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Why do architects earn less than other professionals?

Why do architects earn so much less than surveyors and project managers, let alone lawyers and doctors?

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28 answers

  • 1

richard brindley

(This reply first appeared in BD in 2007)

I would ask the question the other way around. Why are clients prepared to pay their surveyors, lawyers and doctors more for their services than they pay their architects?

The price you get for your services is not directly related to the costs or skills involved, but primarily dependent on how much the client values it.

In my view the solution lies with architects, rather than clients. Compared to our surveying, legal and medical colleagues, architects are generally less motivated by money and are attracted to the creativity of architecture more as a passion and vocation than as a professional career.

The pay structure of the architects’ profession is therefore more akin to other creative professions. Look at the vast difference in financial rewards between Hollywood stars and jobbing actors, or pop stars and working musicians.

Similarly, Norman Foster is number 249 in the Sunday Times 2007 Rich List, while the average UK architect with six years’ experience on top of seven years’ training earns about £36,000 annually. Similarly experienced UK quantity surveyors and building surveyors earn an average of £38,900 and £41,150 respectively, while GPs reportedly now earn an average of £100,000.

Going back 50 years or so, architects used to have similar earning power to lawyers and medics, but we seem to have gradually painted ourselves out of the picture for clients. We wanted to focus on the interesting design bits.

We didn’t want to “do money”, which led to the rise of the QS in advising and controlling costs for the clients. We were less interested in the management of projects, which led to the project manager becoming the client’s agent.

All the so-called boring technical bits we delegated to technicians, technologists and engineers. No wonder clients now put far less value on what architects do.

So if architects are to be paid more, we need to promote the “value addedness” that architects can deliver to clients. All those lateral thinking and problem-solving skills are valuable and relatively unique to architects among the other construction professions.

Here are some ideas for getting paid more:

• Start by defining your services to clients in terms of the benefits you bring to them, such as increased property value and the operational improvements of your design, or your ability to skilfully steer a client’s project through the increasingly complex regulatory processes of planning and building control. Communicate in a language they will understand and appreciate; deliver at least what you promise and manage expectations; and don’t focus on the cleverness of your design in architectural terms.

• Express your fees in terms that offer tangible benefits to your clients. Don’t express your fees as a percentage of the construction cost, as clients don’t see this as working in their interest. You can hear the client asking: “What! You mean the more you spend of my money on the construction, the more I have to pay you too?” Instead, express your fees as a lump sum for a defined service or outputs, with a performance bonus related to client benefits such as increased site value, additional lettable floor area, quicker service delivery. Clients will respond positively to this approach and will share with you less grudgingly the additional value they see you creating for them.

• See the emerging challenges of climate change, rising energy costs, scarcity of traditional on-site construction skills and even the increased complexity of planning and building regulations as real opportunities for architects. These crunchy issues do require our holistic problem solving skills, which is where other specialist professionals find it difficult to see the big picture. This is what clients will really value.

The UK construction industry needs to do a lot more to prove the value of good design and architects. There is an increasing amount of evidence from the US on improvements in healthcare and teaching related directly to the design qualities of new hospitals and schools. Clients need to see tangible benefits to convince them to pay more for their architects.

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  • 1

j francis [ Editor ]

As discussed in Richard Brindley's response I would say that we are failing to focus on client perceptions of value and often loose focus on how we can deliver best value for clients.

There is a great need for architects and architectural technologists to promote the added value that they can bring to clients.

Ruth Reed, Current President of the RIBA, recently put this view forward when she visited Ipswich to meet with the Suffolk Association of Architects. She expressed her view that it is vital that architects learn to promote themselves as being able to bring added value to clients, particularly through promoting and practicing "Good Design". This concept of focusing on the client and being clear on how architects and architectural technologists can bring this added value can only be a good thing.

While the focus on Good Design is one way to promote the benefits we can give to clients I would also suggest that there should be some inward looking focus on how much of the process of design building and the boarder built environment is now out side of the role of both architects and architectural technologists.

There are movements toward specialisation, which can be a great tool to actively bring this added value to clients, and I would suggest in these hard economic time we need to try to explore and debate how we can build on these ideas.

