Lumen Strategy
Engagements & updates
Where the work has been.
Presentations, consulting engagements, and news from the firm — newest first.
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Why Good Boards Make Bad Decisions — and what to do about it
A one-hour session at the PSATS Board Chairs Retreat at Toftrees, delivered inside a two-day program on leadership, meeting management, and staff management.
The premise: a retreat like this hands chairs real tools, and tools without reinforcement have a short half-life. In a township, the chair is the person who decides whether any of it survives the drive home — not because the chair is the boss, but because the chair sets what the dais treats as normal.
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Pennsylvania UCC: the 2018 to 2021 I-Code transition
A session for the architects and designers at Alloy5 on what changed in the Commonwealth's adoption of the 2021 International Codes — built specifically for the room, with an emphasis on the provisions most likely to surface in plan review.
It also took up the working relationship itself — how designers can open a real conversation with a plan reviewer or inspector when a project doesn't fit neatly inside the code.
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Board dynamics, staff, and the relationships in between
A Q&A panel for township officials covering board function, working with staff, communication with residents, and the township relationship with fire and EMS providers.
Those questions tend to get answered procedurally. The more useful conversation is usually about the relationships underneath.
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Building Influence and Trust with Municipal Leadership
A panel at the Pennsylvania Building Officials Conference annual meeting, on the problem every code official runs into eventually: technical authority doesn't automatically translate into influence with the people who set budgets and priorities.
Getting a manager or a board to act on what you know is a different skill than knowing it, and nothing in the path to certification prepares you for that conversation.
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Ferguson Township strategic plan
Strategic planning for Ferguson Township, Centre County, in partnership with Polity. Led stakeholder sessions and public presentations, compiled and analyzed the underlying data, and developed options the township weighed.
Co-authored and produced the final plan.