Engineering firms have engineers and drafting staff. Engineers could be junior or senior, but don't waste time drafting. Why can't the same be true in the architectural profession?
May be it's because architects design some thing which has a lot details and everything a new one so it's necessary for them to draw it's by own rather than other people like draft man which needs extra time for teaching and how to do that stuff.
Many firms have drafters, we typically call them 'technologists.' And they're a critical part of any large team, in my experience. (I graduated in 2011 and haven't drafted anything other than schematic plans since maybe 2013. Drafting has been replaced by project management...)
When I graduated from college in the early 70s it was pretty common for many firms to use "drafters" who did not have formal education in architecture. However, around that same time, the number of architectural graduates was expanding rapidly and that trend began to drive down average pay levels for those graduates (supply and demand).
Over the ensuing years, many firms began to adopt the philosophy that it would be better, and more cost effective, to have graduate architects do most of the drafting since -- supposedly -- such graduates would bring a better understanding of the design intent to the contract document and construction administration phases.
Personally, I think what we've ended up with is a large group of graduate architects who hate their jobs, who don't feel like they're doing what they were trained to do, who don't see much prospect for upward mobility, and, for all practical purposes, who aren't necessarily doing a better job at completing the projects than was the case when 'drafters' were more common.
Still, one wonders about the employment situation for graduate architects if firms start going back to the 'drafter' concept. The disruption across the profession would become more terrible than it is now.
quiz, you worry about graduates, and i worry about a profession incapable of recognizing, and activating a group of talented, motivated, and increasingly looking at better ways of engaging and integrating their nascent expertise.
the aia has seen this, many have seen this, younger graduates are aware.
it seems those on the edges of retirement, haven't.
While I was one a few years ago, I completely question the logic of using recent grads for drafting. i.e. people with no drafting skills, never looked at CD set before, no desire to do it. Management usually responds, "oh well they are half your billing rate so even if it takes them twice as long to complete a task its fine." When in reality it takes them about 5x as long and then project techs end up fixing their work anyway.
I worked in a firm with drafters about 20 years ago. It was a very efficient operation. There was a lot of benefit having people that focused only on drafting working drawings. And don't get me started on the skill level of recent graduates, the absolute absence of drafting and working drawings taught in architecture school is staggering. The current situation where I, as an employer, have to teach new graduates all practical architectural job skills stinks.
Jun 3, 17 6:42 pm ·
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archi_dude
So what if you just don't hire recent grads unless they interned and actually have those skills, or just have job techs be your lowest level? I'm just curious about the thought process of hiring recent grads when they really are only proficient at photoshopping plans to look nice.
Jun 3, 17 6:49 pm ·
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thisisnotmyname
I feel an obligation to pay forward the training and opportunities that people were good enough to give me when I was a recent graduate. I did, however, grow up in the business and had 2 years of drafting in high school along with a summer doing CAD in a community college. I don't know where I'd be without that background. Architecture schools in the USA graduate too many people that don't really understand what most architects have to do all day to make a living.
Jun 3, 17 7:14 pm ·
·
thisisnotmyname
We probably will look at hiring job techs in the future. My big question is how they might fit into a BIM workflow. Interns with three years of experience are like gold in our local employment market. Everyone wants to poach the people that someone else has trained to be productive.
It is very unusual in the states, but I too worked at a firm with architectural technicians. These were people with usually 2 year degrees in building technology and CAD from a tech school. It worked really well in my opinion also and as a recent graduate, they taught me a bunch of stuff that I was missing and I enjoyed working with them. Just don't ask them to design anything, but that shouldn't be a problem.
A few years back, our firm researched the 'outsourcing' of drafting to Asia and/or India. That investigation brought all of these same issues into sharp focus for us.
Not only would we be hiring nothing more than 'drafting labor' their work would be done mostly while we were not in the office, making communication and coordination very difficult. And the people doing the drafting half-a-globe away would have incrementally less understanding of our projects and what we were trying to accomplish.
In the end, despite the dirt cheap hourly rates being quoted, we decided such a move would be a false economy for us and would make project control (quality and schedule) incredibly difficult to maintain.
We decided to continue employing graduate architects for all of our technical staff positions.