Finally I would suggest that even without becoming a "specialist" there is a need for those in the architectural sector to ensure they can deliver the widest range of service to clients possible, either by individuals building on their existing skills base and adding to it or for there to be a move towards practices with a mix of specialist skills.

To close I refer back to the concept of selling Good Design, if this is to be how we promote ourselves is this only possible if we actively seek to explore and define the concept of good design with reference to bring added value to clients? To this end I will post a question to try to trigger some debate on this concept.

note added 15.03.10 - As a footnote the Story carried by Building Design "London practice pays £5.71 an hour" from the 12th of March, 2010 raises some further questions!

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=426&storycode=3159752&channel=426&c=1

We really need to keep this debate going in these testing times and make sure we all ask ourselves the hard questions.

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  • 0

peter_71

I used to be a young structural engineer (Im now studying a masters in Urban Design) and you would certainly have to pay me more (millions perhaps) to return to dealings with that part of the built environment for 40 hours a week :-)

The better the job, the less people will pay you to do it! >>>speak to any muscian/artist

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  • 0

philip carr

How about the basic laws of supply and demand: in 1994 there were 19,800 registered architects and now there are over 33,000. There are also over 20,000 students in the system. You would need to close down half the schools of architecture to start to redress the balance. Philip.

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  • 0

frank low

Having gone through Architecture school in Singapore for 4 years for my RIBA Part 1 and having worked for close to 9 months now in the largest locally-based Architecture Firm in Singapore, it's my personal belief that Architecture should be pursued as a passion and interest, not a professional career.

I will be taking my Masters in Project Management in the near future, and not a RIBA Part 2 followed by years of experience and acreditation to get registered. For me, its just not worth it.

In this modern world, its ALL about the money. And you make very little money being an architect.

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  • 0

timillustrator

I think promoting "Good design" is a bit too low key. Clients expect good design as a matter of course. If a QS promoted accurate surveying or an engineer correct calculations it would be nothing less than the client would expect, in fact the client would start wondering why such a low level of service was being promoted; the only lower level being incorrect surveying or incompetent calculation.

Excellent design, money saving design, innovative design would be better if they weren't shorthand for (respectively) showing off, cheap and experimental design.

I think this is one of the fundamentals as to why architects and technologists are paid less - the added value they bring is no less than the client expects from them in the first place.

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  • 0

rob_58

@ Noah Murney,

I agree entirely with your point about the problematic quality and length of education, but I'm unclear as to how student debt could lead to a low post-education salary. I think that it is simply a matter of an over saturated job market (this problem will, obviously, only get worse in the coming years).

Clearly, a Part 1 or 2 with an advanced level of knowledge of construction and running a job would be more likely to get a job than one who is clueless, but as long as there are 1000 similarly qualified buggers behind him in the dole queue, graduate pay will remain low.

I do think educational reform is necessary (universities are the only one's who cynically benefit from the current system). But I don't think it would increase pay.

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  • 0

laurence

So many valid points on here.

The truth is that there is not one reason, but a wide range of factors which make the profession unbelievably depressing, and surely, with an even more bleak future.

All I'll add is don't let your children do it. It's not worth it.

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  • 0

aa_87 [ Editor ]

Fiona- I agree with your answer. As members of the profession, we should stick together.

We also need to have a professional body that looks out for us. We need more support from RIBA, they have the ability to pull architects together as an profession so we can have a united front. Ruth Reed has finally issued a belated response on the issue of low salaries for architects (http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=426&storycode=3161523&channel=783&c=1) , but we need to see more action.

Architecture has comparatively low fees and they seem to be sliding even lower.

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  • 0

sandals

Everything is relative - and alot of good points are raised above.

As discussed recently with a GP friend of mine, I don't mind not getting paid as much as a Doctor because I don't want to examine feet and look at stranger's bits on a regular basis.

Pass me the coloured pencils any day.

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  • 0

james_75

I find it amazing how negative we are as Architects. If you study carefully and work at the right practices the results can be very rewarding.

If you compare the architecture practice against other professions than you will see that we are paid well below their level. However, there are a large number of architects which get paid large sums of money. Indeed it takes time and practice to get there but it is possible. Also another comment which I feel important to add is how badly we operate as a business - Obviously the profession is between art and business but our inefficiency is shocking. With the correct management skills and ability to work with the client we must adapt to sell our skills as architects - the only major issue is competing against international architects willing to work for a lower fee.

