The results of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) ‘Working With Architects’ survey, which highlights how architects are perceived by construction clients, has been published.
The findings of RIBA’s ‘Working with Architects’ survey provide a snapshot of clients’ views about the design qualities of their projects and the services they received from their architects.
Key findings include:
- Three-quarters of private domestic and commercial clients, and 51% of contractors, were either ‘very’ or ‘quite’ satisfied with their projects.
- Architects achieve higher client satisfaction ratings than non-architects in all performance measures, particularly for developing and interpreting the brief.
- Clients were highly satisfied by their projects’ aesthetic and other design qualities (such as levels of daylight, room dimensions, ease of circulation, and so on) and their architects’ abilities to meet the brief.
- Process management skills were less highly rated
- Clients consistently rated architects’ process management skills lower than their design skills.
- Architects selected through personal recommendation or because the client had used them before were rated significantly higher than architects selected in other ways.
- Architects who followed up after the end of the project, especially when not contracted to do so, were more highly rated than architects who did not.
- Private domestic clients consistently gave the highest ratings on all satisfaction measures.
- Contractor clients consistently gave the lowest ratings on all satisfaction measures.
“These findings are a vital body of intelligence for the profession and the RIBA,” said Former RIBA President and current RIBA Ambassador for Clients Stephen Hodder MBE. “The results show the need for even closer collaboration between our profession and our clients; they present positive learning points for agile architects.”
Nigel Ostime of Hawkins\Brown, Chair of the Client Liaison Group, led the survey. He said, “This survey follows on from the qualitative research summarised in the 2015 ‘Client & Architect – developing the essential relationship’ report. How we are perceived is crucially important for our long-term commercial and professional wellbeing and we encourage all our members to look carefully at this report.”