Carnegie Mellon University desired to have 23 existing buildings ranging in age from 1902 to 2004 evaluated for accessibility for individuals with disabilities. Carnegie Mellon’s has a committee with a yearly budget to address compliance to the Americans with Disabilities Act and other accessibility issues that arise. Tusick & Associates Architects was hired to survey 23 buildings and gather data. This data would be modified and included in CMU’s program. Tusick & Associates Architects realized that CMU would end up with lots of data and no way t easily evaluate and establish a plan of action. To assist the committee we developed an Excel spread sheet to items the non-complying items; establish a probable cost to comply and a plan of action.
To summarize and for quick understanding, we generated an executive summary for each building and two maps. The maps purpose was to visually show the committee How each building presently comply and a path of travel through the build. Also, we created a map with proposed items to have the building fully comply. Carnegie Mellon‘s Linda Mc Fadden inform us that the maps and executive summaries aid her department more that anyone anticipated.

Carnegie Mellon University project is related to your proposed project by demonstrating Tusick & Associates Architects’ ability to listen, evaluate and understand the concerns of the client and from the gather date create a viable solution that is more than the client perceived. Also, it shows that we understand accessibility from many different points of views and many different codes and law. Our goal is to achieve access for everyone- the elderly, the young, the tall, the short, and the disabled.
The CMU committee desired to have more that just complied data. The time to weed through just the data per building would have been weeks and months. We organized the information into a usable format , presented to the committee, reviewed it as per comments and had consensus into out plan by clarifying the needs and wants of a client.