<p>Aliasto, let me see if I can answer a couple of your questions;</p>
<p>Do project managers need to know architecture very well? Yes, a good project manager is a highly skilled and knowledgeable individual who can orchestrate the team, the consultants, the owner (by far the toughest to manage), the contractor, and all the regulatory issues. He needs to be able to fight for and maintain design quality, manage the work so we turn a profit, and deal with contractual issues so they do not put the firm at risk. Many of these folks were very talented coming out of school and have decided that they would rather be a conductor than a musician. Good PM’s also tend to generate strong customer loyalty and repeat work, and as such they are typically well compensated.</p>
<p>How do architects get work? We typically do not bid on work, we typically negotiate fees after we are selected, though fees can also be included as part of the selection process. Probably 60% or more of our work involves repeat projects. There are primarily three ways we get new projects;</p>
<p>1) Community involvement; we spend a lot of time getting involved in the communities in which we work. By meeting as many people as possible we hope they will think of us when they have a building project. This may be the cities in which we work (chamber of commerce, charity boards, country club memberships, planning boards, etc.), or the professional communities (hospital conferences, church conferences, etc.). This is the realm of the marketing partner.</p>
<p>2) Building type expertise; here you have designed the buildings that an owner admires and so they want you to design their building. In a museum project this might be purely the quality of your design portfolio, for a lab building it might be a unique technical challenge that you have mastered. In most cases this expertise will not win you the job outright, it will just get you onto a shortlist of firms so you can then interview or compete for the project.</p>
<p>3) Design competitions; you submit a design for either an invited competition (a small group of invited firms), or an open competition (anybody can enter) and the owner selects the schemes he likes the most. Sometimes you get a small stipend, sometimes you don’t. This is very common in Asia and Europe, not as common in the U.S. This is a very expensive way to procure work, but it can give young firms a better shot at unseating a large established firm.</p>
<p>Particularly in todays economy, thinking about how to get our next job occupies at least 50% of my waking thoughts (and I am not the marketing principal). That is just the reality of our profession; we live from project to project.</p>
<p>rick</p>