Just a few More Hours…

At our firm, the office mantra is “Record all hours you work on the project, including overtime hours even if you aren’t paid for them,”  The reason for this is simple, when writing proposals for new projects, we mine the hourly data from previous projects continually, in an attempt to better refine our contracts.  Sure, you threw that schematic design package together in a week, but it didn’t take you just 40 hours, and so it would be absurd to assume that the next similar project would take only 40 hours.  No, it took you an additional 20 hours of overtime that week to hammer it out, so write it down.

But where does that fee go?

Well, as with a lot of professions, you can’t always do a straight value analysis of each project as either being success or failure based simply upon it’s profitability.  Things happen, clients make decisions, contractors bid different things, the design process is a fluid dynamic.  A mentor of mine once said “You can’t make money on every project, you just need to make money on most of them,” and there is a lot of truth in that. However, we attempt, very diligently, to craft our fee proposals to both work within the hours required, and the cost the client is willing to pay and we work just as diligently to finish that project within the time and fee allowed.  Recently, though, a rather grave question has come more and more to the forefront of my thinking:

In this post-recession reality, can the business of architecture legitimately sustain itself without unpaid overtime?

I’ve gone back and reviewed the financials on several of my projects, and while I obviously won’t share the details here, I’ve really started to question this.  Companies have always relied on the inexpensive billable hours of young staff, but increasingly, with stagnate or declining fees, it appears that financial relief is coming more and more through a cross section of “free” labor within the firm.  Essentially, we’re headed toward working more hours to get paid the same (or less) in order to support competitive salaries.

The profession itself is in a ripe state for this.  Too many employees have been unemployed for so long that when they finally get back in the game they are quite happy to put in more than the extra effort, if asked.  Clients are still leveraging fees with a wealth of still hungry firms eager to take on new work.  While I feel the profession was very successful at not allowing the standard of fees to drop too far during the downturn, we are essentially three years on now, and still scrambling to get back to where we were.

Now, my analysis is more shooting from the hip that a serious investigation.  Much of this is guessing the speed of the ship by the vibrations on the running boards, but I’m curious if anyone else in the profession has felt this.  Please comment…

Image via Marcelo Jose Blanco whose Flickr Photostream you can view here.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/viejano/3013849004/

09

03 2011


by Jonathan Brown
posted in Architectural Profession
5 Comments »

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  • Justin

    I think it’s just the nature of the profession in general to commit all of yourself to a project. Especially in the case of a down turned economy and increased competition. The ones in school that did well were the ones that devoted all of their time to making the best product that they could. Even if the design wasn’t award winning, the level of discovery that a person could obtain from immersing themselves entirely was priceless in earning respect from a jury of critics. I used to tell myself constantly that I need to learn the ability to cut myself off from a project to make a profit at the end of the day, but now, as I work from home, I’ve been telling myself that sleep is overrated and I’ve got to create a more beautiful product than the architect down the road (no matter how much it cuts into my personal life )so the clientele keeps coming back and/or referring me to others. I think the goal is to make it to the point where the clients are willing to pay a high enough percentage to afford you the chance to commit countless hours happily instead of competitively.

  • http://twitter.com/mondo_tiki_man Jonathan Brown

    I appreciate the comment. I suppose this rather illustrates my concern. Architecture isn’t just a “job”, it’s a profession, and it isn’t something that ever leaves you. Architects in their off time are always taking photography of buildings, or exploring their spaces, whether they mean to or not. It’s in our blood. It’s who we are.

    That said, I don’t feel that it should be the reason we work, in and of itself. Many people martyr themselves for their art, in architecture and elsewhere, but I think most architects work during the week so they can enjoy their evenings and weekends. I don’t think we should need to sacrifice a personal life to achieve a quality of profession. In reality, we do sacrifice a lot, from time to time, to get the job done. Architecture is never “done”, it can always be refined, the documents can always be further clarified, but if we don’t draw a line, we work ourselves out of profitability.

    That has always been the case with the profession, definitely not anything new. My concern, though, is if fees have dropped enough that we need to sacrifice more personal time to meet the bottom line.

  • http://twitter.com/mondo_tiki_man Jonathan Brown

    I appreciate the comment. I suppose this rather illustrates my concern. Architecture isn’t just a “job”, it’s a profession, and it isn’t something that ever leaves you. Architects in their off time are always taking photography of buildings, or exploring their spaces, whether they mean to or not. It’s in our blood. It’s who we are.

    That said, I don’t feel that it should be the reason we work, in and of itself. Many people martyr themselves for their art, in architecture and elsewhere, but I think most architects work during the week so they can enjoy their evenings and weekends. I don’t think we should need to sacrifice a personal life to achieve a quality of profession. In reality, we do sacrifice a lot, from time to time, to get the job done. Architecture is never “done”, it can always be refined, the documents can always be further clarified, but if we don’t draw a line, we work ourselves out of profitability.

    That has always been the case with the profession, definitely not anything new. My concern, though, is if fees have dropped enough that we need to sacrifice more personal time to meet the bottom line.

  • Justin

    “…My concern, though, is if fees have dropped enough that we need to sacrifice more personal time to meet the bottom line. ”

    My first response to this is “yes”, so long as we are fighting to survive and thrive in a bad economy. I think that it will continue like this until the profession as a whole can begin to raise their fees back up. Could this be an affirmation that great design is a luxury? that it is on the chopping block first when the wallet gets thin?

  • http://twitter.com/mondo_tiki_man Jonathan Brown

    I really hope not.