Measure of Competency - Weighted Experience

When you get licensed, there are expectations about what you can actually do at that point.

When you're first licensed, you've got your degree or experience in other areas, you've taken this massive exam, you've been working and gathering these hours of experience under the AXP, and everything's done. You get a letter saying, “Congratulations, Architect!” You're now licensed. Here's your license number.

But to get to that competency, you're logging hours. There's an emphasis on what we actually do over other things that we can do. It starts even in education, where there's a big emphasis on design, learning how to design, problem solve, because those are skills that will help you in all the other areas. But you also have to gain technical skills. You have to gain general knowledge about systems and materials and construction and structures and all that.

And when you get into practice and you're working for a firm, to gain those real life experiences, you're actually doing some of those same things, but they're organized based on how a project is developed.

So you'll start with early stages of analysis and code study, and then site analysis, and then programming, and then early concept design, and then into design development, and then project documentation. Ultimately, the project goes to procurement or bidding and gets under construction. And then there's a whole bunch of activities under construction.

The AXP organizes these six areas of understanding knowledge, ultimately, 96 tasks that represent the things that architects need to know. So you're supposed to get the hours in those areas.

Project Planning And Design takes 1080 hours

Project Development And Documentation, 1520 hours

Construction Evaluation is only 360 hours

Practice Management is only 160 hours

Programming and Analysis, 260 hours

Project Management, 360 hours.

What are these different amounts? We're essentially weighting the experience that you're expected to get and be competent in. We're saying this is more important than this by adding more hours. Is that the right way to do it? Are there competencies that are more important than others?

As we look through the 16 Competency Standard, there's really nothing that says you need to know this one more than this one. You need to know all of them and have a basic understanding of all of them. Some of them are going to be easier to learn than others and others will require more practice and more time to get familiar with that. Ultimately, it's not about how many hours you put into it, but how well you can learn those tasks that give you that competency.

This is for mentors and supervisors as well: encourage the gathering of experience, of knowledge, of the skills needed. Besides all these competencies, there's more knowledge you'll need. Like you have to understand basic time management, and skills that help you make good decisions -- things that apply to all the competencies.