Our Process

KDA Collaborative Design Process

Our Collaborative Design Process is an interactive team approach that guides stakeholders through a multitude of choices and promotes consensus towards a shared, creative vision.

Throughout the process we continually reassess the project priorities and ensure that all options are fully explored during the development of the design.

Our four-step approach is illustrated below:

Visioning

We begin with the recognition of your mission and long-term strategic goals. Understanding is an active task of listening and learning about your culture, campus, residents, and operations. KDA provides realistic solutions based on our understanding of your goals, priorities and constraints.

Translation

We believe the best solutions come from highly interactive work sessions where key stakeholders review and evaluate ideas. Between sessions, KDA will explore alternatives and develop ideas for consideration. Ideas are presented to the group so that alternatives can be discussed and evaluated.

Evaluation

The evaluation/revision role is critical to the planning process. As ideas are developed, they are tested against a variety of important criteria such as cost, operational impacts, and phasing. KDA will facilitate the evaluation of solutions ensuring that ideas are always discussed in the context of these parameters.

Consensus

Although there will be many ideas explored, one must be chosen to provide the road map for going forward. We believe our process provides a proven methodology to incorporate all the best ideas that emerge from the process into a unified, comprehensive solution.

There are several key reasons for the success of our collaborative process:

We listen well. We are open minded and believe in searching through alternative ideas until we are satisfied that we have “thought of everything” in our pursuit of the best solution. In this way, priorities emerge after careful searching and are not preconceived.

We check our ego at the door. Although we take our work seriously, we do not take ourselves too seriously. We enjoy what we do and genuinely enjoy the give and take that defines good design. We try to make the process accessible and enjoyable.

We are good at what we do. Our work is built on years of knowledge and research in the senior living industry. We are students of the industry and are always on top of current developments in senior design.

Our process is inclusive and invites a variety of input from various stakeholders. We are very good at gaining consensus and making sure that every voice has been heard.

We care about relationships, not just projects. We see projects as opportunities to develop long term relationships with clients – to become trusted advisors and friends.