Positive Thinking is the key.- How do you think marketing managers get paid so much? They have learned the ability to sell their value to businesses. We must learn to create building which are not just pieces of art but offer the client a financial reward in the long term (i.e zero carbon housing)

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  • 0

teejay

I believe the Egan and Lathan reports deal with some of the inefficiencies and perceptions of architects in the UK. I'm not sure how many practices received the reports with open arms, there is a lot of valuable research. The reports basically state the stats on wastage in the construction industry, tackling these will not only increase the efficiency of individual practices, but can help reduce this inbuilt confusion some of the professions even within the field share.

I have always believed that modern day architecture is too pretentious for the average man or woman, it refuses to move with the times. Modernist styles don't reflect the modern times, it's not about a style but about adapting, to the needs and niches that are emerging.

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  • 0

noah murney

These are all good points, but there's one which I think is blindingly obvious. Experience tells me that the single most influential factor in persistently low architect salaries is the partnership between the riba and the UK schools of architecture.

Together they continue to promote courses which:

  • fail to prepare graduates for the realities of architectural practice

  • are at least one year too long, extending the misery of student debt

  • flood the market with people who have been brainwashed into thinking that working for no pay is somehow a good thing

I learned more about my job in my year out than in the previous four years at university, which were padded out with all sorts of completely irrelevant coursework (writing programs for lifts, advanced mathematics, and finger-painting. That was just second year). I know that I'm not alone in this.

Architect salaries will remain the lowest in the construction industry until architectural courses are reduced to a reasonable period, re-focused on practical matters, and made more relevant to the industry. If there's strong evidence to back up the need for seven year courses then by all means reconfigure them to focus more time on practical matters, and to allow students to spend more time making a salary while they learn, instead of building up debt, and filling their heads full of unrealistic expectations.

The suggestion that better marketing is the answer is obviously well intentioned, but is unlikely to promote the kind of change that's required. The riba and the schools tend to be managed largely by academics for whom practical matters hold little value. For them it's all about bums-on-seats, lucrative research grants, and the perpetuation of a stratified attainment system which guarantees that the next generation of teachers will maintain the status quo.

Don't expect to see the salary situation improve unless there is a major shift in how courses are funded and in the methods used to train architects.

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  • 0

skint architect

All of the above points are valid, particularly the one regarding architectural education which I completely agree with.

Surely some blame for architects poor salaries has to fall with the RIBA. They have protected the title of "architect" but not the profession.

You need to be a lawyer to practice law, a doctor to practice medicine, you need an engineers certificate to obtain most building warrants...

Yet to act as an architect you need nothing. Granted you cannot call yourself an architect, but "architectural services" soon gets around that hurdle. If a registered architect was required for every construction project then our fee's would represent the value they should.

Why is it that we, as a profession, allow other professionals and non-professionals to setup on our doorstep and steal our potential clients?

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  • 0

jeremy_56

I'm speaking from an American point of view, and inexperience as I will be starting school this fall.

With the prevalence of the beige planned communities, I think people here have lost touch with the value that Architects provide. It's difficult to sell a client on "good design" when their perception of what an architect does is design one or two houses, then the contractor builds 500 of the same design. Their idea of value is that their house will increase in value due to the neighborhood being desirable. Not to the good or unique design.

I've ranted about these communities for a long time. They are a big reason that Architects aren't valued here. They are rarely seen as a big part of the equation.

Perhaps a good way to prove value would be to put it in terms of time. If it takes an architect X hours to complete a building, and it only takes the contractor and other services a small portion of that time, perhaps it would highlight the value.

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  • 0

richard harris

Because we are not seen as essential to ensuring the competent design of buildings. Many clients are fooled into procuring by means of design and build, thinking that they are saving on professional fees and perhaps more crucially transferring all risk. The RIBA is an organisation completely out of step with the times. The discipline code is completely unenforced allowing architects to undercut each other on fess to the point where we all know the job simply can't be done properly. The RIBA turns a blind eye to this and architects themselves do nothing to force the RIBA to change. Despite the emergence of sustainability as a key project driver there is still the predominance of big practices hoovering up work hundreds of miles from where they operate, which undermines local architect's ability to survive and pay decent salaries to their staff. Finally, we have to sell ourselves but we don't have to sell ourselves short.

