Building Tomorrow: Metal Excellence - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Tony Bouquot and of John Underwood from Metal Building Manufacturers Association (MBMA). You can read the interview below, listen to the podcast or watch the recording.

Intro: Welcome to MetalCast, the podcast where we're turning up the heat on all things metal roofing. On this show, we'll explore the world of metal roofing, from its durability to design, expert insights and more. Join us as we bang out the details on the toughest roofs in the game. Get ready to unleash the power of metal roofing.

Megan Ellsworth: Hello, everyone. My name is Megan Ellsworth here at metalcoffeeshop.com, and you are listening to MetalCast, the premier metal podcast for all things metal roofing and building construction. And today, I am so excited because I'm going to be chatting with the gentlemen from MBMA, Tony and John. Hi, guys, how are you?

Tony Bouquot: Hi, Megan.

John Underwood: Good to see you.

Megan Ellsworth: Good to see you too. Super excited to learn all about the student design competition and to learn a little bit more about MBMA while we're at it. So I'll just have, Tony, why don't you introduce yourself? And then, John, we'll go to you.

John Underwood: Okay.

Tony Bouquot: Great. Thanks, Megan. So I am Tony Bouquot. I'm the general manager of the Metal Building Manufacturers Association, also known as MBMA and the host of Travels with Tony web series. MBMA, we're a nonprofit trade association. We've been around since 1956. We represent the $6 billion metal building industry.

Tony Bouquot: I've worked in building products my entire career. Twenty-five years I worked for manufacturing companies, and then six years ago I made the jump over and now I am representing a trade association of manufacturing companies. So that's my background. John, what about you?

John Underwood: Well, I've been in the industry for a lot of years. I would guess over 40 years, which is interesting. I am retired, but continue to work with the association on projects that they deem to allow me to do. Any case, for a number of years I've been involved in the manufacture and distribution of metal buildings. My background is actually as an engineer, but worked into management and now part of the chair of the education committee with the association.

Megan Ellsworth: Amazing. Well, thank you both for chatting with me today. I'm so excited to learn all about the Metal Building Student Design Competition. So Tony, can you give us a little background on the competition? What is it? What are they doing?

Tony Bouquot: Yeah, absolutely. If you go back to 2019, MBMA held our first annual architectural faculty workshop, which has now become an annual event. And we pulled together faculty from architectural schools all over the country, had them come together in Houston that year. And had a great gathering, a great sharing of ideas, a nice cross section of schools from around the country and even a couple international.

Tony Bouquot: But one of the things we came away from that workshop with is that our product is not represented in the architectural curriculum as well as we would like it to be. It's a unique form of steel construction that we just heard from that group, "Hey, we could do a better job of representing our product." So what we did was we actually had a study done by Marci Uihlein, who's an associate professor of architecture at the University of Illinois.

Tony Bouquot: And we said, "Hey, Marci, we've been kicking around the idea of doing a student competition. Tell us what you think and how we should go about it." And Marci did a great job for us of putting together a proposal. She looked at other association student competitions and saw the things she liked and the things that she thought we could improve. Put that proposal together, and then fast-forward another two years and we launched it in 2021.

Tony Bouquot: So 2021 was the first year of the competition. We put it out there not sure what we were going to get. And we ended up with, I believe, about 70 entries that year representing about five or six different schools. So that was the start of it. We've been doing it every year since. The first year we did a school, an elementary school and each year we change the building type for the focus of the competition.

Megan Ellsworth: Wow. Wow, so this is relatively new. That's amazing. And I can't believe you had 70 registrants or participants for your first year. That's huge. That's a big number for the first year.

Tony Bouquot: Oh yeah, we were thrilled. Right, John?

John Underwood: Absolutely.

Tony Bouquot: You could probably add a little more color to that, because you've been involved since the beginning.

John Underwood: Well, we didn't know what to expect. But it is, I guess, interesting to us that the interest on the part of architects and students was great enough to allow them to certainly enter the contest and actually do quite well, I must say.

Megan Ellsworth: Wow. Amazing. So John, maybe what do you think the primary goal of the student competition is? To bring more awareness? To get involved with the community? What's the goal for this competition?

John Underwood: Well, I think your first point is probably dead on. One of the things that we've done over the years is we conduct a perception survey of our industry. And one of the things that we found was that architects really didn't understand the kinds of things that metal buildings can do in today's world. They were stuck in the old metal building with a warehouse or an industrial. And of course, we've expanded over the years and our capability's expanded over the years to encompass many more end-use products. And we wanted to communicate that to architects.