Jun 3, 17 10:10 pm ·
·
spiketwig
My office has a version of this they push us to use because the billable rates are so cheap. And it's just as awful as you'd imagine - communication is very difficult due to language barriers and time zones, not to mention completely different cultural expectations around asking questions. I just had one of the projects they did a lot of the work on go through construction and the number of RFI's was through the roof. We were checking the drawings, obviously, but it was like playing whack a mole - you correct one thing and another completely different issue would suddenly appear. So fun!
Not to mention that using them makes me feel like we're completely failing our local graduates by outsourcing jobs that should be going to them - where is our next generation coming from if we send everything overseas?
The firm I worked for, having taken on a massive project on the basis that all skills would be provided, then went and hired external consultants to do the work, effectively subcontracting it out. In the process of doing so, they did nothing to provide any leadership or oversight, or even design management of what was being done.
Despite Architects being prominent in the mix of subconsultants, because they were effectively a drafting service only, little to no design development has been done, there has been a glaring shortfall in the quality of the work, and lot of the require scope for the project was intentionally avoided, and 3 years into being on site still remains to be done.
This is an example of the problem with skilled vs unskilled labour, that leaves aside the architect / drafter debate, which has been going on sice before I graduated 22 years ago.
Depending on the project, the right skills mix is what needs to be considered, perhaps having younger architects who may be more in touch with design, working with older drafters who know how to draw and detail so it is buildable. Overseeing this, experienced Architects who have done the work themselves and know where and when to intervene, and how to stop problems created by the younger architects derailing a job.
As tintt described, I put a team of self-employed consultants together per project, including drafters. The team typically consists of consultants that I have worked with in the past.
While the consultants are generally local, most of the coordination of the work is done via a web conference and by phone. For more complex projects, we may have occasional working sessions if needed.
I have been able to keep my overhead costs down, so I can afford to pay a higher fee for an experienced drafting consultant.
Drafting is part of the design process, not some after thought. As one drafts a project in detail, opportunities and errors will reveal themselves. Not a good idea imo to remove this important step from the design minded person.
Jun 4, 17 11:46 am ·
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geezertect
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes !!!!!!! You really don't fully understand the building until it's mostly drawn up. Architects should do most if not all of their own drafting so that they internalize what the documents, which they are liable, say.
Jun 4, 17 12:02 pm ·
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Wilma Buttfit
Agree. It still worked in the firm I worked at because we did many of the same project types over and over again (new construction for schools, hospitals, libraries) and would therefore recycle designs and drawings and the younger architects (under 40) and of course interns were still drafters as well as designers working alongside the techs. Some of the older architects even still drafted during schematics, then had techs finish the drawings for working drawings. It wasn't all or none. Some of the "drafters" were project managers too.
Jun 4, 17 3:26 pm ·
·
spiketwig
totally agree. I absolutely have to draw/draft to make sure the design is coming together as I intend - it's not just production, it's part of the thinking!
There is no better way to understand how buildings go together and function than to draw them in detail, while being mentored by experienced architects. This should be a fundamental aspect of an architect's career path. And it takes years.
The idea that a person should graduate from the GSD and start designing buildings, without having had this experience is a ridiculous one. If this is what the schools are teaching students to expect, they are doing them and the profession a big disservice.
I've worked in a couple US firms that have separate drafting or production departments and design departments. In those firms there tend to be more drafters from technical school backgrounds, or who were trained as CAD drafters in the military. Sometimes "drafters" in these firms also include some people trained as architects - often in other countries. The design department side of these firms includes mostly US-educated architects or not-yet-licensed people from more "designy" or M.Arch programs - usually with several years of experience in other name-brand firms, because whoever gets those designer jobs is as much about how their resumes look in marketing and proposals as it is about their design skills. The drawbacks for those aspiring to be design-oriented architects in these firms are two: 1. the design departments are small in comparison to the production and CA departments, so those design positions are scarce. In one of those firms I was one of 4 designers in a firm of about 120 staff in 6 branch offices. 2. the design may be all yours in early project phases, but a little less so as the project gets to DD, and much less so beyond that. We were expected to be "big idea" people, in generating the parti and the overall aesthetic of a project, but we didn't get much more than an advisory role in the detailing - and wouldn't have had time for more anyway, as we were always expected to step away from the project at that point in order to be on to the next project's conceptual phase.
