Thursday, April 12, 2012

Too Busy Yet Too Poor

Last year was fantastic in the development of my company. I was pulled into a new market that held promise - that was IPD Modeling (IPD stands for Integrated Project Delivery and it is an emerging construction coordination process). Frankly, IPD carried us or most of 2011 while the architectural design/drafting market was dragging itself back to the surface.
The good old design/drafting market is coming back, and is welcome as IPD is taking a break. But the challenge I'm seeing is in the devaluation of my services as an architect. Part of it is the client type; we're seeing more and more developers come through the door, and they want us to tighten up the numbers.
So I'm seeing myself busy, but poor. It's a bit frustrating.
What's more frustrating is that there is other work that has a better client type, but it's all going to the older, better established firms in town. And yet to add to this, I feel that I have more value to offer. A lot of these other architects in practice can't even use the software, but instead hand it down to a draftsperson or "CAD Operator".
I am the owner of my firm and personally develop my plans. Just gonna let this post trail off with that rant...