsidiary of Corning Incorporated, which would own and maintain the building; community representatives; a union representative; a retired corporate director of design; and the day-care organization’s board, managers and staff. The group was large, unwieldy, and deadlocked on programming, site selection, and architect selection. There was little sense of what was to be expected of a physical facility, and no consensus on strategies or procedures. We presented the committee with better choices of architects, helped them to evaluate options, and mediated among the project manager, the stakeholders, and the architects throughout the process. We developed a consensus that a well-designed new facility could provide significant benefits to Corning Incorporated as a vivid representation of its values, as Synthesis Partnership founder Sam Frank pointed out in his remarks at the ground breaking ceremony: “Innovation is essential to corporate success, especially for a company based in research and technology; in new materials and ingenious processes. If we think to ask where innovation comes from, we are led directly to the inhabitants of this building. If its design can stimulate the imagination and the curiosity of our children; if it can help them to learn to work and play together productively, we will have truly made a significant corporate investment in the people of this community.” “The individuals cared for in this building are our future; the way we decide to address their needs-either by warehousing them during the day while amusing them as best we can, or by using our imaginations to challenge theirs-says everything about our values and our destiny. There is no excuse for demanding any less of the building than we do of the curriculum or the staff. Beyond all the preconceptions and tastes of corporate sponsors and adult care givers, the architects have put their priorities in order, and have taken as their guide the wise words of that most reliable parental figure and sage, Dr. Seuss’ Horton the Elephant, who said without equivocation, ‘A person’s a person, no matter how small.’” The building has been published in Architecture (cover article), House Beautiful, Metropolis, and GA Documents (Japan). It serves as a prime benchmark for corporate day-care facilities, adding luster to the company’s reputation for employee relations and work / life balance.
Save The Bay was established in 1970 as an advocacy group dedicated to protection and respect for Narragansett Bay and its watershed. Its assets include a large and devoted membership; broadly respected, scientifically solid positions; and the respect of legislators, industrialists, and the general public. Having made significant progress in combating major point-source pollution, the organization became interested in addressing its mission at an even more fundamental level, through providing extensive direct public experience of the bay. Having experimented with educational programming for several years, the organization proposed to develop a program that would offer exploration of the bay to all school children in Rhode Island at least once during their education. Synthesis Partnership was hired initially to perform a feasibility study to assess the market opportunity for such a venture, its financial feasibility, and the capability of the organization to take on such an expansion and reshaping. We found that although school programs would be able to be supported only through foundation grants and corporate gifts, the opportunities for programs outside of school hours (summer, weekends, and after school), both as education and as recreation, could more than support the required overhead. In addition, we identified a significantly underestimated opportunity for retail sale of items that would support the organization’s mission, as well as its budget, in a variety of ways. We suggested a process and a schedule for coordinating program expansion, organizational growth, a capital campaign and physical development. We also combined these elements with capital cost estimates and projected operating expenses and revenues into an economic model to guide implementation. Following a favorable capital campaign feasibility assessment, and preliminary organization for campaign operations, Save The Bay came back to Synthesis Partnership for further development of site and facility planning, including quantitative and message-based programming, strategies, and budgeting.
The hospital administration asked Synthesis Partnership to examine the full range of facilities issues, and to offer a strategy and prioritized agenda for addressing them in the context of the mission of the hospital, the vision of the leaders of the institution and its individual units, and the dictates of sound business principles. Synthesis Partnership explored Women & Infants’ facilities, strategic objectives, organizational structure, operating procedures, and capital project planning and budgeting processes to identify key issues and opportunities. We suggested development of clear, detailed facilities standards and guidelines both to reduce costs and to reinforce identity and values through higher quality and greater consistency in the design of facilities. We defined a group of institutional core facilities (and suggested ways to concentrate scattered opportunistic rental sites) to create operational efficiencies, increased and ongoing flexibility, and new program options. Our strategic facilities report indicated opportunities for saving time, raising quality and reducing costs through multi-year planning, and a variety of specific steps in project implementation, supplier acquisition and guidance, and annual review procedures. Based on our interpretations of the visions and values of hospital leaders, we recommended developing the patient-centered notion of the healing garden as the underlying metaphor for the hospital (as distinct from the currently implied technological metaphor of a machine for curing). This way of thinking about the hospital captured the imagination of a broad spectrum of constituents, from doctors to administrators to patients. It has come to serve as a catalyst and a common reference point for a wide range of identity- and values-based explorations throughout the institution. In order to realize the maximum benefits from our observations, the hospital has subsequently retained Synthesis Partnership to assist in the early stages of conceptualization, programming, budgeting and architect selection for several inpatient and outpatient facilities projects.
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