Depends, are they already working 10 hour days?

Everyone should take advantage of available mass transit, or car pooiing. Besides being the right thing to do, there are financial incentives available to encourage mass transit use.

At our office, we work 4 nine hour days and four hours on friday to get a longer weekend. Major urban location, so everyone takes mass transit, some even ride their bike. The only staff that drives, do so to get to their local commuter train stations.

Most weeks, most work longer than 9 during the week and we usually work a full friday. Some staff comes in on weekends as well, due to the workload.

The cost of fuel is probably going to continue to go up, and stay up. I'd suggest you find other ways to conserve, or provide creative incentives for alternate transportation, unless you want to go to a permanent 4 day week.

We say yes to the 4 day work week.

i'd like more three day weekends...even if we have to go to an eight day week to get them

how about leap day once a month...asssuming it's a hoiiday

time to get creative with the schedule...word!

and that don cherry...wtf!?!...where does that guy buy his clothes?...can it get any weirder than tonight?...that shit would put lily pulitzer to shame

not that i've ever bought anyting from lily...that would totally not be me...at all

actually...the thing about a 4 day (10 hours per) week for architects is that you are basically just giving them a day off per week...seems like an atrocious idea from an employer's perspective

I absolutely love this idea and have been pushing it at the places I've worked for quite some time, gas prices aside.

yeah, if architects actually had a 40 hour work week to begin with, i think getting it all done in 4 days and having a 3 day weekend would be GREAT. unfortunately this is an industry that generally kills your freetime, your extracurriciular life...so yeah, ugh.

personally, i've always wanted to work nurses' hours: 4, 12 hr shifts per week. i much prefer working intensely for a long period of time, as in school. however, like nic ben said, this idea would only be realistic in a 9-5 office.

certain corporate firms have adopted a 9 hour workday, and fridays off every other week...or something to the like.

it think this is an excellent idea.

4 day? work weak.

We have done the 9 hours m-th and 4 on Friday during summer. As long as the office was staffed until 5pm. It worked well.

btw labor laws actually prohibit the alternate Friday. The employer is responsible for over time in the long week.

are there people who actually like working 50+ hours a week?

I tend to work about 45. I am a recovering workaholic. I used to work 60-80. I did enjoy it. I needed it. My hours worked were my badge of honor. Then I had my zen moment and now enjoy other things too. My work week has been caped at 50 for two years.

: a few years back, I worked for a firm that did the "alternating Fridays off" thing. They kept clear of the labor laws by defining their work week as starting at noon on Friday and ending at noon on the following Friday. By working four 9-hour days M-Th each week and an 8-hour day every other Friday, each 'official' work week was exactly 40-hours.

by the way, that approach makes timesheet administration a bitch - but, the staff eventually gets used to the complexities.

Once I finish school (oh, in about 6 years, ha) I am going to start a firm where the main premise is that we only work 30 hours a week.

No, really.

I think this is possible because most architects spend so long studying tons of different options when the first thing you think of is usually quite good too. So if we make a point of being super efficient, I think it's doable.

30 hours would be nice. However, the execution of the design is 90 percent of the work. Yes, systems, general notes, details and what not can help with efficiency but there is always a net amount of time that will be required.

More than likely it will take more than 30 hrs / week.

wait, your office has a 5-day workweek? that's 1.5 days off mroe than i get!

we do 9 hour days and every other friday off. its awesome.

The web company 37 Signals has gone to a four day work week:

http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/966-urgency-is-poisonous

"One thing I’ve come to realize is that urgency is overrated. In fact, I’ve come to believe urgency is poisonous. Urgency may get things done a few days sooner, but what does it cost in morale? Few things burn morale like urgency. Urgency is acidic."

True, urgency is poison to morale. Imagine doing an all nighter to complete only to find out the client just took a quick trip to Vegas and won't be back for three days.

One of the reasons why we are looking at the four day week is that our time constraints are fabrications.

More often than not, for us, getting the project finished is not time sensitive. The planning offices, the civil, or the developer are always backed up that one more day (or week) just doesn't matter.

You need to pace yourself.

Life is a marathon. Not a sprint!

I worked in a firm with a 4 day work week if you desired. We were ask to clarify we were working a four day week at the start of the week
for general office scheduling. So not everyone was working a four day week, some people worked days with less hours. It seemed to work rather well. There was only on condition....that is if you had a job meeting scheduled on a Friday you were expected to be there.
It was rather nice during the winter because we planned a number of
long weekend ski trips and Friday was always less crowded.

i say yes to the 4 hour week...in a perfect world.

I've had (mixed) experience with this in three different firms:

Firm 1: In the mid 90s I worked in a firm in NYC that claimed to have the 4-day workweek with every Friday off in the summers. It seemed to be the trend at the time - most of the firms I interviewed with had this "summer hours" schedule. Most of them also started their days relatively late (most people came in around 9:30 to 10:30 am, so a 10-hour day went into the evening.) But the reality of it was that at least 60% of all summer Fridays were declared to be "deadline emergencies" and everybody had to work anyway. So overall not at all a good system for morale, since we were really working at least 50 hours per week (and often more like 75).

