The newly updated AIA Firm Survey Report 2024 from the American Institute of Architects has been published, revealing the dynamics at play for firms in a rapidly consolidating market and increasingly fragmented profession.

The report assesses answers from more than 1,200 firm respondents and provides insights into factors such as the flight of new projects toward the commercial and institutional sectors and a subsequent decline of involvement with new single-family and manufacturing sector designs nationwide.

Incumbent trends such as higher rates of diversity amongst the youngest employee age groups, the decline of single-discipline firms, and cascading average firm age relative to their sizes (e.g. older firms tend to be larger) remained as constants in the firm and staff profile subsection.

Among the survey’s findings that have bearings on professional practice, many should note the reluctance of most (72%) small firms to incorporate AI into their day-to-day workflows versus that of large practices (39%) and the national average, which is approximately one-third. 

A new resource introduced along with it is the firm performance calculator that allows users to compare their own firms’ metrics against the survey questions as they are broken down by region, firm size, and/or specialization for a fee. 

Many other important insights, including the net billings per employee, the process and methods used for project delivery, integration of research initiatives into practice, and preference for cloud computing and other technologies, are among the report's other valuable takeaways.

The AIA promises this as the "only report that covers the full complexity of firms that power the architecture and design profession." It follows July's release of the Mid-2024 Consensus Construction Forecast. 

As a final note, the average amount of debt shown to be carried by firms of all sizes in 2023 was $71,400.