Roundtable: Boost your business resilience

‘Resilience’ –  bouncing back from setbacks and adapting to new situations – translates into the business lexicon as the ability to continue healthy and robust operations during times of crisis. The 2020s have been plenty turbulent, and they’re not even half done, said chair of the roundtable, Helen Castle, RIBA director of publishing and learning content. Resilience is how we will make it through. This concern is precisely why the RIBA’s Business and Career Resilience Hub exists: to provide members with the tools to succeed. 

Current challenges

‘Hands up how many of us actually turned a profit last year?’ asked Nixie Edwards, co-founder of Manchester and Burnley-based Had & Co at the recent roundtable. ‘Because all the architects we know agree that 2024 was dire … it felt like we were back to 2008.’

Statistics support this. According to the RIBA’s Business Benchmarking survey, average architects’ profits haven’t risen since 2019 and, in fact, fell by 2 per cent last year despite growth in revenue. All but the largest firms have been hit by a potent combination of goods and wage inflation, increased fixed costs plus a dysfunctional planning system and Building Safety Act repercussions. As Helena Rivera, director of A Small Studio summarised: ‘Overheads are a killer … the landscape for architects in a traditional contract management role is really difficult.’

Diversity – of projects and talent

‘Building stuff is the least profitable thing to do,’ ironically agreed Tobias Jewson, associate at 31/44 Architects. So, how are our panellists surviving right now? Diversification is a key commonality. Saira Hussain, also a co-founder of Had & Co, elaborated: ‘Letting, branding, feasibility studies, accessibility and heritage statements … we are now pushing for [these different offerings] and selling them to clients’. 

Tim Fu, whose studio, Studio Tim Fu, specialises in AI-informed design, offers training and collaboration with academia as a ‘safety net’. Meanwhile, Kuldeep Gill, director of technology at TP Bennett, noted the contribution his firm’s interior design offering had made to profits in 2024. 

Diversity of talent is crucial too. Gill feels that diverse representation at board level has seen direct benefits in terms of talent retention and ability to better understand ‘who TP Bennett are providing work for’. Rivera agreed. ‘Resilience is definitely around diversification,’ she said. Having, until recently, an all-female team (recruited on talent, not demographics) alongside strong corporate social responsibility has attracted clients who share these values. ‘Clients definitely approach us for our ethical stance,’ she said.

Winning work globally, locally and socially

According to  RIBA head of economic research Adrian Malleson , £1 in every £4 made by UK architectural practices is from overseas – predominantly the US, Europe (Poland seeing significant growth), East Asia (mainly China and Hong Kong) and the Middle East (Saudi Arabia). For our panellists too, an outward-facing model is serving them well. Fu obtains most of his work from global clients; likewise, 31/44’s Nantes office not only gives the practice a foothold in Europe but also an opportunity to collaborate with other practices seeking to enter that market.

For Had & Co, meanwhile, amplifying efforts locally, and reinforcing the practice’s presence with two highly visible shopfronts, has cemented its business. ‘We get quite a few walk-in clients,’ said Edwards, ‘and our main selling point is that we have this commercial presence on the high street … we started off as small-scale residential but now most of our clients are developers [and have grown with us].’ The downside, jokes Hussain, is that ‘even if we hide in the back, if they see our car parked outside, they drop in for a chat and we can’t get any work done’.

All participants agreed that social media played a huge role in gaining work. Had & Co uses it for visibility, with frequent posts accompanying its PR efforts. ‘The work might not come directly from Instagram,’ said Hussain, but clients say they ‘saw us on there. The more we post, the more chance there is of us being in their thoughts.’ It is seen as a ‘democratic’ platform that amplifies smaller voices to the same volume as large industry players.

This is certainly true for 31/44, a nine-person practice with a 31.4k Instagram following. Jewson believes, however, that social media is primarily useful as a conduit for meaningful conversations with other architects.

Fu, meanwhile, said social media was a direct and successful means of cultivating clients. ‘It has allowed me to proliferate my ideas [and build up brand awareness] which I was able to funnel into a business model based on my personal endeavours,’ he said.

