Maturing

As your new practice emerges from the early, sometimes painful, setup stage and begins to consolidate its position in the market, you will gradually need to take a different approach to running the business. Habits, good and bad, will have taken root, commitments will have been made and a track record will have built you a reputation among clients and others. You may still view the practice as young, up-and-coming and thrusting, and that view may stay with you for ever, but you also need to build on the work that has been achieved and to break free of any early typecasting that may be restricting your growth.

The problems of running an established business are different from those involved in setting one up. Keeping a steady workflow and ensuring that the monthly billing target is achieved become matters of much more importance. There is greater complexity, with jobs now at very different stages and needing varying degrees of attention, more management effort is required and you suddenly have new competitors coming up on the inside track.

No one wants the practice to become stuck in its ways. It needs to maintain the vigour of its earliest period, to stay up to date and be able to reinvent itself, as and when necessary, to improve its competitiveness for both clients and staff. At the same time, the appetite for the long hours and late nights may have dimmed, and you will want and need to achieve a better work–life balance.

Benchmarking

Find out how you measure up as a practice in comparison with other businesses – your peers and competition. Benchmarking has now become a standard business tool to help companies assess their performance against a series of measures and to compare the results with other anonymous firms, both in their business sector and beyond. It can be used as a DIY tool, using your own chosen criteria, or as a formal process that will provide standardised results.

The RIBA provides a benchmarking service as part of its Chartered Practice Scheme (www.architecture.com) and a bespoke benchmarking service, aimed specifically at architectural practices, is available from Colander (www.colander.co.uk). There are also many other, less architect-specific, benchmarking services available.

Reviewing

Periodically and regularly review the development of the practice, allowing for specific time-outs with partners or directors and discussions with staff, clients, advisers and fellow consultants. Check against the original vision and practice objectives and take corrective action as necessary.

Office manual

Take stock of what you and the practice know. This guide has emphasised the desirability of capturing your knowledge as it is learnt and developed. Consider whether you are using this knowledge effectively and how it might serve you better. If appropriate, formalise and develop the office procedures into a more effective tool, possibly in the form of an office manual or as part of your quality management system (QMS).

An office manual should be as comprehensive and up-to-date as is reasonable, as well as being easy to navigate and accessible for a newcomer to the practice. The manual should give a clear understanding of the practice approach and means of dealing with a wide range of situations. The QMS will amplify this and provide greater detail and depth. A single person in the office should have responsibility for both the manual and the QMS. See overleaf for possible outline contents of an office manual.

Quality management

You may want to take this process further and achieve a recognised quality management system standard. The best known of these standards is the ISO (International Standards Organization) 9000 series, which includes ISO 9001:2008 certification, administered by the British Standards Institute (see www.bsi-global.com). Also known as quality accreditation or quality assurance (both QA), such standards are intended to help you to:

• achieve greater consistency
• reduce mistakes
• increase efficiency
• improve customer satisfaction
• market your business more effectively and in new sectors and areas
• manage growth more effectively
• continually improve your products and services.

Certification may not necessarily improve the quality of your product or the service you give to your clients. However, you may find that many clients, especially those from the public sector, will require their suppliers and consultants to have ISO 9001 certification and so you might lose business and business opportunities if you do not obtain it.

If you choose to become an RIBA Chartered Practice you will be required to operate a QMS of an appropriate size although full accreditation is possible for both medium and small practices.

• Practices with up to ten staff should use the RIBA Project Quality Plan for Small Projects (PQPSP) or another plan of an equivalent standard.
• Medium sized practices of between 11 and 50 members of staff need to use the full RIBA Quality Management Toolkit or an equal or better equivalent. The toolkit incorporates the PQPSP.
• Large practices of over 50 need to be externally certified to BS EN ISO 9001: 2008.

If you do intend to seek certification you are well advised to seek assistance from an external specialist consultant in order to develop your quality management system fully in advance. Achieving certification requires assessment and approval from a recognised accredited certification body, payment of fees for certification assessments, occasional surveillance visits thereafter and annual registration. It does not come cheap, but it may prove necessary and worthwhile.

