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Today we are going to dive deep with Oliver Lowrie, the straight-shooting co-founder of Ackroyd Lowrie, as he lays bare the top 10 lessons learned while setting up their architecture practice.
Curated content, insights and opportunities to accelerate your career in Architecture, Design, Development and Real Estate to the next level.
Oliver Lowrie’s Top 10 LESSONS LEARNED made while setting up an Architecture Practice
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Stephen Drew: Hello, everyone. Get ready. We're going to learn some lessons. Now, this isn't boring school. We're going to actually do stuff which you can apply to your business. Or if you're thinking of setting one up, maybe we save you a lot of time, stress, and money. Not lessons from me, someone has actually done it.
That'll help, won't it? 20 seconds.
Hello everyone and welcome to this live stream special. I am joining you today and we're gonna, we're gonna learn something. So pay attention because these lessons could cost you a lot of time, energy, a [00:01:00] small fortune. Thinking of setting up that architecture practice? What better way to learn than someone who's done it before.
An award winning architecture practice. They made the mistake potentially of hiring me a while ago, but We keep in contact still and it's gone on to great things after I've left as well. Another reason, probably, why you shouldn't have hired me. I'm joking. But it's the fantastic Oliver Lowry from Aquilary.
Oliver, how are you?
Oliver Lowrie: Very good. Thank you. I realized I haven't put my surname on the little thing now, but anyway, it's too late now. It's
Stephen Drew: It's all right. It's Ollie, Oliver Lowry and Akron Lowry. We can see it there. Now, while I know you, and I was choking around a little bit there, in case someone in the audience, first of all, has not met you before, might not have heard of Akron Lowry. Maybe just give us a quick rundown of who you are and who's Akron Lowry.
Oliver Lowrie: Thanks for, I'm me, but so Acroid Lowry is the company that me and John, my business partner set up 10 years ago this year.
Stephen Drew: [00:02:00] Ooh, well done.
Oliver Lowrie: I know, it's making me feel old. We used to work, we met when we were at Archetype, who are a pioneer of sustainability, and I worked there for 10 years, met John there, and we had many a lovely hour designing passive house details, and very sustainably sourced skirting boards, and we genuinely, I have nothing but respect for Archetype but after 10 years, we thought we want to do things a little bit differently, and we want to focus on taking a lot of that sustainable knowledge, And applying it to a city scale context.
Set up with the ambition with our 10 year plan to work on city scale projects. We want to build a company that designs the cities of the future. And then we started off and started people's house extensions for a bit, everyone's got to do that. So that was, the first year or so we We were doing small scale projects, but, we always had that vision of wanting to grow and make impactful city scale projects.
And, I'll come on to this, but one of the, one of the crucial things that we did was pay for advice. Actually, I think I might have forgotten to put that on [00:03:00] my list,
Stephen Drew: It's the bonus one before we begin then.
Oliver Lowrie: one. So we, after about two years we actually hired a non exec. Which seemed very expensive to us at the time, but he gave us some incredible advice amongst, which was if you don't want to work on house extension projects, take them off your website, which we did.
And the other thing that he said was we were telling him that we wanted to grow our revenue by 20 percent that year, which we thought was quite ambitious. And he said, guys, what would you think if I just told you that you should double your revenue in 12 months? And we were like, Hmm, that's doesn't, that seems like quite an easy thing to say.
And he was like just think about it. And we went away in the month later came back for that next board meeting and had put in place a plan to double our revenue. And there are factors that you can't control like the economy around you. But at that time, the economy was okay. And we put in place a plan that did allow us to, to double our company In that 12 month period and then we've doubled it again since.
So we now have around 25 people. We have our beautiful [00:04:00] office here in this warehouse in East London. And we did once hire a man called Stephen Drew.
Stephen Drew: Yeah, and I enjoyed my time there and it was a good social life And I did get some work done as
Oliver Lowrie: You helped us double again. So you helped us when we hired you. We were probably around 15 people and we hired Stephen in the height of COVID because we couldn't get people in the door fast enough to satisfy all of the projects that we were taking on. And so Stephen, I think you roughly hired one person a month for 12 months.
