Category: Insights

Takeaways from a “Monumental” Marketing Conference

I just got back from the SMPS Northeast Regional Conference in Washington, D.C., and I’m still energized. Not just by the sessions, but by a broader shift I felt in how our industry is thinking about marketing’s role in business growth. In almost every conversation, I felt proud to say, “at SMRT, we’re actually doing…

What PDC Reminded Me About Designing for People 

Every year, the Planning, Design & Construction (PDC) Summit offers something unexpected. This year, it started for me with a concept: vuja dé. Borrowed from ThinkLab, the term, coined by George Carlin and later developed by organizational theorist Adam Grant, describes the opposite of déjà vu: seeing something familiar as if for the first time. (A fun coincidence for the francophiles: it also happens to…

Reduce, Reuse, & Create Impact: Extending Resources Where They Matter Most 

You never know how a single act can multiply impact beyond your imagination…  Two years ago, SMRT donated six laptops to support a school in Liberia. This year, we donated seven more. Thirteen laptops total, delivered to schools where students had never used a computer before.  Thirteen laptops. On paper, it’s a modest contribution. But watching the impact, students experiencing…

Beyond the Boiler Room: Two Big Takeaways from SCUP North Atlantic 

There’s a shift happening in how higher education talks about sustainability. The “why” is largely settled. The sessions that drew the most energy at SCUP North Atlantic in Hartford this spring were the ones deep in the “how”: how you finance it, how you plan for it across decades, how you design for it in ways that also serve students and…

The Wellbeing Dividend: Why Human-Centered Work is the Ultimate Competitive Advantage

I’ve been with SMRT for nearly two decades. In those 19 years, I’ve had a front-row seat to a fundamental shift in how we define the workplace. In the past, offices were a backdrop, a static arrangement of furniture and floor plans, today, work environments are a high-performance tool for productivity, profitability, and people. Here…

Integrating Wellness: How Hudson Headwaters is Setting a New Standard for Community Care 

In the evolving landscape of healthcare, the safety net is moving beyond clinic walls and into the heart of the neighborhood. At the new Glens Falls, NY Health Campus, Hudson Headwaters Health Network (HHHN) has realized a dual mission: enhancing community access to essential medical services while launching a new approach to senior care.  This unified wellness campus…

Honoring a Legacy: Designing the Future of the Boys & Girls Club 

I grew up in Maine and New Hampshire with dreams of becoming an architect. That path led me across the country and even overseas, designing people-centered spaces in all kinds of communities. But now, I’ve come full circle, back to Maine, the place that first sparked my passion for design. Some projects resonate more deeply…

Precision & Acceleration: 7 Key Design and Construction Trends Shaping Radiopharma Facilities in 2026 

The Urgency of Targeted Medicine  The radiopharmaceutical sector is experiencing a period of explosive growth, driven by the shift towards highly targeted theranostics, agents that both diagnose and treat diseases like cancer with unprecedented precision. For architects and builders in 2026, this dynamic landscape presents a unique mandate: design facilities that can keep pace with science that requires administration…

What It Takes to Build for Radiopharma: Reflections from the Summit

Indianapolis in mid-November felt like an appropriate setting for conversations about radiopharma—clear, focused, and moving at a deliberate pace. At The Radiopharma Facility Design, Engineering, and Construction Summit, the discussions weren’t about hype or future promises. They were about what it actually takes to plan, design, and deliver facilities where precision, safety, and speed all…