Monday, November 4, 2024

Angela O’Byrne wanted to diversify her architecture firm after Katrina. Now, she’s working worldwide

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Architect Angela O’Byrne was a single mom with three children in 2000, working at Perez Architects, when its owners, August Perez III, Stuart Farnet and Walter Ernst, decided they were ready to retire and asked her if she wanted to buy the firm.

She had a master’s degree from Columbia, big-city experience at AECOM and Skidmore and Owings, and several years under her belt at Perez. Still, buying the venerable firm — which designed much of New Orleans’ medical district in the 1960s and 1970s for the VA, Tulane University and LSU — was a daunting proposition.

Plus, she didn’t have the money.

But the late “Augie” Perez, whose father had founded the firm, felt she was the right person at the right time. So, the partners lent her the money to buy them out, structuring a deal that she repaid over several years. Nearly 25 years later, O’Byrne has grown the New Orleans firm into a global powerhouse, expanding its reach to almost every continent on the planet. Though Perez Architects is still relatively small, with about 20 professionals, it does a diverse range of impactful projects for governments and nongovernmental organizations.

O’Byrne is currently managing one of those projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We caught up with her on Zoom to discuss why the firm diversified and what some of the challenges are working overseas and back home.

Interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What exactly is Perez doing in the DRC?

We are working as a third-party reviewer on the design and construction of potable water distribution systems here. The DRC is a huge country, two-thirds the land mass of the U.S., with roughly 100 million people, and more than half those people do not have easy access to potable water. They may have to walk very far to get bottled water or chlorinated water out of a lake, which is just not sanitary. We’re overseeing construction of reservoirs, pumping systems and piping systems that might be very, very, many kilometers long that will bring potable water to houses or, at least, public buildings so people can easily access it. We’re mostly working in villages in the eastern part of the country, though we also have work in the capital, Kinshasa.

Do y’all do a lot of this kind of work?

We have done similar projects in countries all over the world. Our work is almost always either related to potable water — sanitation, treatment or distribution — or schools. We have worked in dozens of countries on every continent except Australia.

What made a longtime New Orleans firm want to go in this direction?

Katrina was a wakeup call that changed my thinking. In the early months after the flood, a lot of the work in New Orleans was going to large multinationals. I had to take out an SBA loan to keep the firm alive. About a year later, work started pouring in and we were going full bore, and I realized “this is not going to last forever.” So, I thought, I can do the same thing the large multinationals are doing here — taking  our work away — and go into their backyard and take their work away. The idea was to make us more sustainable, diversified, so we are not reliant on the local market. It has worked.

How is the local market at the moment?

It’s really slow right now. We’d like to work more in New Orleans, but only about a third of our work is in Louisiana. It’s not only hard for us but for our competitors.

Why is it so hard?

Mostly interest rates, insurance costs and COVID-related cost of labor and materials. It’s literally stopping projects from happening. If you’re a private project, you need public subsidies, like tax credits, to make it happen and even then it’s still not enough. So, it’s difficult for everyone. But there is plenty of global work and we have developed an expertise so it has become easier to compete. If we didn’t have this overseas work, we would be out of business.

What are the biggest challenges of working overseas in remote locales?

Procurement of materials. It was especially difficult when we were in Afghanistan. Some things could be flown in, like fire-rated doors. But stuff, like cement, would come in from Pakistan and get stuck on the border, which would cause delays. The logistics are tough, too. You have to register to do business in a foreign country, so you have to hire international lawyers to advise you on the HR laws of each country and the taxes and so on. So, just navigating enormously different laws and registering to do business is an additional layer of complexity. And, while it sounds like a small thing, the time differences are hugely challenging. On one project, the only time we could all meet was at 8:30 a.m. in India, which was 8 p.m. in Montana, where one of our contractors was, and 10 p.m. in Washington, D.C., where the client was.

What is the most rewarding thing about this kind of work?

I have met amazing people and learned about other cultures. You are improving the lives of people at the grassroots level. It is enormously gratifying to feel like you are making a difference.

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