Industry Leaders EP23 with Miranda Sheehan

Miranda Sheehan has been at PDT Architects for close to thirty years, and the Brisbane firm itself has been going for eighty-eight — six generations of ownership, in a profession where most practices do not outlast their founders. She is one of three directors who deliberately chose not to appoint a managing director. She tells host Seton Walsh-Rose what buying equity at twenty-six actually cost her, why coming back from her third baby meant eight to ten years of digging the business out of trouble, and why she would not change any of it.

Episode Chapters

• 00:10 Welcome — Miranda and PDT Architects
• 00:56 Everything apart from a brewery
• 03:46 Why most firms decline and this one didn’t
• 04:06 Six generations and the real origin story
• 05:13 Thirty people to a hundred and forty
• 07:02 Three directors, no managing director
• 09:39 Three new Queensland bases
• 11:29 Growing without getting too big
• 12:03 Remote before it was normal
• 14:03 Letting the team design the post-COVID model
• 15:18 It all comes down to trust
• 19:03 Succession runs from student to director
• 21:06 Where the industry loses women
• 22:25 Three boys and the juggle
• 23:55 What would Ruth say?
• 25:24 Resilience, guilt and not being your best self
• 29:34 When PDT had no women but the receptionist
• 32:32 The other side of equity
• 33:45 Coming back from maternity leave into a crisis
• 34:47 Six or seven years to get out of that spot
• 39:43 Why women leave architecture and construction
• 41:05 How shareholding actually works at PDT
• 42:14 Shares are worth what someone will pay
• 45:08 Making buy-in work for the next generation
• 47:38 Queensland’s moment
• 49:38 AI and “they think we draw pretty pictures”
• 50:30 Clients arriving with a ChatGPT render
• 53:16 Sketching again, an AI policy, a secure environment
• 54:25 Monthly updates and the creative workshop
• 57:03 An introvert on the networking circuit
• 58:32 The forced football conversation
• 1:01:08 Five to twelve meetings before a fee request
• 1:03:51 Your network is your real value
• 1:04:42 Good Hang, Utopia, and laughing at the industry

Key Takeaways

• Succession is the whole business, not the exit.
• Buy in for the business, not the payout.
• A shareholders agreement sets the rules, not the price.
• Recovery takes years, and effort doesn’t compress it.
• Flexibility is a trust question, not a policy question.
• Three directors, no managing director, equal pay.

Sound Bites / Quotes:
“It all comes down to trust. And if we’re hiring these people, we should be able to trust them. And if we can’t trust them, they shouldn’t be working for us anyway.” — Miranda Sheehan, ~15:18

References & Resources

• Lange Powell, founding architect of the practice that became PDT (Powell, Dods and Thorpe) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lange_Powell
• Powell, Dods and Thorpe architectural drawings, UQ Library archive — https://manuscripts.library.uq.edu.au/uqfl226
• Tim O’Donnell, PDT’s in-house heritage architect (rendered as “Timo Donald” in the raw transcript) — https://www.pdt.com.au/post/meet-our-in-house-heritage-architect
• Ian Downing, PDT Architects — the director who took Miranda to her first builder meeting — https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-downing-3b55a346/
• Gold Coast University Hospital — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Coast_University_Hospital
• Indooroopilly Shopping Centre, a PDT retail project — https://pdt.com.au/projects-retail/indooroopilly-shopping-centre
• NAWIC — National Association of Women in Construction (Australia) — https://www.nawic.com.au/
• BVN, whose centenary Seton references — https://www.bvn.com.au/article/100-years-of-collective-creativity
• Property Council of Australia — the peak body behind Queensland’s property leadership councils and committees — https://www.propertycouncil.com.au/
• Microsoft Copilot — https://copilot.microsoft.com/
• ChatGPT — https://chatgpt.com/
• Good Hang with Amy Poehler — Miranda’s podcast pick — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Hang_with_Amy_Poehler
• Utopia (ABC, Working Dog) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(Australian_TV_series)
• The IT Crowd — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_IT_Crowd
• Tones and I — the artist behind the lyric Seton quotes — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tones_and_I