Sherm Moreland

As CEO, Sherm Moreland is DesignGroup’s strongest advocate for Lean project management. Because, as he likes to say, he was lean before it was a thing.

He can’t remember a time when he didn't want to be an architect, and as the first member of his family to graduate high school, he had to scrap like crazy to get into college. He worked as a draftsman for a local factory starting his senior year in high school, and did it every weekend and holiday he could to help pay for college. His educational journey took him through three community colleges and two major universities in pursuit of his undergraduate (Kent State) and graduate (University of Colorado Buffalo) degrees. 

Perhaps more than anyone in our firm, Sherm understands the life-changing possibilities higher education and cultural institutions present to young people. And he embraces every opportunity DesignGroup has to plan and build facilities that make those aspirations possible, whether it’s a modest community college dorm or a billion-dollar learning hospital. Sherm is quick to credit many mentors throughout his career, from his first boss at the factory (“He challenged me, supported me, and gave me responsibilities that no 20-year-old ever gets that early in their career”) to DesignGroup’s previous CEO, Bob Vennemeyer, who defined the idea of “steady hand on the wheel” and set a model for kindness and dedication that every DesignGroup leader follows today. 

Sherm is a board-certified healthcare architect, a lean-certified project manager, speaks and publishes nationally, and is a frequent contributor to research of the Advisory Board Company. With more than 26 years of focused experience in healthcare, DesignGroup clients benefit from his unique depth of industry-specific knowledge and understanding of the changing trends that lead to best practice thinking and innovation.