Stephen Drew: I'm very grateful because I was lost in the shore, just setting up my business as well. So this is good. So actually even these 10 lessons that we're going to go into, I can still learn from them because I am currently at four people. I know it's a slightly different business, but some of these concepts still apply.
So let's just wind back to that. Cause you mentioned you and all you and John were in the pub. You had that thing of, we're going to do this bestie mates. Gonna conquer the world and then reality's kicked in, right? [00:05:00] You've done some amazing stuff, but it's hard. Running a business is hard. So we're going to focus on those 10 lessons because I think they're really useful.
So if you're happy with it, Ollie, I'm going to bring up number one and we can go through it
Oliver Lowrie: I've tried to do them roughly, so they work chronologically, although I've now given it away by telling the story already, but
Stephen Drew: now it's fine. Come on, let's just go for it. So number one is jump, but make sure You are tied on. What does that mean?
Oliver Lowrie: I think if you want to start a business, you've got to start a business, right? You've, at some point you have to jump, but and so the way that we started, we did have some security around that jump. So we, John and I had already done a bit of private work together before we set up the company and one of those projects had gone into becoming like a real project with one real client with real fees. By the time that we actually decided to set up the company, we already had a [00:06:00] client there waiting for us. It made that jump a little bit safer. And, one client and one project is not enough to, build a company and run a company, but it is a good start. It means you can pay your rent and it allowed us to buy our first printer and our first laptop.
Cause we could forecast those fees. And the other thing was that I didn't leave initially. So I was working, John, I think we both started full part time, then John went full time and I was still at Archetype. And then, so it was a gradual transition as we, basically when we got our second project, that's when I came over as well.
Yeah. That's the thing. Don't, I think everybody that feels like they want to do it should do it, do jump, but, try and put a little bit of security around that. Work out where you think you might get clients from, ideally try and, secure one at the same time as jump.
Stephen Drew: Makes complete sense. Now I know the Acro Lyra history as well, because I've been there and I've heard, I've seen the cool presentation. Also [00:07:00] a quick interlude. You, the first place that you got an office though, was above a pub, Ollie.
Oliver Lowrie: No, it was in the, it was in the pub.
Stephen Drew: it was in the pub
Oliver Lowrie: our friend owned the three compasses at the top of Ridley road market in Dalston. And during the day there weren't many people in there. So we used that as our office and we signed our first client for a genuinely quite big project in in that pub.
Stephen Drew: Fair enough.
Oliver Lowrie: He just thought we'd gone to the pub for a drink. He didn't know that it was actually our office as well.
Stephen Drew: Yeah. You're like, yeah, the names on the wall. They're like I thought we just having the pine, but there you go. I think that's brilliant. Maybe that wasn't a mistake then. We'll see. But anyways, I'll move on to number two where you said it's not about you. It's about them. When you talking about the client, what do you mean by that?
Oliver Lowrie: So I think that architects and look, I've made the mistake of doing this. You get in front of a client. And you talk about your process. You talk about how you design. You go, look, the way we do it, there's all these [00:08:00] other people. They're doing it wrong. We're doing it like this. I've got these guys in the office and we use BIM and like design process thinking or sketching, like clients don't give a shit about, I'm sorry, we're in the daytime
Stephen Drew: It's alright, Bill Gates Microsoft, I'm sorry. Don't worry, we keep going.
Oliver Lowrie: What do they care about?
They care about what's in it for them. They want to work with you because they want the outcome. They haven't come to an architect because they want a friend, a companion. They've come because they want some, something to do with property. And it's the, it's the same thing. You don't go to an, if you were in a high stakes court claim situation, either as the defendant or as the claimant, you're not going to go to the lawyer because of their process.
You go to the lawyer because they're going to win. You can't you want the outcome. And I think that architects, when you're selling you need to listen listen is the, listening is the key skill to selling. You've got to listen to what it is that your client is saying about the outcome that they want, and then gear your sales pitch [00:09:00] towards that outcome.
Not about you. They, it doesn't matter about you. You could be whatever, you can do the, you could do it standing up backwards with your head turned around the wrong way around. As long as you're getting the outcome that they're after. And I think that's the most important thing, when it comes to sales is to articulate to them back the outcome that they desire.