John Underwood: And we've done that through our education committee. And as Tony talked about, we've introduced a student design competition with the idea that they would be able to investigate what metal buildings can do in the marketplace in terms of serving their clients and customers. And let them see through the expansion of what metal buildings can do and what they can be used for, enable them to understand in a deeper way what they might do in practice once they graduate. So that was the motivation for us doing what we're doing.

Tony Bouquot: Yeah, building off what John said there, we pick a different subject each year. So I mentioned it was a school the first year, a fire station in 2022, an environmental research center last year. And then this year's competition, we're going to be doing a university sports complex.

Tony Bouquot: And part of the goal of that, and when you talk about what's our primary goal, is as John mentioned, it's about education. It's about showing the versatility in all the different ways a metal building can be used. It's really about, the metal building is the bones of the building, the metal building system is. And how you finish that out and how you clad it, the sky's the limit.

Tony Bouquot: And one thing I will tell you is, and John can back me up on this is, each year we continue to be more and more impressed with the level of the entries that we get. These kids, they're kids honestly, that are out there. They're students, undergrads and grads. And they send us these packages and they are just amazing. Wouldn't you agree, John?

John Underwood: I agree. Yeah. They are certainly more inventive than some of us that practice in the industry, which actually, that's what we want. And I might mention back on the judging, I come from the metal building background and so I see some of these imaginative metal building uses. Some of them may be not exactly practical in today's world, but I don't care.

John Underwood: I think what we really want them to do is think about using metal in construction, metal buildings in construction, in ways that maybe push the envelope. And we've certainly had that. So any case, Tony's right. We get a great variety of entries and many of them are entries that our members look at and say, "Wow." I think they're really helping us understand what the products can be.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah. Going off of that, how have you seen this competition evolve over the years? And maybe, how have you seen the projects and the quality of things getting submitted evolve?

John Underwood: Well, as we've already indicated, the first year was pretty interesting in terms of the quality of entries. But every year we've seen the quality step up. And the participants in these competitions can look at past competitions and see what other people have done, and they have resources that they can tap into.

John Underwood: Any case, one of the things we have seen is they've progressed very nicely over the years to be better and better in terms of the application of a metal building and better and better in terms of the imagination that they bring to the table.

Tony Bouquot: And in terms of more of the nuts and bolts of how we've evolved, we're relatively new to the contest business as an association. We're just going into our fourth year, so we've learned some things as we've gone. The first year, for example, we didn't have divisions. And so we grouped all the entries together, and we had some graduate student entries and some undergrads. And no surprise, the graduate students, they were more advanced and their entries rose to the top and they swept most of the prizes.

Tony Bouquot: So the second year we said, "Okay, let's have two separate divisions now. Let's judge the graduate students against each other and the undergraduates against each other." We had to bump up the prize money. And by the way, we didn't mention that before, but we give away about $30,000 in prizes, both to the students and to the faculties' members who support them on that.

Tony Bouquot: So we split that into two different categories. We also added in the second year an element that now is a staple and we couldn't see doing it without it, which is a requirement for the submittal to include a video. And the first year we had a couple of students who took the initiative and they created videos as part of their entries. And what we found when we're judging them is that, wow, the videos just popped. They brought the project to life.

Tony Bouquot: And the neat thing about it is, with the design tools that architectural students and practicing architects have available to them today, they can create such realistic environments from these designs that only exist on a computer that you can walk through, you can see movement, you can see people, you can hear stuff. And these videos are just a very important part of that.

Tony Bouquot: And then the third bit of evolution is the resources that we make available to the participants. We've continued to add to our library of architectural resources in the years since we started the competition. The biggest one of them being our folio series. So we are now up to 10 titles in our architectural folio series. And what those are is we take a deep dive into one specific metal building that we think is architecturally interesting, and we write about a 20 to 25-page folio, booklet, that dives into the design of the building, the decisions that were made in the design process.

Tony Bouquot: There's generally an interview with the architect involved, with perhaps the builder and the building owner involved, into selection of materials and why a metal building was chosen for that particular application. It goes into some history around the project. And these are all intended to be learning tools and teaching tools for architectural students and for faculty to use in their classroom to help teach these concepts for these students who we want to enter our contest.

