Every few months there seems to be an article in one of the more popular architecture magazines about how great working for free is a road to making money. As more and more students leave university with huge loans, working for free is not the way to go. There needs to be a shift in thinking that our designs are worth being paid for. 

The creative part of the process is where the most time is spent in coming up with ideas that will work for the client. We are sometimes so consumed by our creative side that we forget that our time should be valued, these are traits that need to be changed into more of a business plan. This has been a struggle for me.  All I want to do is just start coming up with the designs for the client without thinking about how much time I’m actually spending on doing so.

A while ago I saw a RIBAJ Webinar called “Practice Management webinar: setting the right fees” and it was interesting that they all talked about treating architecture as a business.  Peter Farrall who is an architect and senior lecturer gave a great breakdown of the cost rate and the ‘break even’ cost, what to look out for during the stages, working out hourly rates that need to be applied.  

It seems simple enough, once you get your hourly rate, you need to process the time on each project.  It would make life easier if you could just say ‘it’s going to take me a week of my time’ but every project is subjective and the time spent on each is not the same. This can become tricky until you gain some experience.  You have to approximate the time that you are going to spend on each portion and do a calculation according to the hourly rate you want to charge, this in itself can be a challenging process.

It really becomes apparent from this that business needs to be part of the education, maybe at part II stage as you are in the final leg of your studies.  Our time is not calculated in cost value just how good or bad the design is perceived (reminds me of crits at uni).