Workload

After several years of practice, the workload should have matured too. Ideally, you will have fewer small awkward projects that struggle to be profitable and a greater proportion of larger and possibly more challenging jobs. You may have successfully obtained a regular flow of work from mainstream clients and such work will have brought with it more established staffing and resourcing patterns.

Assess your workload to see if it is providing:

• a range of different projects to balance cross-sectoral risk
• a range of clients and types of clients, with no more than 25% of fee income from a single source
• projects at different work stages
• bread-and-butter work, coming in at a regular pace
• higher profile projects that can help promote the practice
• commissions that can help the practice develop and maintain specialisms or expertise in key areas
• work from growth sectors of the economy
• a match between staffing levels and workload
• work to enthuse and retain yourself and your staff
• new clients and new building types.

With more of a track record and greater experience, marketing the practice and bringing in work should become more straightforward – but you may also find that more depends on you maintaining that workflow. There will be a constant need for a stream of new work to replace that currently underway in the office, and as the moment requiring the greatest effort to achieve this will be when the practice is at its busiest, there may never be any time to let up.

Skills

As the workload shifts, so will the need to ensure that the practice maintains the right skills to attract new work and to carry it out. New skills will be required, following changes in the market, developments in ideas, products and technology and simply as part of keeping up to date. Some of these skills can be developed among existing staff as part of training and CPD, others may require recruitment of new personnel.

The practice will need to keep track of the range of skills it requires and can develop or afford. Action will be required to maintain and achieve the right mixture and level of skills, experience and enthusiasm if the practice is to stay on top of its game.

The practice may also wish to take on students as part of the staff mix. This will involve commitment to providing training and experience as well as work and pay. In turn the practice may gain considerably from the recent training, curiosity and freshness that a student can bring. The RIBA has published guidance on employing students, including model contracts, which is available from its Professional Education and Development Resource website (www.pedr.co.uk).

Planning for disaster

Disaster may also strike, and in many different ways. Some disasters may be so extreme that recovery from them will only be worked out at the time. However, many potentially catastrophic events happen on a regular basis to all sorts of businesses and are largely predictable. Such events can and should be planned for, as well as insured against.

• Natural disasters – including floods, burst water pipes (due to cold weather), storm damage, etc. The likelihoods will vary depending on your location. Consider measures that can prevent avoidable damage and allow you to carry on elsewhere almost immediately should it happen.
• Theft – especially of equipment and, potentially, of stored information. Ensure that office premises are secure – install security devices and alarms as necessary. Maintain a register of all your equipment, recording serial numbers and values. Follow up with regular checks and audits. Allocate responsibility for items of equipment to individuals. Lock equipment to furniture or the building fabric. Permanently mark or electronically tag equipment. Regularly or automatically back up information and store it securely, away from the main site.
• Online theft, fraud, impersonation, hacking – the dangers of unauthorised access to your computer systems are frequently discussed and can badly damage a business. Maintain high levels of online security and encourage vigilance. Take appropriate advice and keep up to date.
• Vandalism – physical vandalism and computer viruses, etc. can disable your business. Take precautionary measures to protect staff, premises and equipment.
• Fire and explosion – can be devastating for a business, but loss of information can be far worse than the loss of premises or equipment.
• Illness or incapacity of key staff – can strike at any time. How might you cope? Is all relevant information recorded in a clear manner to allow work to be picked up by other members of staff? Are you insured?
• Legal action or a formal complaint – whether from clients, contractors, employees or others, and whether reasonable or not, may need to be defended. How would you find the time, energy, costs and relevant advice to deal with such a threat?
• Damage to reputation – How would you respond to negative press stories or scares? Would you know whom you could request assistance from to help manage the issue?

Work–life balance

However it may seem at the time, there is a life beyond architecture and the making of buildings. Around any company there is a wider community of people – friends, relatives and dependants – who need attention as much as the people in the office. Ensure they are all treated with consideration and imagination.

Allow for adequate holidays and time off for sickness or for family matters, and allow the greater richness of the world beyond the office to fully inform the way you run your practice.