Stephen Drew: Fair enough. I always think of it's like spewing information in the sales pitch, isn't it? We do their stats. You're right. It should be about the person trying to find out about that stuff. Now, the third point that you mentioned is assuming that your design skills will be discovered by potential new clients rather than delivering high value content to potential customers that demonstrates these skills.
It's a bit like, I've built a website. Where the heck are the customers? I'm guessing that's what you mean, but I might be wrong. What do
Oliver Lowrie: Yeah. Or even one back from that, even I think architects think again that, or, a criticism of architects would be to think that because they're very good designers, people will naturally find that out about [00:10:00] them. And, even building a website is part of what I'm saying that is in some ways it's content, but, really what I'm getting at is. The sort of ecosystem, which I think might be my next point. Yeah. You need to create an ecosystem of products around you where clients will get to learn about you. And you have to be proactive about that. They won't just discover that you're good at designing because you're good at designing.
And you can, and it's actually quite hard to go out and tell people, Hey, I'm good at design. So for us, what we've done is we've built an ecosystem of products Around us, which are all free for our clients. So we've got our podcast, which is Urban Forecast, where people, and you have your podcast, it's the same thing.
People for free can discover what, what my views are, what John's views are, how we think about the world. It's free for, it's free for the client to learn that, but at the same time, they are learning about my values without me having to ram down the throat, down their throat, what I think.
So that means that they're already warm. Warmed up, we run [00:11:00] an event series called the Breakfast Club Briefings. And that's high value content because we try and get incredible speakers who will attract to those events, planners from across London and across the UK, politicians sometimes. And so our clients, who are largely in the property sector, developers and stuff, will get to have, a round table meeting, Where, and it's all Chatham House whatever happens in that room can't be spoken about afterwards.
And people get to have dialogue. That is, that's a high value product for a client if they are, able to have these discussions about, the future of cities with key decision makers. And we offer that to our clients for free, so we pay for the cost of that event. And what that does is it demonstrates, when we're in the room, we will discuss with people what we think are our values around the future of cities.
Again, clients are learning without me having to ram down, or John having to ram down their throats, what the values of Accra and Lowry are. And that is [00:12:00] a more subtle way to sell, is for, to build this ecosystem of products where people will be able to learn about you. And move them towards that position where they're ready to do work with you.
And the next point, the funnel, the ecosystem of products, it goes, there's still more free stuff to give away. Sadly, I think, with in the funnel, you've got a podcast, which you're paying for to give away free content. Then you've got for us, the Breakfast Club events where we're paying to give away free content.
That's quite high value. And then the next bit of the touch point for the client, sadly, is usually to do some, an exercise where they will go, Oh, I've actually, I've got this site. And that's, that's the Eureka moment for us. Cause okay, they're not still yet parting with cash because we will often look at that site for free, but they are moving down the funnel towards becoming a client.
And I'm sure it's the same for you, Stephen. You've got your podcast as the first touch point. Then you might take somebody for lunch because you want to build a relationship with them, [00:13:00] and then you might get, you might go, actually guys, I've got a few candidates here, why don't you take a look at them?
And you're still not at the point where anybody's paying for anything. You're still, that's, that is the, the beauty and the pain of marketing is that you're paying quite a lot to give away stuff for free to clients. It does eventually pay off if it can be done right.
Stephen Drew: Yeah, I think that's really true. And I think an important distinction that you're not say you do charge for certain products and you're not cutting those down. You're talking about free vehicles, free products, which lead then to a client paying a fair fee for the work that is entailed in
Oliver Lowrie: Yeah, so I think, oh, you've actually copied the whole thing, Daniel Priestley, that was really only a note for myself. But anyway, Daniel Priestley is a master of explaining the product ecosystem. Some of those products are free, but ultimately, the service that you provide is a product that is not free. As, You might do a free capacity study for a site, but what you're trying to get out of that is the client to decide to go [00:14:00] with you for a pre application, a planning application, and then on to technical design, and all of those things are our core services, which are, that's the thing we charge for, and that, the revenue from that has to, Draw it has to be able to pay for the marketing system to attract the next round of clients into the funnel.
So it's, it was explained to me by actually the guy from the business of architecture, the
Stephen Drew: Oh, Rhian.
