Configura announces winners of 3rd annual Awards Program

Configura announces the winners of its Awards Program held Sept. 29-30 in conjunction with the 3^rd annual CET Designer® User Conference in Las Vegas.

 

This year, there were three categories – Best Success Story, Best Rendering and Best Video.

 

The Best Success Story grand-prize winner, Jennifer Newton, a designer with Steelcase dealer NBS in Troy, Michigan, submitted an entry explaining how she used CET Designer and the Steelcase SmartTools Extension to complete a 450-workstation project.

 

“I set a goal for myself to really push the software to the limits. We won the job – and I don’t think I would have been able to complete the work for the client in the timeframe given if it hadn’t been for SmartTools,” Newton said.

 

As the Awards Program’s grand-prize winner, Newton received a laptop computer with a high-end graphics card and a new CET Designer license plus an external monitor.

 

Senior Designer Paul Riches with Steelcase dealer Heritage Office Furnishings in Vancouver won second place in the Best Success Story category for his 104-station, 18-office project.

 

“I submitted our entry to show dealerships that may not have moved past a Phase 1 or Phase 2 integration of CET Designer how easy it is to incorporate CET into an internal Best Practices process. The project I submitted was the first real case study we did of CET as a total design/specification/rendering/order tool. It performed to all of my standards and, in most cases, surpassed my expectations,” Riches said.

 

Kaylie Tucker won third place in the Best Success Story category for showcasing work she has done for Seattle-based Starbucks. Since January, she’s been working closely with Starbucks’ corporate and regional offices to design and specify seven different Starbucks offices throughout the U.S.

 

“I use CET Designer in so many ways with the client; they are completely on board with it and love its capabilities. I use it as a product training tool, to show an entire space in 3D and to do live walk-thru’s. I even use CET to work directly with the client in creating designs,” said Tucker, a senior designer for Bank & Office in Seattle.

 

She said she is using CET Designer to develop a design standard for Starbucks’ corporate and regional offices and plans to use CET to develop a system for converting legacy drawings into CET Designer.

 

Kristen McWethy of BKM, a Steelcase dealer with offices throughout the eastern U.S., won first place in the MovieStudio video category.

 

“The CET movie option allows you to show the client what the experience of walking through the space would be like – this gives clients a strong comfort level in our dealership’s abilities,” McWethy said.

 

Second-place video winner Tara Hoffman entered a video that shows a variety of ways CET Designer is used at her Haworth dealership, Office Environments, Inc., based in Pennsylvania.

 

“CET incorporates video fly-thru’s, renderings of the full building and individual typical workstations. The software allows us to creatively respond to any client's request,” she said.

 

Seana Turner, LEED AP, a studio designer for One Workplace in Oakland, California, said her Steelcase dealership had a very specific request from a client: “He wanted to be able to feel like he was in the room and look around. We provided him with multiple rendered photos and a movie (all created in CET). It was very easy to create a space that the client would be able to ‘walk around in’ and see how his office would look from different perspectives. I would not have been able to do this as easily and in the timeframe given if I had used CAD-based software.”

 

Turner’s video created in CET Designer’s MovieStudio took third place in the Video category.

 

View the winning videos at www.youtube.com/ConfiguraAB and the winning renderings at www.facebook.com/cetdesigner.

 

1^st place – Jennifer Newton, NBS

2^nd place – Paul Riches, Heritage Office Furnishings

3^rd place – Kaylie Tucker, Bank & Office

 

1^st place – Erin Valladares, Workplace Furnishings

2^nd place – Julia Honshell, Young Office

3^rd place – Shannon McKenzie, Young Office

 

1^st place – Kristen McWethy, BKM

2^nd place – Tara Hoffman, Office Environments, Inc.

3^rd place – Seana Turner, One Workplace

 

Best of NeoCon Gold Award-Winning CET Designer® is used to design and specify office furnishings and space. The software produces photo-realistic renderings, accurate bills of materials and complete installation instructions.