Firm 2: Small firm that decided to do the 4 10-hour days, but decided that some people should take off Mondays and some Fridays, and for some reason a couple people decided to take Wednesdays. This way the firm was always staffed, phones answered, & clients didn't notice a difference. I think it was also because the principal preferred when there were fewer people working & things were quieter (he worked every day).
It worked ok, though there were a certain amount of coordination & supervision issues on projects - things got kind of disjointed because of so few days with everybody there at the same time.

Firm 3: The firm allowed anybody who'd been with the firm at least a year to write their own schedule - as long as project meetings and such were covered - so the four 10-hour days thing was fairly popular. Again there were some coordination issues, but they were a little better because everybody was required to be there for Tuesday morning meetings. There were some times approaching deadlines when the flexible scheduling was pretty much suspended, but they were few and far between - not like at Firm 1. I took off parts of two days per week for a couple years, to teach, and worked longer hours on the other days, and that worked fine.

As for labor laws: they vary somewhat from state to state, but for the most part architects fall into the Professional Exempt category and aren't required to be paid overtime. Usually the Dept. of Labor finds that only architecture firm employees who have less than one year of full time experience or who do not hold professional degrees must get paid overtime. Everybody else can be salaried and then systems like the alternate Friday schedule shouldn't pose any problem.

folks in my office keep saying that inventions shouldve
stopped at the bike

formerly -- yes, you are correct in what you say above about exempt employees ... but I'm reasonably convinced there aren't any design firms out there who don't employ at least a few non-exempt personnel ... you still have to deal with them, no matter how you deal with your professional employees.

Yeah, I think that's why the third firm I worked for above did not allow those with less than 1 year with the firm to have a flexible schedule (that took care of the people who might be classified non-exempt because of lack of experience.) There were no people in any of the firms I mentioned who would have been classified as non-exempt because of lack of a professional degree (no tech school CAD drafters, for example), except for an office manager/receptionist in the NYC firm - and she was not part of the 4-day schedule there because they wanted full time phone coverage.

If you do have non-exempt employees and you want to go to a strange schedule but avoid paying any overtime you would either have to do what BlueGoose is describing, and get creative with what constitutes a pay period, or you'd have to have different rules for different people in the firm.

dsc_arch:

How many of your staff have kids? We tried the 4-10's and only the single folks really took advantage of it, even in the summer. You still had to work your 40 (min) but it still ended up that you were working 9-5 m-f, to get around the kid's school, camp, sports, or whatever. Just to add to the mix...

they should have their kids come to work and help build models

Only the partners have kids.

The schedule would allow for less daycare / camp costs

I have experience with the "summer hours" thing and emaze is right, everyone with kids bitched and moaned about it. Daycare isn't changing their schedule to work with mine. However, that was back when $2 gasoline was expensive and people could afford more driving over scheduling inconvenience.

Dropping one day of commuting is a start, and a 10 hour work day can get you there, but I've got a feeling employees will start demanding telecommuting. Dropping that 5 day commute to 3 or less.

We have always done the 4-day work week for those that want to take advantage. All it really is a flexible time table that allows for parenting, lifestyle, and a mature choice of schedule.

We have 5 - 9.5hr days a week. But we get about an extra day off a month. Usually it is scheduled on the friday before or monday after a 3 day weekend...thus giving us a 4 day weekend. We can also schedule to work that day and take the "flexday" to coordinate w/ our personal vacations or personal life.

We are also doing this thing which you may have herd of called the 2030 challenge. In that we are doing the 2010 challenge which is to get the office facility itself to be a net zero(or as close as we can get to it) This challenge deals with how employees get to work, office garbage, office elec-water-gas consumption, the kind of projects we are putting out of the office.....etc.

Our principals husbands office made a GHG Calculator for his offices 2010 challenge and passed down the information to us. And I pass it on to you. It might be a little hard to understand, but once yuo look through the whole document you should get the picture. Its just an excel document that all you have to do is plug in numbers. This spreadsheet should make managing overall consumption in your office ALOT easier! GOOD LUCK!!!

Telecommuting is out. As per the recent interpretation of the IL Licensing Act….

STATEMENT OF COMPLIANCE:
I HAVE PREPARED, OR CAUSED TO BE PREPARED UNDER MY DIRECT SUPERVISION, THE ATTACHED PLANS AND SPECIFICATIONS AND STATE THAT TO THE BEST OF MY KNOWLEDGE, BELIEF AND EXTENT OF MY CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATION, THAT THEY ARE IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE "ENVIRONMENTAL BARRIERS ACT," THE ILLINOIS ACCESSIBILITY CODE (71 ILL. ADM CODE 400) AND THE LOCAL BUILDING CODES AND ORDINANCES.

