Workloads improve, but too early to call a trend 15|10|09

Optimism over future workload continued to improve among architects in September, with one third of practices looking forward to increasing work. The figure was well ahead of the 22% recorded for the previous month, while the proportion expecting workload to decline was little changed at 16%, just one per cent up.

The resulting positive index figure of +17 was therefore well up on August’s +7, although the RIBA cautioned that this indicator has been quite volatile over the past quarter and should not be taken as a sustained trend. Both private housing and commercial sectors contributed to the increased optimism.

Changes in predictions for staff retention also reflected marginal improvements, with September’s figures remaining very similar to August – 5% of practices predicted an increase in staff (up from 4%), while 13 % expected a decrease (down from 15%). There was also a 1% improvement in the number of women employed in practice, which stood at 21% in September.

‘The September figures reflect modest improvements across staffing and workloads, but it is clear that practices are not yet sufficiently confident of improvement in workload prospects to return to recruitment on any significant scale; nearly one third of survey respondents continue to indicate that they are currently personally under-employed,’ commented Adrian Dobson, RIBA Director of Practice.
 
‘The survey also collects anecdotal evidence from participating practices about the market for architects’ services. An emerging theme is the difficulty of demonstrating value to clients in an intensely competitive marketplace.  Many respondents comment that the value of architects’ services still appears to be ill defined for clients, in comparison with other players such as planning consultants, quantity surveyors, project managers, engineers and even party wall surveyors and CDM co-ordinators.

‘At the same time as facing this competition to stake out the high value consultancy and project leadership services, architects feel under increasing competitive pressure from 'architectural consultants', plan-drawers and other non-architects offering low-cost architectural documentation services. It is widely felt that there is an important role for the RIBA in helping to define and promote the specific value and benefits of using an architect.