Archinect - News

7 Strategies to Prevent Past Due Invoices

2019-12-05T09:00:00-05:00

This post is brought to you by BQE Core

How many times have you sent a client past-due invoices, only to hear nothing back?

Small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the U.S. were owed $825 billion in 2016, according to figures released by invoicing financing company Fundbox. And the value of funds tied up in unpaid SME invoices is equivalent to 5% of the GDP!

If you have late payments from your clients, you aren’t alone. In fact, just 30% of businesses in a recent survey by YouGov said all their invoices had been paid on time.

Past-due invoices can have a crippling effect on your business. When an architecture firm isn’t paid on time, it can’t take on new projects, hire new employees, or scale very well. And nonpayments can negatively affect the company’s finances.

7 tips for avoiding past due invoices

It takes the average small business 21 days to get paid. And 81% of small business invoices are 30 days past due, according to Fundbox.

Past due invoices may seem like a fact of li...

How to Set Boundaries With Your Clients: Part 2

2019-10-29T18:17:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by BQE Core

If you want your clients to respect and treat you like the expert you are, instead of as an employee or subordinate, then you need to set clear and consistent boundaries with them.

Far too often, we don’t take the time to think through the consequences of not having set boundaries until we’re overwhelmed and stressed out. In part 1 of this series, we covered the foundational concepts of successfully setting boundaries with clients, fending off scope creep, and gaining clients’ respect.

In this post, we’ll explain how to set billing standards, how to collect your money without ever being the “bad guy”, and how to clearly demonstrate the value you bring to your clients.

Plus, we'll show you the single most important factor to make your boundaries work for both you and your clients.

Establish standards & gain oversight

In our last post, we discussed the importance of creating a detailed project proposal that explicitly states the scope of your p...

How to Set Boundaries With Your Clients: Part 1

2019-10-15T09:00:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by BQE Core.

All too often architects find themselves dealing with clients and prospects who treat them as employees, rather than fellow business owners (Related: Clients from Hell… and Other Love Stories). Even if your clients aren’t difficult on purpose, they can still have overarching demands.

Maybe this sounds familiar: your client has approved the design development drawings and the project moves on to the next phase...but shortly after, your client asks you to modify the drawing. It’s nothing major, so you do it as a gesture of goodwill to your client. Then another small request comes in, and then another, and pretty soon you find yourself spending time on work that goes beyond the original project scope. And because you don't want to risk upsetting your client, you agree to the work without asking them for more money.

Scope creep, as this scenario is known, harms architects because it results in more than just lost time, money, and resources; it ...

MONU #28 on "Client-Shaped Urbanism" released

2018-04-16T12:47:00-04:00

"Are architects at risk of losing their relevance to the client?" asks Beatriz Ramo in her contribution "Sympathy for the Devil" for MONU's issue #28 that we devote to the topic of "Client-shaped Urbanism". (Bernd Upmeyer, Editor-in-Chief, April 2018)

“Are architects at risk of losing their relevance to the client?” asks Beatriz Ramo in her contribution “Sympathy for the Devil” for MONU’s issue #28 that we devote to the topic of "Client-shaped Urbanism". We consider “clients” to be crucial participants in the shaping and creating of urban spaces. We intend to find out how to improve things, such as the collaboration between client and architect or urban designer, for a more satisfying outcome for everybody involved and above all for the users and inhabitants of cities. For Alejandro Zaera-Polo architects today have not only lost the trust of clients, but also the trust of society to deliver anything culturally significant, because they have been fooling around with idiotic, self-involved ideas for too long and are now viewed with some level of distrust, as he claims in our interview entitled “Project Managers and the End of the Dominatrix Architect”. But he partly blames the clients too for this situation. On the one hand, client...

Five decades later, Richard Meier unites with Smith House clients

2018-02-27T15:37:00-05:00

[...] Richard Meier designed a house on a rocky site on Long Island Sound that exhibited many of the moves that would come to define his career. From the front, the Smith House—located in Darien, Connecticut, and completed in 1967—is a narrow, three-story white box.

Completed in 1967, Smith House was one of Richard Meier's earliest commissions and recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. Judging by a new set of images shot by photographer Mike Schwartz, the building with its light-flooded interior and floor-to-ceiling windows enabling stunning vistas of the Long Island Sound has aged gracefully.