Currently working in the office where probably less than 5 people ( out of 100 ) who are not using BIM. Fresh grads start from front-end stuff and later on progress to more technical/senior role.
And why would employers hire Arch drafters w/ 2 years academic training vs Master of Arch grads , who would be on the same pay packet.
recent grads may know bim, but they certainly don't know anything about putting a building together. they also have developed bad habits to work around the program because they haven't bothered to do any bim training, they just learn enough to get by.
don't be fooled by the word drafter. I would rather provide bim training for someone who knows how a building is put together vs hiring someone because they know the program and not much else.
I could care less about academic training, creative problem solving can be learned outside of an academic setting. where is the real world problem solving from project experience?
My job is fixing the work of the so-called designers - read below
urbanity
recent grads may know bim, but they certainly don't know anything about putting a building together. they also have developed bad habits to work around the program because they haven't bothered to do any bim training, they just learn enough to get by.
Because many of these hot shoe designers never really bothered to take the time to really learn Revit, they leave all these bad wall joins and other Revit ruin in the project file - Upper management is thinking of pulling the plug and reverting to autocad and bum wad
I thought the entire point of using young graduates to draft was so that they could learn and become licensed architects one day. After all, the only way to really understand stairs or walls is to draw them in section.
I have never worked with a technologist, and would worry that they may understand drafting but not codes and clearances.
Jun 5, 17 12:48 pm ·
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Wilma Buttfit
The ones I worked with knew codes and clearances. The only thing they couldn't do was design.
Jun 5, 17 1:03 pm ·
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On the fence
Except M. Arch. graduates don't want to spend more than a week or two learning about stairs or walls these days. Think "fast track" when it comes to these people.
a technologist is a Revit modeler - period - no design
Jun 5, 17 2:09 pm ·
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Non Sequitur
X... my office just had a project go down in flames because of a self-proclaimed intermediate tech playing revit modeler. I had to pull away from my own projects and do 3 weeks worth of damage control. Not fun.
Jun 5, 17 9:27 pm ·
·
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Drafting Staff vs Architecture Graduates
Engineering firms have engineers and drafting staff. Engineers could be junior or senior, but don't waste time drafting. Why can't the same be true in the architectural profession?
May be it's because architects design some thing which has a lot details and everything a new one so it's necessary for them to draw it's by own rather than other people like draft man which needs extra time for teaching and how to do that stuff.
Too few projects, too many wannabe-designers. Myself included
Many firms have drafters, we typically call them 'technologists.' And they're a critical part of any large team, in my experience. (I graduated in 2011 and haven't drafted anything other than schematic plans since maybe 2013. Drafting has been replaced by project management...)
When I graduated from college in the early 70s it was pretty common for many firms to use "drafters" who did not have formal education in architecture. However, around that same time, the number of architectural graduates was expanding rapidly and that trend began to drive down average pay levels for those graduates (supply and demand).
Over the ensuing years, many firms began to adopt the philosophy that it would be better, and more cost effective, to have graduate architects do most of the drafting since -- supposedly -- such graduates would bring a better understanding of the design intent to the contract document and construction administration phases.
Personally, I think what we've ended up with is a large group of graduate architects who hate their jobs, who don't feel like they're doing what they were trained to do, who don't see much prospect for upward mobility, and, for all practical purposes, who aren't necessarily doing a better job at completing the projects than was the case when 'drafters' were more common.
Still, one wonders about the employment situation for graduate architects if firms start going back to the 'drafter' concept. The disruption across the profession would become more terrible than it is now.
quiz, you worry about graduates, and i worry about a profession incapable of recognizing, and activating a group of talented, motivated, and increasingly looking at better ways of engaging and integrating their nascent expertise.
the aia has seen this, many have seen this, younger graduates are aware.
it seems those on the edges of retirement, haven't.
fcuk.
quizzical for the win^
While I was one a few years ago, I completely question the logic of using recent grads for drafting. i.e. people with no drafting skills, never looked at CD set before, no desire to do it. Management usually responds, "oh well they are half your billing rate so even if it takes them twice as long to complete a task its fine." When in reality it takes them about 5x as long and then project techs end up fixing their work anyway.
