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Job losses in Architectural offices
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Moderators, Home & Garden Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 18,121 Mod ✭✭✭✭
Join Date:Posts: 17886
SB - would you mind posting up a copy of the text of the email you sent. I actually have all the email addresses of my local FF & GP TDs and Cllrs saved but just have not had a chance to draft and email to bang off.
To busy trying to keep the work I have!
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sydthebeat wrote: »6 months + of work ahead of me and no sign of it slowing down coming in.....
but we're a small office and are very mallable...
Hopefully you meant "malleable" as in flexible, sydthebeat.
No surprises finding you have some work on, or that you're here.
ONQ
Sorry about bumping up a relatively old comment - itchy send finger, only saw the date after I'd read a bit.0 -
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pseudo-tech wrote: »However, What is wrong with healthy competition? In essence, the RIAI is a cartel which recommends fee structures to its members, that's Architects and not Technicians because they are not supported in the endeavour. I would suggest that there should be more competition with all the professions and the restrictions to practice should be eased to professionally competent others!!
There will always be people who want to service their own cars, but its when they start designing and building their own cars that the problems start.
For example we have a thriving, unregulated, self-build market in Ireland.
Some of the questions asked by self-builders when things start to go wrong are frightening.
The barest foresignt and common sense seem to have abandoned them.
We have direct labour loans from banks which actually require that a main contract SHOULDN'T be retained and asks an Engineer to certify the work, as opposed to the design of the work, compromising their P.I.
Not using professionals and competent, experienced contractors to deliver a building is just asking for trouble, and yet here are the banks again, promoting this as if its going to save you money.
If you're lucking perhaps, but in general I doubt it and certainly averaged out over the long term I hope to get a lot of post facto inspection work out of Direct Labout Loan funded developments.
Recommending fee structures sets a reasonable income level which helpds support continuous professional development, a requriement for most professionals in order to stay "on form".
Charging a fair price for a professional, competent service supports this.
Permitting unqualified persons to provide design or build services will tend to cause problems, period, and not just by undermining professional offices by hoovering up all their bread and butter work.
I see huge problems for any competent, qualified person getting undercut by these geniuses, the relatively recent David Grant Fiasco being a case in point.
Unuqualified successes and direct labour trades people carry no overall liability where they are directly employed and the employer assumes the responsibilities of both Architect and Developer, leaving him surrounded by the dust trails of fast-disappearing men of straw when trouble rears it head.
Certain problems may occur in permitting qualified persons to work here who may be unfamilar with the Irish Building Regulations.
[Its all very well to ask for mobility of labour to occur, but in France they don't even use decimal points in the same way we do.]
Higher standards in building tend to apply in many anglophone or commonwealth or ex-commonwealth countries and Ireland is no exception, together with Australia, New Zealand, America Britain and Canada.
Differences in the way tenders and contracts are configures and administrated, in the way design work and buildings are insured all need to be understood as part of professional practice.
Wiki the word Architect and you'll see there is little equivalance between these english-speaking countries.
Sure, you can say this is anti-competitive, but professionals will argue that its apples and apples you should be comparing, not apples and oranges.
The minimum required for persons entering this country from abroad to work as an architect for example, is a recognised qualification and two years working here to "learn the trade".
Many will use this time to make client contacts and develop their language skills, which will further improve their ability to deliver a competent service.
Is that a bad thing or a good thing?
FWIW
ONQ.0 -
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pseudo-tech wrote: »<snip>
Technicians in the UK are recognised as professionally competent to prepare planning applications, tender drawings, supervise and sign off on projects. Why not here in Ireland???? We certainly have restrictive practice here??? Why??
Are you suggesting ALL technicians are that competent?
I've worked with some that are and some that aren't.
I think that the abilities overlap more with the years as technicians become more competent in design and architects become more technically competent.
I don't think this is a matter resting solely with architects or architectural technicians BTW.
Fuzzing at the edges of qualifications isn't confined to archs/arc-techs.
There are interior architects vying with interior designers.
Chartered surveyors are now getting involved in macro-planning, stepping on the toes of urban planners and planning consultants.
Most technicians I have worked with were certainly better organized and more disciplined in their time management on projects than newly qualified architects.
Their technical competence meant that any design work they did wasn't restricted by fear of not detailing it properly.
Technicians who wanted to take on more design responsibility in the office or on a project or perhaps wanted to become architects tended in my experience to be limited in their progress or studies by; -- their level of innate design ability [as are architectural students],
- their professional focus on detailing which, if you will, leaves some of them missing the forest for the trees and
- their age and relative maturity, which can get in the way of accepting design critiques [just as can an architectural student's arrogance]
- their sometime unwillingness to investigate alternatives for the sake of it, if they arrive at one design that works okay relatively early in a project.
I've had the privilege of working with two technicians who did the RIAI architects course as well as a slew of technicians from the Longford Terrace course.
The top 10% from Longford Terrace were accepted into Bolton Street DIT and a significant number of them [75%? Uncertain, but certainly all bar one that I knew] passed out as qualified architects.
But technical and design competence are only two aspects of an architect's performance envelope.
Judgement calls are where its at.
Judgements made in the presence of unknowns.
Being an Architect carries the weight of responsibility.
I don't mean the laughable level of "responsibility" that company directors carry or that shouldered so easily by our elected representatives.
Architects can be sued, sued even after they've died, and their successors in title can bear the loss of them being successfully sued unto their estate.
The law is an ass, and its the architect who's the target, not the architectural technician - when did you ever hear of an architectural technician getting sued?
"The flat roof was flat and well constructed, but the kid playing ball on it fell off and broke his back" - sue the technician who detailed the roof?
No, sue the architect who designed it!
Its yet another dark side of architecture, one they don't dwell on too much. We skim over two years of law covering the basics.
Do you want to enter that arena?
Architects live there every day.
You're welcome to join in.
Get the qualification.
No going back.
ONQ.0 -
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