Photo: Mike Schwartz

Marking the occasion, Surface magazine united Meier with Chuck Smith, current co-owner and one of the original clients' two sons who had the privilege of growing up in this modernist masterpiece.

Richard Meier: "The special quality of the house is that it gives you an understanding of the relationship between what’s man-made and what’s natural. The whiteness, of course, highlights that relationship. It reflects and refracts the color of nature in a way it heightens your perception of the landscape around you."

Photo: Mike Schwartz

Read the complete interview here.

Virtual Reality: An Architect’s #1 Marketing and Business Development Tool

2016-08-25T15:05:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by Yulio.

There’s no denying it: Virtual Reality (VR) creates a buzz. It’s exciting and attention-grabbing. It attracts and then holds. And keeps holding. Wherever you go, a pair of goggles instantly draws a crowd.

For businesses in the Architecture and Interior Design industries, VR technology becomes a fantastic marketing and business development opportunity. Telling – or showing – prospects that you’re using VR is great for sparking conversations and leaving lasting first impressions.

For those interested in or actively experimenting with it VR, here’s a few tips for using this technology as a business development and marketing tool in your business.

1. Give a great first impression

Show, don’t tell. The best way to explain what VR can do is to simply hand your client or prospect a pair of goggles. Pre-load it with a sample space, past projects or perhaps even a 360° ‘before’ photo, and let them imagine the possibilities for themselves.

Make sure you know y...

Frank Lloyd Wright puts his foot down in 'a tribute to the pluck of a salesman'

2016-08-18T12:56:00-04:00

Thomas H. Truslow Jr., a general sales manager at Corning Glass Works, proposed a solution of flexible waterproof strips directly to Johnson executives, bypassing Wright. The architect seethed. “Are you then unfamiliar with the way of work with an architect,” he wrote in a typed letter on Nov. 10, 1948. He added an angry question mark in green ink. “The scheme is not the Johnson Company’s,” the typing continued. “It is the architect’s.”

The full, typed letter reads (with handwritten text in bold):

My dear Mr. Truslow: You have the cart before the horse. It is necessary to secure the architect's approval before going to the owner. Are you then unfamiliar with the way of work with an architect - ?

The scheme is not the Johnson's Company's. It is the architect's. Mine.

I shall be in New York at the Plaza Hotel on November 17th.

Sincerely yours,

Frank Lloyd Wright

Yulio offers architects a DIY Virtual Reality platform

2016-07-07T09:00:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by Yulio.

AN INTRODUCTION TO VIRTUAL REALITY

Though Virtual Reality (VR) is yet to truly break into the mainstream consumer market, it’s an industry growing at breakneck speed.

With Deloitte Global predicting a $1bn year for the VR industry this year, and Digi Capital estimating it to hit $30bn by 2020, it won’t be long before VR is in the hands of millions of consumers worldwide.

Yet though initial traction for the industry has been centered around the gaming and entertainment communities, VR is making serious headway as a tool for health, education, and business.

VIRTUAL REALITY FOR ARCHITECTURE AND INTERIOR DESIGN

For an architect or designer, viewing an image of a 3D space is enough to fully visualize the space around them. Yet this is not the case for the clients, who typically lack this ability. Yulio aims to bridge this communication gap through VR technology.

“Virtual Reality technology transforms crucial aspects of the client-engagement experience b...

Start 'em young: teenaged son picks architect for family's house

2015-08-04T14:54:00-04:00

The family hadn’t been in New Jersey long ... and they still missed their previous home, a modernist design that Ms. Wong, in particular, had loved. So Andrew, who was then in eighth grade, suggested commissioning an architect to build a modern house. [...] “being type-A parents ... we thought maybe it would be an experience for him to work with architects and be intrinsically involved in building a house.” [...] "He was interested in design, and they empowered him.”

More teenaged architecture dreams:

Mustn’t Keep the Client Waiting

2014-11-04T14:13:00-05:00

One of my more bizarre travel experiences involved a client in China, who was very excited about our work. [...] By the time we landed, I’d completed the first pass at a design for a three-story villa to be built atop his high-rise. Good thing I did. When I landed, I was whisked directly to a dinner, where I had to present the ideas I’d developed on the plane. By that time I’d been up for nearly two days. [...] I wanted to die, but we did get the business.

Scott Lee, principal and president of global architectural firm SB Architects, shares some of his Frequent Flier stories.