This means the following:
1. All work needs to be done in house, in the office and no outside drafting services.
2 All overtime work of interns shall be time and one half. Interns are not able to discern how the work is to be completed therefore they are a non exempt employee.

See also: http://www.idfpr.com/dpr/who/AR/Design_Code_Manual.pdf

dsc: I was working in a large firm in IL a couple years ago when the firm got their time sheets and payroll audited over the overtime issue, and the end ruling was pretty much as someone mentioned above: interns with NAAB degrees and a year of experience were deemed to have enough managerial control of their deadlines and work that they are exempt. The firm had to pay some back overtime to techs and summer student interns though. Also the board had something in one of their meeting minutes back around that time about the regs not being meant to prohibit people working from home. I think you or your firm might be reading the regs more strictly than they're intended.

My experience with 4 day weeks has been that some people decide not to take advantage of it - sometimes the people with kids whose schedules don't work well that way. I sometimes decided to work the 5 day week just because 10 hours is a long day especially in the summer, and also Friday was a nice quiet day - with most everybody else gone I could get things done with minimal interruption.

They do the alternating Friday's off thing in Calgary, everyone does this b/c otherwise they can't get enough job applicants.
Some companies have even offered three day work weeks (something like 3 12hr days and 4 hours at home), I'd heard of one place doing shift work that has people work only Sat and Sun for 12 hours each day at straight time, they've got a waitlist for those hours, and the company saves having to pay them time and a half on Sat and double time on Sun.

I'm on flex time here and I love it, I'd prefer to telecommute at least part of my time, partly b/c I have a long commute and partly b/c I get more work done at home with no distractions. I know several people that work from home almost exclusively and only go into work once or twice a week for meetings and other face to face activities on scheduled days (ie. when everyone is there).

but zig, Calgary is a boomtown right now thanks to all the oil money flowing into the area. If things were more moderately paced would firms offer the same flexibility? I imagine the firms up there are desperate for people...and knowing how Canadians in the east feel about Alberta, I doubt many are moving out there to fill the void.

aqua,
b/c Calg is a boom town, the firms HAVE to offer flexible schedules, if it weren't I'm not sure firms would offer these schedules.

"knowing how Canadians in the east feel about Alberta, I doubt many are moving out there to fill the void. "
I know of many east coasters who have moved to Alberta, they fly em in as fast as they can, the exorbitant pay checks seem to help too. I'm in Ontario but I spent some time in the Calg and I loved it, got me a nice pair of boots too, yee haw! Besides the people we're more entertaining over there none of this lovey dovey Liberal party nonsense over there ;-) <------that should zing this thread up a bit

france: 35 hour week and 5 weeks vacation or 40 hour week with 8 weeks vacation.

I love Europe!

recent story from construction site:
supervisor noticed that one of the men was working four days per week instead of five. when he confronted the man why he was working four days the reply was "because i don't make enough money in three days to spend the rest of the week fishing."

Ha ha Zig, Canadian politics amuse me. We always hear about the US being a "nation divided." Canada is equally as bad or worse. I married into a Canadian family and find it interesting how different the east vs. west mindset is, especially in regard to the US. However, I do agree that Albertan's are some of the nicest people you could run across.

I do think that places like Chicago, Minneapolis, Indinapolis, etc. would be offereing more flexible schedules if Alberta shut off some of the 1.78 mln barrels/day that flow into the upper midwest and keep our commutes humming.

Once we start seeing 1970's style supply disruptions in our energy I think employers will be forced to drastically change the workday. That's going to be the straw to break the camel's back, not pump prices alone.

4.5 day work week is the best in the world!!! I'm out of here in 23 minutes....

"it really is a flexible time table that allows for parenting, lifestyle, and a mature choice of schedule."

Whistler... uh, wow.... Whenever you have a minute, I'd like you call my bosses and explain the facts of life to them. Either that or send me a job app... no hurry... by the end of today will work.

Well I'm in here by myself and multi-tasking today, but managed to ride my bike to school with my daughter, continued on a longer ride for me, did laundry ( home office ) completed the rezoning application for client, going to get my hair cut in ten minutes, walk dog, then redesign a spa project with green roof assemblies vs pitched roofs, coach soccer later in day for son's team, then off to dinner with clients.

Its a busy today!

what about comments of consultants or demands from clients...will they wait 3 days ?? i guess we architects need to be alert and ready anytime. and not to be logged off for 3 days

I worked for a firm that did 9 hour days withe every other Friday off during the summer. The off Fridays were scheduled to coincide with Monday holidays whenever possible.
(Got to try and get that adopted here.)

do architects in europe get the same great hours that european civil servants get? by that i mean 35-40 hour weeks and 4-8 weeks paid holiday?