Architects, engineers labor as coworkers, consultants

Michael Buono, director of Hammons School of Architecture at Drury University, said combining architects and engineers in the same firm has been done for years.

“If we go back to the early 1950s, the end of the war, architects had their own firms. With the explosive growth after World War II and the complexity of buildings at that time – in the early 1950s we had the explosion of major skyscrapers in many of the cities ... I guess they found at times it was certainly far more efficient, and also probably profitable, to develop architectural engineering firms, in other words, firms that had both professionals involved.”

An advantage to having both architects and engineers in-house, Buono said, is that it can allow firms to retain a greater portion of fees.

“And I’m confident the coordination would be a lot easier to actually facilitate,” Buono said. “A lot of times, clients would look at these larger firms who have track records of doing a greater portion of the project as a positive thing. But on the other hand, being an architect who just does the architectural portions, they may feel more comfortable having certain aspects of it taken care of by consultants and not have as much liability that might go with any aspect of the project. Probably the professional – the architect – may feel more comfortable if that’s where their strengths are. Some prefer to do that.”

Creative Ink Architects is one Springfield firm that offers both architecture and engineering in-house. According to Scott Ward, senior architect with Creative Ink and president of the Springfield chapter of American Institute of Architects, offering both services at one firm can save money for clients.

“We think so, because it allows us to work more efficiently. We’re able to tailor our fees accordingly,” Ward said.

The only disadvantage, Ward said, is liability. “Obviously, you have the liability of the architecture and then you also have the liability of the structural, so you’re not spreading that liability out. You’re responsible for both,” he said.

But Joel Chamberlain, principal at Chamberlain Architects PC, said he keeps his firm focused on architecture.

“Basically, you have to think in terms of the way consulting engineers get their business and the same with architects,” he said. “Architects, who are usually prime — which means the guy that has the client in their pocket – as the primes we hire engineers,” he said.

Hiring engineers who are subconsultants, or working with architects in the same firm, is “essentially feeding your competition,” Chamberlain said.

But for Creative Ink Architects, another benefit to having both architecture and engineering professionals in-house is that it helps with day-to-day coordination of the firm’s responsibilities.

“The real advantage is the individuals are members of the same firm. They’re used to working with each other. They can understand how they think, (and) what they’re going to be looking at, so when you start laying out a building it makes it a little easier through the process,” Ward said. “You’ll get the same thing with out-of-office engineering, too, if you’ve used them several times. They’ll also get used to the way you do things. We just find it to be a lot easier as far as coordinating our work.”

Chamberlain prefers to keep his firm’s focus on architecture, due in part, he said, to the possibilities of isolation and friction.

Of the isolation factor, Chamberlain said, “I think once you put engineers in, you are really a lot more on your own and you don’t move around the architecture/engineering community very much.”

The need to acquire engineers from outside his firm helps Chamberlain expand the firm’s contact base.

“They can help bring you work whereas the engineers that you have working for you don’t necessarily bring you work,” he said, adding that architects usually bring work to engineers. “They’re the project leaders, but that’s not exclusive. Engineers have got lots of their own clients that they want to do architectural services. My engineering subconsultants that I’ve used have brought me a lot of work over the years and I would never change it.”

For Creative Ink, which currently has two registered architects and one engineer, who are assisted by four architectural interns and one engineering intern, having in-house engineering doesn’t mean the firm never uses outside help.

“We’ll go outside (for an engineer) when we get really busy,” Ward said. “If our engineer is unable to meet the schedule or do the work, then we will go outside and use several area engineering firms.”

Friction, Chamberlain said, sometimes arises when engineering firms decide to expand.

“Engineering firms that hire architects usually end up with disgruntled architects because architects want to lead the design. They have the creative side,” Chamberlain said. “Engineers, when they’re the prime, they want to lead the design, but they don’t do it in a creative fashion. They will do it in a save-money or easy-to-build or more engineering mode. They stay in their engineering mode.”

Chamberlain said he has seen firms combine architecture and engineering his entire career, which spans more than 30 years. “I think there’s always been a certain number of firms that have worked that way out of the population in a given city or region,” he said.

While Chamberlain doesn’t have engineers in-house, he said he often works with his favorites. “You end up with people that you know how they work and they do good work, and you enjoy working with them as people,” he said. “But also we do bid for some of our consulting work. We will send out proposals to two or three consultants, a request for fee proposals to two or three structural engineers, and we will look for best price and best service and make our selections based on that. I’d say we constantly bid on those services, but we also end up giving our best jobs to consultants that we know perform well and that we enjoy working with.”