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  • 0

ben_17

I think Noah Murney's posting goes close to the heart of the problem. As long as the schools completely fail to teach students anything of practical use to being an architect then the graduates of those schools will continue to earn next to nothing. Project management and project costing should have been made an integral part of architectural education decades ago, but the schools persist in their lazy response that 'you learn that stuff in the workplace'. My experience is that you neither learn that stuff at school nor in the workplace, mainly because since the previous generation did not learn it either, then there is no one for you to learn from. As a consequence, despite some admirable exceptions and a lot of (often pointless) long hours spent trying to accomplsih relatively simple tasks, many qualified 'architects' are pretty incompetent. Is it any wonder then that clients are not prepared to pay them as much as they do their lawyer, QS or project manager?

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  • 0

gerald organ

Oh how the times have changed. At the age of 14 I spent a day as part of my schooling with an Architect in Cheltenham. We spent the morning cruising around the leafy suburbs, stopping every few minutes to look at one of the projects this established Architect had completed.

In the afternoon, we looked through beautiful A0 tracing paper drawings beautifully crafted showing exciting new buildings yet to be built. At that point I decided I wanted to become an Architect more than anything else in the world. I choose and passed my O-levels and A-levels with the sole intention of getting to University to study architecture.

After a lot of hard work and scrimping and saving by my dedicated parents, I made it through University and found myself in an Architectural Practice in the centre of Birmingham surrounded by drawing boards and Architects. I new more than ever that I wanted to be an Architect and after another year in University passed my Part 2.

Out into the real world I managed to find a job in the Local County Council Architects Department, where I spent 5 happy years working on a variety of projects with some wonderful people and after qualifying Part 3, got to design and build some great projects. I can still recall the unadulterated thrill of becoming an Architect, and finishing a major project in the centre of my hometown.

Wind the clock forward 25 years and I have just completed my 7th. year in my own Sole Trader Practice. Paul Getty once said that " the only way to make real money is by working for yourself", and I have completed 80+ projects and turned over more in 7 years than I earned in the previous 25. Rich? Well no.

The crippling effects of taxation, litigation, the Thatcherite economy, the modern costs of raising a family, insurances, over regulation, the Internet, punitive Bank Charges and greedy and unhelpful Banks has diminished what should have been a lucrative finale to my professional career into an unsustainable nightmare.

As a Sole Trader I am seemingly excluded from all Government Framework agreements, for not having meaningless QA Certificates, Health and Safety Certificates and other Regulatory and People Training paperwork. After 2 days completing a Framework Application to design Social Housing I was politely advised that I had come 18th. out of 37 Applicants.

Meanwhile in the possible areas for work, smaller commissions are advertised on the Internet and are being gobbled up by amateur spare time CAD operators using illegal software working in their back bedroom for £250 cash for Full Planning and Building Regulations Applications.

On a daily basis I have to deal with Planning Assistants (no Planning Officers it seems) with no aesthetic training nor real responsibility mundanely checking my designs against suffocating Planning Policies which allow the mundane and reject the good.

In the Internet age, I now have to pay for the privilege of obtaining contact details for people wanting a toilet extension on their bungalow, only to be told they were just interested in getting a price. I drive for an hour to visit someone who says they want some drawings done only to find I am one of 6 people engaged on the "race to lowest price".

I resigned from the RIBA a few years ago, refusing to pay for an arcane service which bears no resemblance to my career either in the corporate world or as a private Architect. At no time have I ever felt the RIBA or the ARB for that matter have contributed to anything I have ever achieved.

The profession has been left to slither down the earnings ladder to that of a car mechanic, whilst the reputation of Architects has not been promoted or protected.

The annoying but accessible Kevin McCloud has done more to enhance Architecture on the telly than anything the RIBA or ARB has achieved. (and he is not even an Architect!)

With the imminent demise of my Practice and everything I have ever sought to achieve, I am faced with impossible Corporation Taxes, mandatory £5M PI Insurance I cannot afford, and the possibility that at 50 years old I am effectively "unemployable" as an Architect.

Seeking possible employment elsewhere, I am bombarded with job offers for Software Architects (so much for the ARB protecting the title "Architect") and told the only jobs are in London on the same salary I enjoyed 25 years ago.