Oliver Lowrie: Yeah. Whereas the American one on his podcast, he explained it, the monkey's fist sounds disgusting. But it was
Stephen Drew: it does.
Oliver Lowrie: a thing from when people used to sail massive ships around the world, which I suppose they still do, so maybe they still exist.
You've got a massive chain that needs to tie the boat up to the dock side, but you can't throw the massive chain, so what you have to do is you get this ball of rope, and it's got a little weight on it, And it, or like string with a stone on the end and the stone's called the monkey's fist. You throw the stone to somebody that's standing on the shore and they pull the string.
So catch the [00:15:00] stone. They pull the string and the string's attached to a rope. Then you pull the rope's attached to the chain. You pull the chain and then you pull the boat in. And so the Mon the monkey's fist is like all this stuff. First you've got a chuck out a Pebble, that's a podcast. And then somebody will, you reel them in via these other ecosystem of products, along the way, it's not, it's, they're learning more and more about you and they're working out whether they want to work with you based on you being able to talk about your values, what you represent and the outcomes that the client might achieve by working with you.
Stephen Drew: yeah. No, really, thank you for fleshing that out. I agree, the monkey's fist sounds gross, but actually, a lot of that stuff in marketing, even I apply for, and ironically, sometimes giving something away for free and initially not even asking for a return can mean you can get to the actual The assignment and charge a decent fee for it because suddenly you're like we do all this stuff and that's why we're X fee.
So no, I really agree. And thank you for sharing that. The next one I've [00:16:00] had problems with, Olly, when I've started my business, where especially at the start, you all want to say yes to everything. no's. It's hard though, saying no. And here you say, saying yes to design programs. That you know are unachievable.
Oliver Lowrie: Yeah, so there's it's easiest mistake to make. It's really hard at the start of a project to tell people something they don't want to hear.
Stephen Drew: Yeah.
Oliver Lowrie: And often, particularly at the moment, like I've got a lot of sympathy for planners. Because I think they work, they have a tough job and they work really hard, but they're totally overstretched because they're not funded properly or the departments aren't funded properly.
So as a result, pre application processes are taking a lot longer. Clients don't necessarily, you don't really want to, you've got your site, you've borrowed some money to buy it. Clock's ticking. You don't want the whole design team to turn around and go, look, guys, realistically, it's going to take us 18 months to two years to get planning here [00:17:00] because nobody wants to hear that you want to be like okay, six months and we'll get the planning application in then a three month termination.
Yes. And everyone goes, yeah, it's like at that point, you don't want to, you don't want to think about the worst case scenario. That is the timescales that should work, but often those programs are hard to achieve and it's out of your control as a design team, it's the local authority.
aren't able to keep up with that program. And so the problem with that is that as it drags out, your fees get stretched out thinner and thinner. And so, that, that is why the, the lesson learned is that it's best to be, to try and be realistic as a team view at the start and say, look, we actually think this is going to be a little bit longer and either we need to.
We need to draw down the fee in a, in a slightly different way or potentially even have a higher fee because we know that the project is going to take longer and they might have to go around the planning system more. So, that is definitely a [00:18:00] learning that then relates to the next point.
Cause I think if you, if everybody says, if you sign up, if you think your fees are going to come very quickly on programs that aren't met, you will hire on the basis of that. And as everything then slows down, there's a potential that you've you've potentially overhired because you're like yes.
Everything's going to come in as this, as predicted, but nothing ever works out as predicted. And so I think, hiring as fast as you can to meet To meet particular programs can then it can have a negative effect if those programs stretch out because you suddenly may have too many people.
I'm not sure that I've ever been in a situation where we've had too many people to do the work, but certainly as a, compared to your revenue, it is possible that you could have overhired. So those two are linked. And then the next point is also linked, which is that, we've mentioned that, but then if you need to extend, if that program extends.
And there's not fees there. That can be a difficult conversation. So [00:19:00] it is better to be difficult at the start than it is Once you're eight months into the process, you aren't yet at the end and, there's no fee to cover the resource that you need at that point.
