SEPTEMBER 2021 preference when it came to projects,” he explains. “I’ve always done all kinds – commercial, industrial, residential, you name it.” These days, SPAN Architecture continues to take on a variety of work, in a variety of sizes. They will happily take on 1,000-square-foot restaurants, cafes, and retail establishments – and they will just as happily do projects up to 200,000 square feet. The value of their projects can range from $50,000 to over $10 million. SPAN’s projects can also vary greatly in location. The majority of the firm’s work takes place near their home base in Edmonton, but they have done jobs all over Alberta, and they have also worked in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia. According to Songlin, clients of all kinds choose SPAN for their aforementioned personal service. In particular, they like that they get to deal with him personally from beginning to end. “I hear from clients who’ve worked with bigger firms, and they tell me that they’ll talk to the person in charge at the beginning, but after they sign a contract they are passed off to a junior architect who then handles their project.” “That doesn’t happen here,” Songlin says. “I’m involved with every client and every project, and I stay with the project from beginning to end.” Songlin has also heard a lot of horror stories from clients about other architects who fail to complete their work on time. SPAN Architecture, meanwhile, takes a lot of pride in their ability to offer realistic timelines, and once they set a deadline, they take pride in meeting it. That pride seriously sets the company apart. “That’s an important reason clients choose us,” Songlin says. “When we set a deadline, we always meet it. We’ve always taken that very seriously.”
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