Managing expectations and fees

Almost all the participants admitted to avoiding uninvited competitions as the unpaid time required to pursue these opportunities was unviable. 

In terms of fees, nearly all of them bill by the hour, invoicing on a monthly basis. One studio, however, favoured an upfront fixed-fee model during stages 1-5, with 50 per cent payable at the beginning and 50 per cent at the end; site management is billed weekly. This transparency has been a selling point for residential projects as it manages client expectations, even if a few would-be clients balk at the cost and walk away.

The smaller practices said they spent undesirable amounts of time and energy trying to analyse income data, track conversions, chase leads and so on. Rivera said that having a studio manager who is not a fee earner had been helpful in balancing these priorities. According to Malleson, architects estimate that 70 per cent of their time is spent on billable work but some in the room felt this figure was high compared with their experience.

AI and productivity hacks

“Administrative work can be an area where AI can be leveraged such as pointing large language tools at local repositories to capture past experience and aid future efforts to win work,’ suggests Marek Suchocki, Autodesk’s head of industry associations and strategy. Many Autodesk customers are leveraging the AI and machine learning features available in our tools to eliminate some laborious tasks and also by creating scripts that can be re-run to automate routine procedures. How else are architects using it? 

Fu is at the forefront here, harnessing AI as a collaboration tool that allows clients to participate in designs. AI also enables the practice to turn around ideas very quickly, a key USP for his clients. ‘We have trained GPT systems that give client, HR, management advice … even a “Tim’s philosophy” GPT,’ he said.

He is somewhat rare in this. According to Malleson, 19 per cent of architects see themselves as early adopters of tech and 11 per cent as innovators. While 41 per cent are using AI in some way, this is often ‘light’ and in early design stages. Meanwhile, 57 per cent think AI will improve efficiency in the design process but only 20 per cent are pointing resources at R&D, so ‘practices are not always investing in getting ahead with it’. Larger companies can dedicate more resource to emerging tech. There was a general agreement that datasets need to be shared between companies if AI is to be an equitable resource within the industry.

Rivera uses it for heritage statements, access statements, local plan information and similar. Yet she expressed reservations about the ethics of AI in its current state. ‘How do you navigate data protection with GPT?’ she asked. ‘I find this very uncomfortable. We could be breaching all sorts of architectural codes of conduct … I make sure to edit out client and site data wherever it appears.’ For her, ‘this all goes back to how important is it to run an ethical practice’.

The future

Two key themes emerged. The first concerned training a resilient next generation. Had & Co regularly takes on T-Level work-experience students and believes the apprenticeship model to be an excellent entry into the profession. ‘Some graduates have actually said to me: “I don’t want to work on this, it’s boring”,’ said Hussain. ‘But this is the sort of work available in the north-east! Apprentices, on the other hand, know what to expect from day one.’ 

The second emerging theme was of leveraging digital transformation as a force for good, even if an agent of radical change. ‘A smart social media presence, showcasing, say, use of AI and other digital solutions can enhance brand awareness and let you compete with larger practices like the Fosters of this world by differentiating your services,’ said Suchocki. ‘You may not deliver the same number of projects but I think that AI, if you embrace it, gives a smaller practice the capability to deliver equivalent work.’ 

What one advantage can technology bring architects in optimising business resilience? 

It can level the playing field
‘Social media has given us a democratic way of having our work seen,’ says Helena Rivera. ‘It is a good platform to build brand awareness and find your proper voice.’

It encourages talent
‘Embracing AI can help smaller practices attract the right talent. By showing that you use advanced tools and technologies, you can appeal to the right applicants as well as clients and get those fees up,’ says Marek Suchocki.

It is a strategic tool
‘What is an architect there to do? Win work or draw?’ asks Kuldeep Gill. Strategic use of technology drives growth through efficiency and innovation.

It shakes up the system:
‘Traditional corporate structures won’t work in the post AI era,’ says Tim Fu. ‘It is wild how operations can be run in today’s digital world.’

This RIBAJ roundtable was produced in association with Autodesk

Read more on business resilience and winning work from the RIBAJ.