I worked in a firm with drafters about 20 years ago. It was a very efficient operation. There was a lot of benefit having people that focused only on drafting working drawings. And don't get me started on the skill level of recent graduates, the absolute absence of drafting and working drawings taught in architecture school is staggering. The current situation where I, as an employer, have to teach new graduates all practical architectural job skills stinks.
So what if you just don't hire recent grads unless they interned and actually have those skills, or just have job techs be your lowest level? I'm just curious about the thought process of hiring recent grads when they really are only proficient at photoshopping plans to look nice.
I feel an obligation to pay forward the training and opportunities that people were good enough to give me when I was a recent graduate. I did, however, grow up in the business and had 2 years of drafting in high school along with a summer doing CAD in a community college. I don't know where I'd be without that background. Architecture schools in the USA graduate too many people that don't really understand what most architects have to do all day to make a living.
We probably will look at hiring job techs in the future. My big question is how they might fit into a BIM workflow. Interns with three years of experience are like gold in our local employment market. Everyone wants to poach the people that someone else has trained to be productive.
It is very unusual in the states, but I too worked at a firm with architectural technicians. These were people with usually 2 year degrees in building technology and CAD from a tech school. It worked really well in my opinion also and as a recent graduate, they taught me a bunch of stuff that I was missing and I enjoyed working with them. Just don't ask them to design anything, but that shouldn't be a problem.
A few years back, our firm researched the 'outsourcing' of drafting to Asia and/or India. That investigation brought all of these same issues into sharp focus for us.
Not only would we be hiring nothing more than 'drafting labor' their work would be done mostly while we were not in the office, making communication and coordination very difficult. And the people doing the drafting half-a-globe away would have incrementally less understanding of our projects and what we were trying to accomplish.
In the end, despite the dirt cheap hourly rates being quoted, we decided such a move would be a false economy for us and would make project control (quality and schedule) incredibly difficult to maintain.
We decided to continue employing graduate architects for all of our technical staff positions.
My office has a version of this they push us to use because the billable rates are so cheap. And it's just as awful as you'd imagine - communication is very difficult due to language barriers and time zones, not to mention completely different cultural expectations around asking questions. I just had one of the projects they did a lot of the work on go through construction and the number of RFI's was through the roof. We were checking the drawings, obviously, but it was like playing whack a mole - you correct one thing and another completely different issue would suddenly appear. So fun!
Not to mention that using them makes me feel like we're completely failing our local graduates by outsourcing jobs that should be going to them - where is our next generation coming from if we send everything overseas?
The firm I worked for, having taken on a massive project on the basis that all skills would be provided, then went and hired external consultants to do the work, effectively subcontracting it out. In the process of doing so, they did nothing to provide any leadership or oversight, or even design management of what was being done.
Despite Architects being prominent in the mix of subconsultants, because they were effectively a drafting service only, little to no design development has been done, there has been a glaring shortfall in the quality of the work, and lot of the require scope for the project was intentionally avoided, and 3 years into being on site still remains to be done.
This is an example of the problem with skilled vs unskilled labour, that leaves aside the architect / drafter debate, which has been going on sice before I graduated 22 years ago.
Depending on the project, the right skills mix is what needs to be considered, perhaps having younger architects who may be more in touch with design, working with older drafters who know how to draw and detail so it is buildable. Overseeing this, experienced Architects who have done the work themselves and know where and when to intervene, and how to stop problems created by the younger architects derailing a job.
As tintt described, I put a team of self-employed consultants together per project, including drafters. The team typically consists of consultants that I have worked with in the past.
While the consultants are generally local, most of the coordination of the work is done via a web conference and by phone. For more complex projects, we may have occasional working sessions if needed.
I have been able to keep my overhead costs down, so I can afford to pay a higher fee for an experienced drafting consultant.
Drafting is part of the design process, not some after thought. As one drafts a project in detail, opportunities and errors will reveal themselves. Not a good idea imo to remove this important step from the design minded person.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes !!!!!!! You really don't fully understand the building until it's mostly drawn up. Architects should do most if not all of their own drafting so that they internalize what the documents, which they are liable, say.
