AWARDS, AWARD, & MORE AWARDS

ONE OF MY MAIN OBJECTIVES THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRETY OF MY INTERNSHIP HAS BEEN AWARD WRITING

At first, I wasn’t sure what that meant, as there are no courses for “award writing” at my university. However, after a quick and informative conversation with Kristene, I found that my task was fairly straightforward.

Both the Aurora Awards and the EFA: Remodel / Renovation Competition were very detailed, requiring meticulous research and a multitude of meetings between myself and the design team. FDG has always placed well in these competitions, therefore I felt the pressure to succeed.

The process began with overlooking the rules and regulations for both awards and creating a document listing each requirement for various categories we were entering. While this step seems simple, I found myself constantly referring to this form for the extent of the competition.

My next step was meeting with our two Directors of Design, Claudine and Stacy, who helped decide which properties they believed would do well in each competition.

THUS MY WORK BEGAN.

Compiling information was a tedious task, leading me to hold interviews with designers, the developer, contractor, architects, and more partners that worked on these properties. Some properties were more scrupulous than others, requiring longer project summaries and detailed captions for images.

As our deadline approached, we withdrew a few entries to focus on perfecting the best ones, Kristene reviewing the entries and providing feedback to steer me in the right direction. In the end, we finalized seven projects for the Aurora Awards and three projects for EFA.

Altogether, the experience was very humbling. It was interesting to see what goes into submitting a property for an award and to find out exactly what “award writing” entails.

After a short month of waiting, I was excited to learn that five of our projects have been selected as finalists for the Aurora Awards. Furthermore, that four of those five won first place, including Residential Community of the Year.

I was encouraged by the fact that I had done my best and helped to bring home four prizes for this amazing company. I was then given the incredible opportunity to head to Florida with two of my team members to attend the Aurora Awards ceremony and receive the awards myself.

If you’re interested in my time at the ceremony, be sure to check for all the details!