Design Firm Management

In many fields the cost of services is being significantly reduced by information technology. Stock brokers and insurance companies, for example, have been able to lower fees because of dramatically reduced transaction costs. Can information technology similarly reduce design costs? If not, as other business services become cheaper, will design services seem unreasonably expensive in comparison? The problem, of course, is that design professionals in the building industry generally produce a unique solution that is used only once. Design services cannot be commoditized, or can they?

The cost of producing core services may not be falling, but the cost of “back-office” functions certainly should be. We may not yet have achieved the paperless office, but because of information technology investments, administrative staff have declined from 20 to 14 percent, bookkeeping staff from 4 to 0.4 percent of total staff in design firms over the last fifteen years. The paring of nonbillable staff is most pronounced in younger firms, which set themselves up without receptionists, administrative offices, or even drafting boards. The Internet promises to further this trend, with opportunities totrim costs and streamline operations. Firms will save on travel, reproduction,and messenger expense, as well as reduced project delivery time. Product libraries and flat files will give way to Web sites and harddrives. Designers and builders will be in more direct contact with clients, partners, and suppliers, with less reliance on intermediaries or support staff. With the use of project-specific Web sites open to client access, the transparency of the design process is increased significantly.

Human Resources

Increasingly your employees will find you through the Web, which is already the leading channel for recruiting and job hunting in some industries. One of the greatest challenges of managing a design practice is pacing the work to fit the resources available. Matching the flow of work to a fixed number of staff can be very difficult, and an inability to do so is a leading cause of firm failure. Many firms find that they can keep only a small core of permanent staff, relying on imperfectly trained freelancers to fill the gaps when deadlines approach. Virtual teaming may allow you to “borrow” staff electronically from branch offices or even other firms when a short-term need arises. It can allow the sharing of specialized expertise and resources over more projects and multiple offices. A firm with several branch offices may learn how to share professionals with special skills, such as an expert in clean room design or a specifications writer.

MIT business professor Thomas W. Malone has postulated the emergence of an “e-lance economy,” in which the fundamental unit of business activity becomes the individual independent contractor whose work is largely self-directed and project-based, performed as part of a temporary network of professionals supported by advanced communication technology (Malone & Laubacher 1998). Indeed, one can imagine that as the effectiveness of networked business-to-business communication grows while the cost declines, more and more organizations will devolve into confederations of Web-linked entrepreneurs. Intelligent Web agents will make the assembly of project teams more efficient. Just as architectural firms are increasingly global in the markets they serve, so the various skills that must be assembled to produce projects will become less place-bound. Electronic collaborationand teaming will enable the assembly of talent regardless of geographic location. Some firms already administer projects from one city and produce documents in a second, for a proposed building in yet a third. The physical propinquity that results when team members are in the same room may not be as valuable as the ability to assemble the best people to do a job, wherever they may be. In the same way, Internet communications make joint ventures of two or more firms more manageable. You may have more opportunity to obtain work by partnering with firms in new markets. The Internet helps tie together strategic partners, such as the subconsultants with whom you work frequently or a client that represents a significant percentage of work. It may even make design/build easier to implement, allowing the design and build halves to function as separate entities for some projects and as virtual partners on others.

Training and Professional Education

As the design professions become more technology dependent, the demand for training will increase. At the same time, professional societies and licensing boards are increasing their annual requirements for continuing education. Internet-based training is still in its infancy, but the multimedia capability and interactivity of the Web make it potentially an excellent environment for distance learning. The Web makes asynchronous learning possible: teacher and student need not be online at the same time, which allows working people to participate when they can. Web-based courses can be a combination of live, interactive events over streaming video, prerecorded lectures with hyperlinks to outside resources, and self-paced exercises.

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