Megan Ellsworth: Wow. Wow, I think that it is so important, the different parameters and divisions you guys made. Because obviously, the graduate students have so much experience, like you said. And prizes. The prize money, that is so fabulous. College students, they need whatever they can get. So I think that's so great and generous that you upped the ante too and upped the prize amount.

Tony Bouquot: Absolutely, yeah.

Megan Ellsworth: That's super sweet. So John, you're a judge. What do you look for in the submissions? Any specifics?

John Underwood: Yeah. First of all, I might mention that the judging panel is a diverse panel.

Megan Ellsworth: Love it.

John Underwood: We've got architects on the panel. We have people like myself out of the industry. We even have an associate member. We have an associate group that's part of our membership. And so, they would be a supplier, as an example, to our industry. So we have a breadth of judges. And each one, of course, comes from their background.

John Underwood: What's interesting to me is, I typically look at the metal building and being an engineer, I might judge whether this is really a building that can be engineered in this way or not. But the architectural faculty looks at it more as one of the things that they might teach. They look at how the student has captured the instructions that we've given, how they've utilized a lot of the things that they've learned in their processes. So they bring the architects' look, or the faculty members' look. And the associate members, similarly, they look at how they use materials in the project.

John Underwood: So the nice thing about it, I think, is that you get a pretty good viewing of all the aspects that you might consider in terms of a metal building. And then of course, we look at the quality of the submittal, how architecturally appealing it is and anything that would distinguish it from the others in the project. And frankly, sometimes we have a very difficult time separating out first, second and third. And it's a fine gradation in terms of how well these projects are put together and how the students submit. So that's the summary of the judging in our contest.

Megan Ellsworth: Very nice. I love that it's a panel. Well-rounded, not just a couple people, but a full panel of different walks of life, different educations. That's so important. So since you're a judge, and Tony, please feel free to jump in on this as well, what advice would you all give to students and faculty members looking to get their students to do this when they're submitting their projects?

John Underwood: Well, one of the things I might mention, and I think a lot of the students do this, but to varying degrees. We have a lot of resources that they could tap into to better understand a metal building. They can look at past submittals, they can look at, our website is just full of resources and information that would enable them to put together a submittal that follows all of the favorable aspects of a metal building. And so we look for those kinds of submittals that highlight some of the things that we have as resources to architects and to builder/contractors, for that matter and owners.

Tony Bouquot: Yeah, I would add to that two things, Megan. One is, what advice I would give to faculty. Number one piece of advice I would give to faculty if you want to introduce this into your curriculum is come to our workshop. So I mentioned we do an annual workshop. It's an in-person event. It is a great way to meet up with your peers of architectural faculty from schools around the country and to learn from folks who have already participated in the competition. And in particular, ones who have had success with it. Because I can tell you that, I think, John, I'm not speaking out of turn, that every one of the winners, the faculty involved has at one time or another attended one of our workshops.

Tony Bouquot: And the other beauty thing, we were talking dollars and cents earlier is, if you're a faculty member and you want to come to our workshop, we'll pay for you to come. It's a free workshop and we'll even cover your travel. We are that serious about getting the message out there about metal buildings to the architectural education arena. So that's what I would say to faculty.

Tony Bouquot: To students my advice would be, learn the product first. We have a lot of resources that teach you about metal buildings. And every year, inevitably, we have somebody who didn't bother to understand what a metal building system is. And so, you got to start by knowing the product. As I mentioned before, metal building systems are the bones for the structure. How you finish it out is completely up to you. So we want people to expand and to stretch their creativity, but you got to build it on a metal building set of bones. A metal building system is the most cost-effective way to enclose any amount of space in the low rise, non-residential construction world.

Tony Bouquot: So if you understand that, you know that I can start with the most cost-effective way to frame this thing out and then I can put my money wherever I want to within the project to things that are more important to me than what the framing is. An example of that is, we have a building that we just featured in our Travels with Tony video series called the Hardesty Center for Dance Education. It's out in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It's the home of the Tulsa Ballet. And it is a super cool building and I would encourage folks to look up the video on our YouTube channel.

Tony Bouquot: But the Tulsa Ballet, the Hardesty Center, it's a metal building through and through. But the architect, a guy by the name of Bob Schaefer, he and his team embraced the capabilities of metal buildings when they designed this. They knew that they were trying to do a cost-effective structure because it's a ballet, it's an art group. And they're working on a budget and it's all based on donations.

