Weathering Turbulent Times

Ann Lakshmanan

Ann is a director at SEH and became Chair in October 2021.

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I was pleased to be invited to speak at the first ACN breakfast event back in real life post pandemic and the topic was a huge one, covering how we’ve been impacted by all the changes in the past two and a half years and the changes in the last two and a half months!

It’s not news to say that it’s been challenging times but there are some positives.

At the start of the pandemic, we made the switch to home working pretty seamlessly and realised that the flexible working policy we’d been developing was now active, and there was no reason not to roll it out formally. We’re now back in the office, working in a hybrid way. There are positives and negatives:

  • Sick leave is down, everyone benefits from save commute time, life/ work balance (particularly for those with caring responsibilities) is improved
  • The practice carbon footprint is reduced, due to reduced travel
  • Remote meetings mean we can stay in touch with clients/ teams more easily, junior colleagues can attend more easily
  • Paper is hardly used as we’re all used to the technology for sharing models and working on screens
  • But – some things like early stage design really do work better in person
  • And hybrid meetings, with some in person and some remote don’t work as well
  • We need to work harder at defining and maintaining the office and practice culture
  • Remote working takes more management time as it requires conscious effort, it’s harder to mentor junior colleagues and we need to work at making sure there isn’t a different perception of staff that work remotely more often
  • It’s easy to see when staff are struggling or not being productive, but it can be harder to work out what the issues are

The current climate is very challenging -Brexit and the pandemic have had an impact on our clients and their ability to plan projects. Since the recent political upheavals, and October’s fiscal event we’ve had some clients pause works. This all makes forward planning for resourcing very difficult. Tendering for consultants is very competitive, and we’re seeing public procurement returning to single tender procurement which even with a 60/40 quality /price weighting means lowest price is often the biggest factor. Clients have been expecting consultants and contractors to price in inflation risks; fortunately we are seeing more use of fluctuation clauses now but fees are being driven down. As a small SME, we’re often competing against significantly larger practices and we’re worried about a potential a race to the bottom.

All these issues are compounded by the war in Ukraine, with issues with the supply chain having a major effect on projects at all stages, as we have to consider cost and availability of materials and energy costs, adding to clients’ challenges in managing their budgets. Some sectors in particular, such as the schools estate, will struggle as government funding is reduced.

The cost of living crisis is affecting our staff too; we’re seeing some consultant practices making one off cost of living payments or having more than one pay review a year. Junior staff have the double impact of the pressure on living standards and cost of education vs low remuneration, which could lead to a missing generation of consultants as they leave the industry.

There are positives too; having a new King with a proven interest in the built environment and green issues may have an impact on government policy directions. We have an amazing opportunity to focus on retrofit and reuse of buildings to tackle our net zero carbon targets, spurred on by rising energy costs. There are new to us sectors that we’ve started working in, including retrofit of homes and the growing life sciences sector. And there are grounds for optimism in terms of the architect maintaining their role as the protector and champion of design quality despite D&B forms of procurement, and that major clients and contractors see the need as much as ever for good design which in the end will reflect well on their end product