Architects’ ranking of professional design services

Abstract

ABSTRACT The architectural profession in the United States is seeing a growing divide between practitioners and their clients, potentially affecting designers’ ability to shape the built environment as part of design and construction teams. Likely due to designers’ lack in understanding of client priorities, and clients’ misunderstanding of design processes and services, client valuations of architectural design services may differ from those of architects. As part of an effort to discover the differences in architectural design service valuations between these parties, this study uses descriptive and inferential analysis to explore how American architects rank established design services in order of importance, and how they believe their clients rank design services. The design services in this study were extracted from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Documents B101 and B132, standard project agreement forms for owners and architects that include Basic and Supplemental services. Participants were also asked to identify architectural services they believed should be added to the list of services currently included in the AIA documents, and what design services should be excluded. A total of 435 architects responded to the survey, with 85 licensed architects completing the survey. Results show that architects believe their prioritized design services differ slightly from their clients’ probable rankings. Most services mentioned by participants as being qualified to be added to the lists of AIA documents services were related to management and design, while participants tended to recommend services related to telecommunications and data design be excluded. More in-depth research may be needed.