Conversations with Architecture Firm Leaders Project Management Challenges: Staffing Shortages
I'm having Conversations with Architecture Firm Leaders focused on the Deltek report to start with, from 2023 data. What this data showed in Project Management Challenges were three main areas that were of particular concern or challenges for architecture firm leaders.
The second one is Staff Shortages.
Now this is very close and related to the first one, which was Competing Priorities talked about that last time. Staff shortages are a bigger trend that all architecture firms are facing.
In fact, the whole industry is facing a staffing crisis:
The experienced baby boomers are retiring.
There's a “missing middle” and this is the mid-range architects who left the profession in the 2008 2009 recession. So we would have had people with 20 years’ experience--really high quality, high experience, people--who've left the industry. So we've got this gap.
And then there's the new young architects who are the remote architects, the COVID influence. Many only really want to work remotely or just do freelance work, and they're really not interested in an office job. Most architecture firm leaders really are not ready to have their entire staff remote. Some are, but most want some time in the office. And there's this group of young people who are really talented, who just don't want those office jobs.
So now you're consumed with this hiring crisis.
Your staff is over tasked trying to do the work of multiple people.
You can't even get qualified people to respond to your job advertisements, and you're wasting time with fake resumes. You don't even know they're fake until you actually get an interview. Then you realize that they're totally over stating their qualifications, and you've wasted all this time.
The same result happens as what I talked about with competing priorities,
42% of projects are late
Architecture firms are even doing worse than engineering. If you isolate architecture firms out, you find that they're at 50% so
Half of architecture firm projects are being delivered late
and over 30% of projects are over budget, and this is largely because of not being fully staffed.
So what is that costing your firm?
If over 30% of projects are over budget, that means your capacity to make an annual profit is handicapped by 30%. That's a huge hit on your business.
So what can you do about it?
I want to give you some suggestions.
Stop trying to hire people who don't exist. Just acknowledge that those highly qualified people are not out there.
Stop trying to be the highest bidder for the few available people who are qualified, you end up way overpaying for that person than maybe even their value to the firm can exhibit.
Implement more automated systems, cut down on repetitive tasks and invest in software that releases your staff's time and systemize operations to try to cut down on that rote activity.
Use strategic and tactical training.
Strategic training is training to build more leadership, knowledge and skills, so you get a broad range of people who are trained in being able to handle everything about leading projects. And I encourage you to take a look at Architects’ FAST TRACK To LEADERSHIP System™. https://architectsaccelerator.com/fasttrack
Tactical training is targeted training for specific tasks or roles like,
• consultant coordination
• client understanding
• entitlement strategy
• construction administration
I also have trainings on each one of those.
Go to https://architectsaccelerator.com/courses for the whole list of courses there training that you can use; either the strategic, for the FAST TRACK, or tactical.
Those are strategies that you can use to get through this crisis. You don't have to suffer through or struggle with, trying to find people who aren't there, but you can take charge and acknowledge that the situation exists and do something about it.