Agree. It still worked in the firm I worked at because we did many of the same project types over and over again (new construction for schools, hospitals, libraries) and would therefore recycle designs and drawings and the younger architects (under 40) and of course interns were still drafters as well as designers working alongside the techs. Some of the older architects even still drafted during schematics, then had techs finish the drawings for working drawings. It wasn't all or none. Some of the "drafters" were project managers too.
totally agree. I absolutely have to draw/draft to make sure the design is coming together as I intend - it's not just production, it's part of the thinking!
There is no better way to understand how buildings go together and function than to draw them in detail, while being mentored by experienced architects. This should be a fundamental aspect of an architect's career path. And it takes years.
The idea that a person should graduate from the GSD and start designing buildings, without having had this experience is a ridiculous one. If this is what the schools are teaching students to expect, they are doing them and the profession a big disservice.
I've worked in a couple US firms that have separate drafting or production departments and design departments. In those firms there tend to be more drafters from technical school backgrounds, or who were trained as CAD drafters in the military. Sometimes "drafters" in these firms also include some people trained as architects - often in other countries. The design department side of these firms includes mostly US-educated architects or not-yet-licensed people from more "designy" or M.Arch programs - usually with several years of experience in other name-brand firms, because whoever gets those designer jobs is as much about how their resumes look in marketing and proposals as it is about their design skills. The drawbacks for those aspiring to be design-oriented architects in these firms are two: 1. the design departments are small in comparison to the production and CA departments, so those design positions are scarce. In one of those firms I was one of 4 designers in a firm of about 120 staff in 6 branch offices. 2. the design may be all yours in early project phases, but a little less so as the project gets to DD, and much less so beyond that. We were expected to be "big idea" people, in generating the parti and the overall aesthetic of a project, but we didn't get much more than an advisory role in the detailing - and wouldn't have had time for more anyway, as we were always expected to step away from the project at that point in order to be on to the next project's conceptual phase.
Arent we all BIM modellers now ?
Currently working in the office where probably less than 5 people ( out of 100 ) who are not using BIM. Fresh grads start from front-end stuff and later on progress to more technical/senior role.
And why would employers hire Arch drafters w/ 2 years academic training vs Master of Arch grads , who would be on the same pay packet.
To answer the question , BIM.
recent grads may know bim, but they certainly don't know anything about putting a building together. they also have developed bad habits to work around the program because they haven't bothered to do any bim training, they just learn enough to get by.
don't be fooled by the word drafter. I would rather provide bim training for someone who knows how a building is put together vs hiring someone because they know the program and not much else.
I could care less about academic training, creative problem solving can be learned outside of an academic setting. where is the real world problem solving from project experience?
I'm a "technologist:
My job is fixing the work of the so-called designers - read below
urbanity
recent grads may know bim, but they certainly don't know anything about putting a building together. they also have developed bad habits to work around the program because they haven't bothered to do any bim training, they just learn enough to get by.
Because many of these hot shoe designers never really bothered to take the time to really learn Revit, they leave all these bad wall joins and other Revit ruin in the project file - Upper management is thinking of pulling the plug and reverting to autocad and bum wad
We don't have them, anymore, because architects as well as intern architects think too much of themselves these days.
Indispensable. When in truth, a drafter would be fine, if the architect would start to look at the drawings that he signs his/her name to.
I thought the entire point of using young graduates to draft was so that they could learn and become licensed architects one day. After all, the only way to really understand stairs or walls is to draw them in section.
I have never worked with a technologist, and would worry that they may understand drafting but not codes and clearances.
The ones I worked with knew codes and clearances. The only thing they couldn't do was design.
Except M. Arch. graduates don't want to spend more than a week or two learning about stairs or walls these days. Think "fast track" when it comes to these people.
technologists have to have architecture degrees B.arch or M.arch - B.A. min
so what is the difference between a technologist and an intern architect?
a technologist is a Revit modeler - period - no design
X... my office just had a project go down in flames because of a self-proclaimed intermediate tech playing revit modeler. I had to pull away from my own projects and do 3 weeks worth of damage control. Not fun.
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