Stephen Drew: Yeah. That's where a lot of problems happen as well, when there's not enough fees, isn't it? That's where overtime can happen. That's where staff frustrations can happen. It just becomes a world of pain, right? I know in Acura Larry, you actually pay overtime, which is quite rare, and you have strong opinions around this mark.
Do you think that it's attached to fees? And tell me why you've done that in Acura Larry as well.
Oliver Lowrie: Yeah, I think it's related to this point. I think what we, there's two reasons that we pay overtime. One, we think that it, there's a tendency to, for the architectural profession to undervalue itself. And we think that by paying everybody for every hour that they work. We, one, we get a truer reflection of what the real costs are to the client.
Because essentially if you don't [00:20:00] pay your staff, whilst they're working on say a planning application for a client, and they're doing loads of overtime, you're robbing your employee to pay your client, because actually we, the company aren't the beneficiary of that additional work. It's the client.
They're getting a, whatever. Say you do 20 percent of your, of overtime. You don't charge, you don't pay the staff for it. You don't charge the client for it. Who gets the free work? It's the client. It's not us as the architect. So we wanted a truer reflection of what the real costs are. It relates back to the point that I made previously that if you really want to understand how these programs work, how the time works, you have to account for every hour that's worked.
So the best way to account for that So the first thing we do at that time is to say to people you're paid for all of your hours, because then your time sheets become super accurate, because everybody does want to claim, if they're going to get paid for it, of course, they're going to put it down.
And that then comes on to the second reason why we do it is that we want to have a really strong data set, because that allows us to predict future fees more accurately, and also run the business more accurately. If we know what the [00:21:00] real costs are. Then, and we have really strong data and we know those timesheets are reliable because everybody wants to put in the time because that's encouraged incentivized to by being paid for it.
Then we have data sets that are accurate that allow us to make Really important decisions going forward.
Stephen Drew: Makes complete sense. It's hard though when you're in the mix of stuff like this, isn't it? And when you've got pressure or things like costs, you've got all this stuff and you just want to sign that big project because you just know it's going to be big. However, if the fee's not there, maybe it is not worth it.
And on, on that theme of money, what I was going to say is, Cashflow, Oliver. Cashflow. That's why the one that I'm always like, Oh, cashflow is king or queen, but cashflow can kill a business. And I found it in the last 12 months, particularly difficult at key points where you just, you know, something's coming, but you still got to pay your staff on time.
You still got those bills. Why is it such an important lesson to you think [00:22:00] cashflow?
Oliver Lowrie: It's, it's really easy to look at your revenue and go, okay, cool. We've got to say, whatever your fees are coming in, we've got a certain amount of fee coming in. And then we've got a certain amount of cost to our team. And ideally that, there's a ratio of what that should be.
So that's, it's hard enough doing that, to be honest, just balancing out, making sure, looking ahead, going, okay, have we got. Have we got, whatever it is, certain amount of thousand pounds coming in this month in terms of fee invoices going out? And have we got, on the other hand, the right amount of staff to deliver that work?
That is already hard, but the money doesn't come in like that. That's just when you send the invoice out. So your balancing act is being done between invoices, which are, they don't instantly generate. Cash, they just do something to, they, there are a number on your balance sheet, but if the person then chooses not to pay that for months, as you say, the staff costs go out because the staff costs go out at the same time every month, but the money coming in comes in a much more unpredictable way.
And it's, it's the bane of every [00:23:00] architect's existence and many services companies, and you're paid by architects. You're possibly even further down the ruinous food chain of payment in the industry.
Stephen Drew: yeah I've I've experienced it. The prompt payers and the whole, oh, we're not going to get paid till December. So we'll pay you after then. And you're like, we can't wait. So I've had a flavor of it, but cashflow, I do think is key.
Oliver Lowrie: But, so I think, here's my thing. I think that the RIBA needs to do a lot more about this. I think somebody needs to run for the next RIBA presidency, advocating for small businesses, advocating for some mechanisms to alleviate the endemic problem of slow and not, the either slow payment or not payment at all that happens in the construction industry, service providers.
