The redundancy story in today's @BDonline says 32% of practices made job cuts but doesn't say if this affected fee earning architects or others. If it did a bit of digging, it would find that the majority of redundancies are among non-fee earning staff

namely, communications and marketing. This follows a similar pattern to the 2007/8 & last economic downturn when anyone who wasn't a fee earning architect was the first to be let go.

A senior communications specialist tells me that 'redundancies are underway across the
This doesn't include the external PR consultants, photographers, filmmakers, writers + freelancers that are brought in by practices to work on specific projects

who are always the first to be dropped like hot coals when times are tough. In recessions, practices tend to turn inwards and hunker down waiting for better times. This is what happened in 2007/8. and it took them years to recover.

We are in very different times but if practices take a cleaver to their marketing budgets as they did in 2007 the effect could be even more damaging.

That’s because the disruption bought about by the pandemic will change the way we behave and any practice wanting to help shape the new normal will have to rethink how they connect with clients. This means reaching them where they are which increasingly, is online.