There is no justice in this and I suspect I am not alone. With over 2,000 Architects on the dole and prospects pretty bleak, I sit back and gaze across a bleak and penniless future and wonder about whatever happened to the once great and respected title of Architect.

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  • 0

fiona_38

I concur with everything Gerald Organ says, being the same age and having seen my early dreams of what it meant to be an Architect dissipate at an astonishing rate over the last ten years along with my bank balance.

All the points made above are valid, but there is a key reason that we do not command the level of fees that other professionals such as solicitors and accountants do: the RIBA kowtowed when Maggie instigated competitive fee tendering and the fee scales went out of the window. The other professional bodies hung back and won the day and their charges remain commensurate with their expertise and the public perception of their worth. There is definitely an element of perceiving that which costs more to be valued higher.

Additionally, as members of a profession we do not stick together, undercutting each other in the frantic bid to win work. We could all agree to stick to the now obsolete fee scales and then success would be based on other parameters than cost.

Furthermore, it seems that we are not generally very good at asking for money: perhaps we feel it is ignoble to sully our client relationships with such talk as filthy lucre. However, if you go to a solicitor, almost the first thing they do is lay out their charges: and why not? We should not be shy and we should be very clear about the scope of work we are undertaking for the fee agreed and more business like about warning of extra costs, recording and charging for these too.

If our fees were to be increased, it follows that salaries should improve in line – unless we are also too shy to take this up with our bosses, along with the issue of reasonable working hours.

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  • 0

rob_15

All the above are relevant however, there is a simple answer which is supply and demand. There are too many architects. I'd say the only way that architects salaries can rise is by reducing the number and the only way to achieve this is to restrict the number entering schools of architecture by closing down a large number of the schools. If this is combined with a restriction that requires the qualification say, to submit planning applications or make building regulation applications then it may enable higher fees to be charged and then higher salaries to be paid. I'm not sure that this will sit very well with the RICS but it would give architects some degree of protection of role rather than just title.

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  • 0

john toppin [ Editor ]

Don't ask why architects earn less than other "professionals". You will just go round in circles.

Instead ask whether architects are getting an appropriate share of the value generated in a building development/project. Here are 2 examples.

Share of value creation:

How much does the land cost, how much does it cost for the physical materials, engineering, project management, planning, legal work, financing costs, design etc etc... Is the architect's share appropriate? I would say it must be because the market seems to be setting that level almost universally. If you don't agree then it can only be for architects and those who run practices to look to themselves for the reasons why this is the case.

Premium Value:

How much "value" has been added by the architects? By value I mean monetised value. For example, if by clever architecture a retail building can accomodate a higher footfall or a better stock layout than its neighbours and so generate more profits for the building occupier that is premium value that the architect should be able to claim. How many firms do you know that are claiming they can generate, then delivering on and then claiming a fair share of premium value?

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  • 0

j w

I think that one overwhelmingly simple explanation has been overlooked; most architects care very deeply about their work and, out of both duty and pride, are unwilling to compromise quality for expediency.

When I issue a drawing, it has my name on it; when I talk to a client it is my reputation on the line, regardless of the reputation of my practice. These things matter and influence our daily lives greatly.

A client doesn't want to pay a lawyer, well that's just the end of the business relationship (unless the relationship occurs through legal aid). An engineer gets shorted on payments, well work stops until the client pays up; no payments, no certification or warranties, no building and ultimately, little impact on the earning power of the engineer.

Nowadays clients just pay whatever they feel like they can get away with; some architect deep in penury will justify this as a loss-leader, a stop-gap or whatever else springs to mind. And then, with little or no profit on the horizon, will bust his/her gut for days to produce a quality piece of architecure. And when he/she has discharged their duties under the contract and wrangled the budget into a competent and attractive design, the client will say, "OK, thanks for that, here's another one, for the same rate (minus 5% for fun), off you go!"

With no protection for the industry from the RIBA, no quality control via fee scales or protection of function and barely any enforcement of title protection from the ARB, we are left with nothing but late nights and our damned pride.

And in fairness, I'd rather give up being an architect than have to compromise on standards of design and quality, because pride, be it a blessing or a curse, is not something money can ever buy back once it's gone.

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