It's crippling, it stifles growth, and there are plenty of simple mechanisms that could put, could be put in place to improve it. [00:24:00] One thing, it's just a simple thing, like when you rent a flat, you put your money into a deposit scheme. Why don't clients do that? Why doesn't RIBA set up something like that so that, the first invoice going out, it's on day one, so you get 20 percent of the overall fee gets put into a little safety deposit box because it demonstrates that the client can pay.
You can then keep, so that happens on day one and there's a little security blanket that means that if things are going slow and the client is I haven't, I haven't got the money, blah, blah, blah. You can go, okay, that's fine. We'll just access the safety deposit box. You can replenish it when you get your money back in.
So something like that doesn't seem impossible to do. And then the other thing on a, similar theme is that the RIBA seem to be very good at telling architects what their liabilities and obligations are. And I spent another evening last night reading about the new Building Safety Act.
We're doing weekly seminars on it at the moment and it is a very comprehensive document issued by the RIBA about all of our new [00:25:00] responsibilities on top of quite onerous responsibilities that we already had as architects. What I find it harder to access is educational information on the RIBA's website telling clients what they should be paying Architects. I think that, the days of RIBA setting fees are long gone.
Stephen Drew: Yeah.
Oliver Lowrie: Advice available to clients on the website saying, okay, look, if you're doing a house extension and you want to spend 200, 000 on a house extension, expect to pay your architect, something like this for planning, something like this for technical, something like this for construction.
Just educational material. It's not, I'm not saying RIBA needs to be setting fees. If you're, RIBA should be talking to developers and going, guys, building safety act is a big deal. You will need to be paying your architects potentially more. Your principal designers would definitely need to be paid.
It's not a service that you can just wrap into the existing architectural service. It's, again, not setting fees, but [00:26:00] just educating clients around, yeah, there's always somebody that's willing to do it less. You can have a race to the bottom, but if you do that, your architect may not be able to resource the project properly.
They might think they can, but there might emerge gaps. And with this new regime of Building Safety Act, might that not be a detrimental thing? Outcome, would it not be better to have a minimum fee for the scale of project you would not Pay below. And again, I don't think it should be set by RIBA, but there should be some client educational material there.
So that we can end, what is a pretty cutthroat race to the bottom.
Stephen Drew: Yeah, no, said. I do think you should think about that sentence what you said about maybe someone should do it. Maybe not this time, but next time. Here's looking at you, Oliver,
Oliver Lowrie: I'm not an, I'm not a member of the RIBA, so I couldn't run.
Stephen Drew: Not now, but you can sign up but I'm I agree with the sentiment it's I've been hearing about the principal designer thing you're talking about.
Architects get hard enough time it is, talk about fire regulations. It's a nightmare, let alone everything else. However, [00:27:00] we'll move on to your next point. Cause it's quite interesting where you talk about grow slow, hire fast, fire fast, first hire slow, hire like you're selling.
What do you mean by that, Oliver?
Oliver Lowrie: Those are I
Stephen Drew: you're gonna say private note,
Oliver Lowrie: Those are no I've, those are, if you could put it back up again. So I've, we've grown fast a couple of times. I think it's very easy to say yes to things. And we've, when you were working with us, we were just recruiting so fast.
I think that. My lesson from having grown very fast is that if I were to do it again, I would have probably turned down some of the work that was more challenging and just grown a little bit slower. It seems like a hard thing to do at the time, but if you've already got some revenue, you don't need to.
That's, that was my, one of my really key lessons. I think, that's something that I will keep in mind for myself, but it's advice that I give to others is it's possible just to, add one person to the team instead of three and turn down that job that seems actually like it might not quite, [00:28:00] work out the way you anticipate.
Then on that same point, high fast versus high slow. So one of our, one of our early clients was like, look, hiring is really easy. You just hire loads of people and then just fire the ones you don't like. That was his advice. I think, we've tried hiring in different ways. I would say that hiring slow is better.
And that's, so working with a recruiter and trying to work, trying to get people that are aligned with your values, but I think it's really important that you don't hire from the beginning. Don't hire copies of yourself. So I think, it's good to have shared values, but definitely not shared backgrounds.
You don't want to have a monolithic workforce. So I think that balance between trying to get people that get you, but aren't you, aren't, little mini yous is really important. So always trying to get the best talent from as many possible places that you can. And so that's why, we've spent a lot of time over the past few years setting up the AL Academy which is our sort of youth engagement.
