May 2006

We all have probably asked why we wanted to be Architects. Could it be the long hours, the low pay, the high stress of deadlines or just that we love to draw. A recent issue of Money magazine had an article on the 50 Best Jobs in America. Needless to say Architects weren’t on the list, in part because Architect’s average salary was below $50,000. There was a link to a companion article titled “Big Jobs that Pay Badly” that listed Architects as one of three jobs that “...you should take only if you really love the work, because the investment you make to get the job and hours you keep aren’t necessarily commensurate with what you earn.” This certainly is affecting those who chose to enter the profession. There are presently 110,000 +/- registered Architects in the country. It is estimated that to maintain our numbers 3,400 new registrations are required each year. This past year new registrations in all states are reported to be approximately 1,400. I know from discussions with many of the principals of firms in our State that we are all struggling to find candidates to fill Architectural positions in our firms. Perhaps the law of supply and demand will come into play and salaries will increase due to the limited supply of candidates.

This same discussion of pay, which is directly related to fees, has been an ongoing topic of discussion with my fellow AIA Chapter Presidents across the country. As the discussion turns to fees, we are warned by AIA’s General Counsel not to discuss the issue for fear of violating the anti-trust settlement AIA made with the Justice Department eons ago (visit www.aia.org/about_antitrust). The common lament, however, is that our services are not valued.

Architects are often perceived as artists only interested in aesthetics, and our other responsibilities are overlooked. Our creative role is a significant part of what we achieve as Architects, but we also have other critical roles. We interpret our clients needs into a space program, we manage and coordinate engineering consultants, we address the technical aspects so our buildings perform properly, and we monitor and inspect the quality of the construction. It is a challenge to quantify all the different tasks involved in the design process. Our AIA contracts, when we are smart enough to use them, try to identify the services we perform, but the reality is that there is a wide, disparate level of services that Architect’s provide. This is in part the nature of competition, but oranges, apples and grilled chicken is what our clients are getting. Many of my Contractor colleagues tell me that there is a wide range in the quality of documents they receive, with varying levels of coordination and inadequate details. The poorer the documents the less value they are, even with a great design. Our role as Architects must be to provide a professional level of service to our clients in all aspects of design through construction. This means negotiating fees commensurate with the work we perform. Perhaps then the salaries in our profession will rise to levels equal to the value of our work. I believe that we will create our role as Architects by what we do. I hope we’ll do it well.