Tony Bouquot: And so they knew a metal building was going to be the best way to enclose the most amount of space and spend the money elsewhere where it was important, things like studios and performance spaces and interior spaces that were much more significant to the ballet than the framing of the building.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely, that's huge. What a great piece of advice. What's your website? Where can people find all these resources? And we'll put it all in the show notes so people can just click.

Tony Bouquot: So there's two different websites. I'm going to start with the one that's most pertinent to this competition, which is our education website and that's mbmaeducation.org. So if you go to mbmaeducation.org, the homepage there at that website is the homepage for the competition. It goes right into the 2024 competition and all the parameters of this university sports complex. It has links for how you enter. It has the whole schedule for when you sign up, when the submissions are due, which by the way is January the 10th, I believe.

Tony Bouquot: That was another thing we evolved is our first year of the competition we had the entry date due in mid-December. The competition is designed to align with the fall semester for the architectural students. And we figured, "Okay, the semester ends, your entries are due." And what we found out that first year is, even though you got to the end of the semester, some of the students needed a little bit extra time over the holidays to finish up their projects. And so, giving them until that first, second week of January we found was important.

Tony Bouquot: So mbmaeducation.org is where you can find everything about the contest, all the resources. Our main website for MBMA is just mbma.com. And that is our website, that's our face to the world. And there is lots and lots of good stuff out there, so I would encourage people to go check that out as well.

Megan Ellsworth: Amazing. Absolutely. Okay, so last day for submission, January 6, 2025. So start your education process now if you're a student out there listening to this. If you're a faculty member, start thinking about, do you want to attend the workshop? They will pay for it. And what students should you show this to? Which ones do you think are going to really give it their all? And then, when do you announce the winners?

Tony Bouquot: So the winners, we do a webinar where we invite all the schools who had students who entered. All the students and the faculty, invite them to chime into the webinar. We do it in the evening. This year, we have it tentatively scheduled for February 25th. It's usually end of February. That's the date that we have earmarked right now. That'd be 2025, obviously.

Tony Bouquot: And we try to do it and make a show of it, where we have some excitement around it and build up a little bit of suspense as we build up to announcing the overall winner in each of the undergraduate and graduate categories. And John and the other judges are in on that awards ceremony as well, and they usually have a few words to say. Right, John?

John Underwood: Exactly. Yeah. We typically, the critiques oftentimes come from the faculty. But all of the judges may chime in with some thoughts and critiques as we've made the judgment on the entries.
Megan Ellsworth: Amazing. John, what are you looking forward to the most for this next year's batch of submissions?

John Underwood: Well, we look for the submissions maybe to even exceed last year, though that may be hard to do. We look for a number of schools to enter. I think, Tony, the announcement's coming out, I think in July, isn't it, for rolling out this next year's competition?

Tony Bouquot: We've already put some teasers out there to our architectural faculty list, letting them know it's coming. But yeah, we just firmed up all the design parameters for the project for this year. So that's now on that MBMA education website. And yes, we will have a email blast going out to all the professors here just in the next couple weeks.

John Underwood: Yeah, we look just for participation. The more the better in terms of our outreach to architectural students.

Megan Ellsworth: Absolutely. And faculty members, go to the workshops, learn more. Learn as much as you can, bring it back to your students and get involved. So Tony, John, thank you so much for chatting with me today. I really look forward to this year's competition and seeing the submissions and getting to see the winning projects. And I wish you the best of luck judging them and having the tough decision of deciding who wins.

Tony Bouquot: Absolutely. And Megan, here's what I would suggest to you guys over at Metal Coffee Shop is, when we get to February of next year and we announce the winners, let's arrange to have the faculty person and the student winners on your show. How about that?

Megan Ellsworth: Yes, we would love that. Okay, we'll see you in about a year. A little under a year. We'd love to do that. We will be right there with you celebrating the winners and faculty members. This is so exciting. And congrats on three years. This will be your fourth year doing the competition. Congrats on that. That's a big feat.

Tony Bouquot: You bet. Thank you.

Outro: Thank you so much. For everyone out there listening, you can learn more about MBMA on metalcoffeeshop.com through the directory. Go check out their websites. It'll all be linked in the show notes below. And if you're a student or faculty member, apply now and get your submissions in. You have until January next year. And thank you so much for listening. This has been MetalCast from metalcoffeeshop.com. Ready to raise the metal roof? Subscribe to MetalCast now and stay tuned for all things metal roofing. Go to metalcoffeeshop.com to learn more. Rock on, and we'll catch you on the next episode.