Know your worth – ADC

I have worked in practice since 2000 and witnessed the way we win, produce and deliver work change dramatically over the last 23 years. With my children now at or on their way to higher education, I find myself reflecting more than ever on my own career choices, and – with my new RIBA Council member hat on – how we fare as a profession in 2024.

A vicious circle

So what is the broad problem? The current economic climate is putting immense pressure on the construction industry and architects are not being spared. I want to highlight the vicious circle stemming from low fees that impacts on access and retention in the profession. My diagram of the problem might look like this:

There are two parts to this question. The first one is about winning work and the hoops we let ourselves go through to compete. It includes the amount of ‘free work’ we end up giving away in the process, which is often not proportionate to the size of the opportunity. You have to be ‘in it to win it’ but how much ‘in it’ is a practice willing to commit in terms of the overall profitability of the project?

The second part is about how we set our fees. Fees have not increased in proportion to inflation or the cost of living. And therein lies the main issue. Delivering a similar planning application today to one when I may have delivered in 2000 is far more complex, time consuming and onerous. We cannot just be doing our jobs because we’re passionate about architecture and place. This is no hobby!

Cause and effect

So, what effect is this having on practices, staff, students, and the profession as a whole? The short-term effect on practice is to keep outgoings tightly under control. This includes salaries, as it tends to be the biggest monthly outgoing, at about 60 per cent of expenditure according to the RIBA benchmarking survey. But other items are rising well above inflation, such as professional indemnity insurance.

I’m proud that we look after and support our staff at Assael, as well as try to keep a close eye on workload and resourcing for efficiency. We often pay overtime and have enhanced parental benefits, as well as private medical cover for all. But for how much longer? Practices are also being squeezed in the recruitment drive to hire architects by developers, contractors, agents and others, who on average pay 30 per cent more for ‘design managers’.

Diversity is another factor. Muyiwa Oki’s manifesto for the RIBA presidency was based on workers’ rights, fair pay, and increased diversity, while denouncing a toxic working culture. Going back to my earlier question ‘is it worth it?’, and this time from the point of view of teenagers considering architecture as a career, their decisions are likely to be different based on debt-confidence and family security. Does this encourage diversity? Probably not.

In these competitive times we need to act ‘together’ as a group of practices. We must not undersell and undercut our services if we are to maintain the quality of buildings that our society needs. “

Taking a stand

The root causes of the ills rightly condemned by Muyiwa are low fees and not marketing our ‘value’. Making ourselves more relevant to society and speaking the language of our clients – especially when the built environment is facing challenges of safety and environmental impact – are points we must address collectively and immediately. Flora Samuel’s book, Why architects matter, is a must-read on this topic.

It is part of our responsibility as architects to maintain stable businesses and look after our staff, but when work is scarcer and competition fiercer, it becomes harder to keep everything going. In these competitive times we need to act ‘together’ as a group of practices. We must not undersell and undercut our services if we are to maintain the quality of buildings that our society needs. Underselling will only drag us down further and establish the norm with lower fees than ever, for now and in the future.

I personally believe that there is a need to lobby government in order to rethink the procurement of architects, denounce competition organisers that set unreasonable briefs, and encourage architects to undertake POE to have the measurable results of their value.

Access and retention

The RIBA is focusing on two areas: accessing the profession and retention. In terms of access, the main barrier to casting a ‘wider net’ is what we are all too aware of: the length and cost of studying, which makes architecture a profession that only debt-confident students will consider.

There are still only three paths to qualification: full-time options; part-time options, including the RIBA Studio Certificate delivered in partnership with Oxford Brookes University (longer but more affordable); and the apprenticeship route – an ‘earn while you learn’ option. Yet, numbers on alternative courses are tiny and the obligations and long-term commitments required from practices are enormous.

In terms of retention, women leave the profession disproportionately at the early to middle career stage and continue to be under-represented at director level. The education statistics also reveal that black students leave the professional education system disproportionately at the transition between Part 1 and Part 2.

We should not be seen as offering an equal ‘blanket architectural service’, which would be a result of going back to fee scales.”

Return of the fee scale

In light of the current economic scenario, should the RIBA reintroduce a recommended fee scale for architects, and would this be enough? The RIBA fee scales went from ‘mandatory’ to ‘recommended’ in 1982, to ‘indicative’ in 1992, following actions by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission and the Office for Fair Trade. The RIBA ceased to publish annual comprehensive fee survey data in 2009. The intention from government was that this abolition would lead to a more innovative and competitive marketplace.

But we work very differently now, and have far more powerful tools that enable us to create, replicate, modify and visualise. We are also much more innovative when it comes to setting fees relating to the complexity of projects and value added. We should not be seen as offering an equal ‘blanket architectural service’, which would be a result of going back to fee scales.

I think that the Building Safety Act is the one chance we have had in a long time to finally protect our function and start making a difference. It is a role that can be embraced, placing greater responsibility and emphasis on what we do. Using the Building Safety Act to demonstrate our competency in all building projects will need to be monetised in our services going forward. It should not be a service that is expected to just be an ‘add-on’, as these are vital additional duties and complex ones. As a profession, we need to embrace this new role to redefine the function of lead designer, as well as for the benefit it is intended to provide.