Lecture: Tom Donnelly

THis is a liveblog for today's lecture by RU alum Tom Donnelly. Tom is President and Chief Operating Officer of ValleyCrest Landscape Development and spoke a little about his career path and how he got from here to there. He describes his path as going from landscape architecture to landscape contracting. ValleyCrest is a 10,000 employee firm that specializes in Commercial Landscaping and tries to remain in control of its destiny by hiring specialists instead of subcontracting services.

He works with landscape architects to help make their ideas real. Projects included work at the Georgia International Horse Park, Disney's Animal Kingdom, Celebration, the Getty Center (pictured above), the new Census Bureau building, and Millennium Park.

A few years ago they acquired 5 landscape architecture studios around the country. A mantra for them is to "narrow down the variability" which makes it easier to address uncertainty.
And VC uses an Iterative Design Process for working from the studio to the project. VC makes new plans for the company all the time, so he challenged our students to make a plan for themselves and where they are going.