

Configura’s CET Designer User of the Month is Emily Cooper of Denver-based OfficeScapes. Emily’s also a presenter at the 10th annual CET Designer User and Developer Conference Nov. 8-9 in Las Vegas.
Growing up in a military family, Emily attended many different schools throughout the country.
“It amazed me how much the design of each space impacted my learning and overall wellbeing. I could see the difference between the classrooms and ever since have had a strong belief that space matters,” said Emily.
She recalled one family move in which she had the same math class but in two different classrooms.
“One class was in a beautiful new school and the other in an ‘extra space’ trailer parked alongside the school. I could see the difference in the two classes’ understanding and willingness to learn! The class in the pull-up trailer was distracted, cranky and took longer to learn!” she said.
The experience and revelation shaped her future career choice. Ultimately, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in interior design from Colorado State University. After graduation, she worked for a short time at an Ethan Allen store before joining a Herman Miller dealership. There, she was a combination salesperson, designer and account coordinator.
“I learned a lot of the ins and outs of the business very quickly!” she said.
From there, she moved to OfficeScapes, a Steelcase dealer. As a senior project designer at OfficeScapes, Emily uses CET Designer almost every day to specify and design spaces for clients. Her biggest challenge when switching to CET Designer was learning everything that the program can do.
“CET Designer is such a powerful tool, and I’m constantly discovering new aspects of the program,” she said.
Being able to sit with a client and have an active design session has been the biggest benefit of using CET Designer.
“It used to take many emails back and forth with a client to get to exactly the design they were looking for. Now, they can immediately see the impact of the choices they’re making – both aesthetically and financially!” she said.
One of her favorite CET Designer features is the calculation tool.
“It makes it easy to create budgets for my clients. Because everything is captured in the Calculation View, I can easily apply some blanket discounting and give clients an idea of what they are likely to spend. This adds to clients’ peace of mind and helps reduce the number of revisions that I have to complete,” Emily said.
Emily used CET Designer to win a recent project: “The client really loved the detail that the architect had put into their space. The fact that we were able to recreate that in CET Designer, and put our furniture in it, really sold our product,” she said.
Her favorite CET Designer tip is to use “schemes.” She has a basic scheme set up in almost every tab that is essentially a complete spec – so when beginning a new project, Emily already has a semi-accurate budget and can render the space in “blank canvas” finishes, saving a lot of time and effort.
When Emily isn’t designing fabulous spaces, she’s with her husband (her high school sweetheart) donning full head-to-toe costumes and attending the local Renaissance Festival and Comic-Con events!