Advantages to hiring a small architectural firm

Many investors, who are building office buildings, large-scale industrial facilities, or even single-family dwellings, lean toward hiring big Architectural Firms. However, this many not give you the advantages you are seeking. Hiring a sole practitioner or smaller firm gives you advantages in cost, vision, collaboration and effectiveness.

Cost

Cost wise, simply put, a big firm has more mouths to feed. During these challenging financial times there is also a risk that a big firm will go out of business or be unable to maintain their payroll and you might lose a beloved project manager, or talented designer through layoffs.

Vision

When you hire a sole architect rather than a big firm you won’t have to worry about the meshing of more personalities into your design. It will be your ideas combined with your architect’s skills, artistic vision and knowledge about local codes that will transform them into reality. You get who you interviewed, not whom ever the CEO sticks you with after a flashy presentation.

Collaboration 

The sole architect has more direct influence on every aspect of the project. Your architect will be the one choosing appropriate subcontractors for aspects of your job such as plumbing, lighting, or landscape engineering. A small firm usually has people that they are already familiar with working on projects with them. They already get along well, and already know each other’s styles. Since the contractors are not employees they would not work for the same person again and again if they were difficult. Whereas an employee may not have a choice to only work with people he or she admires. 

Effective 

A small firm can be more effective than a large firm because small firms are typically lean and mean to start with, fluctuations in the market do not affect a small firm as much. Small firms can do everything required from design to bid to project management, and they do it very efficiently.

Hiring the right Architect from the beginning will give you the advantage of getting it right the first time. The right Architect will be with you from start to finish and many times even beyond.