It's modeled on Sir Alex Ferguson's Man United Academy, but without a lot of the money or glitz or [00:29:00] glamour of the premiership football. So we we go out into schools. We work, we partner with the New City College. We've got schools all over East London, we go out and we pitch to 14 year olds for why architecture is a cool career.
And architecture gets a lot of shit for having low wages and stuff, but the average salary in Tower Hamlets is, the mean salary I think is in the 30s, 30, 000. And we, what we can say is that, we are able to. In our practice to pay people always above the London living wage.
And, if people will, we're talking to kids at 14, 15, when they're 16, 17, they can come into the office two days a week if they're doing the BTEC and they will qualify with 120 UCAS points and the BTEC in construction built environment. And we were able to partner with the school to actually provide that educational outcome.
And that those. UCAS points are enough to either go into full time education at university, or they can come back and they can work with us on a part one apprenticeship scheme, which can [00:30:00] then lead on to doing the part two apprenticeship scheme, actually it's part two and part three. So over 10 years, we could end to end take somebody from being unqualified to a fully qualified architect without them ever having to pay a penny.
And they would actually get Paid for everything after the first two years, they're still school age, so they don't get paid for that. Cause that's, you don't get paid to go to school, but everything else that will be paid apprenticeship wages. And that's really exciting because it is allowing us to have a diversity of thought.
These people are, these kids are from Tower Hamlets and Hackney. And they, these are places where there's not a lot of people going in schools and telling them that architecture is a career path. So it's been really fantastic working with these kids. We did, we had Ben Flatman from the.
BD come into the office last week and he did some interviews with some of them. And it was so sweet, they were saying, Oh, I always had this dream that I wanted to be an architect, but and then my mom just said if you want to do that, why don't you just do that? And now I get to do it.
And I come here every day and I'm I come to Aquilarium and I walk out with a smile on my face and I, Oh, it makes me [00:31:00] feel good about it. Um, that's the other, the last thing to say is highlight your selling. If you want the best people, go for it. Don't expect them to come to you. You've got to do the same thing.
You've got to go out there and find them. Got to go out, create an ecosystem so that you're attracting the best talent and then pitch to them. And that's, working with you, Stephen, that was part of our, you're part of our ecosystem. We had Architecture Social, Podcast, et cetera, et cetera.
This, this is an example of another, it's a, this is a product. This is me saying to young candidates, please apply to us. When we're hiring, we want the best talent. We want to come and pitch to you. That you will have a place here. Oh, yes. Then number 10. It's all about the team.
Value is not monolithic. I've already done these, haven't I? Shit. Okay there we go.
Stephen Drew: know, that's why I just put it in the background, but that was good. No, it was, it's really useful. And I think I just wanted to build upon one point you mentioned about getting that stuff out there and bringing it inbound talent. That's a really good idea, especially because the market shifts, after the pandemic, it was all about companies like yourself, Oliver, saying, Oh, I've [00:32:00] got a role here and there, when there were lots of people looking for jobs.
But right now, Someone who is very good, they get a choice of where they want to go. And they're going to look for all that stuff, like the Academy. They're going to go through the company culture. They're going to look at stuff like paying overtime and work out where they want to go. So getting all that stuff in place for when you need it is really important.
And then over time, good people are coming to you. But to your point, which you mentioned here, if you can build people up in the ranks, a bit like you're at Alice Ferguson Youth
Oliver Lowrie: Alice? Who's Alice Ferguson?
Stephen Drew: Alex Ferguson, maybe there is an Alice, but Alice, I'm sorry, but you get what I mean?
It's, I think there's the two things, isn't it? And also. Having worked in recruitment doesn't always work bringing in talent from other companies, especially if they're furthering their career. If someone's been at a very different company for a long time, maybe they struggle to change their ways.
It's just the reality of life. So you want people that you can build up through the [00:33:00] company as well as also
Oliver Lowrie: As well as, and I think that, that's important. Our main recruit, our main recruitment strategy is to hire at part two level. So You know, all part one, but when the part ones they have to go away again for a bit. So, it's mostly getting part twos and training them up within our system.
However, our, we've had like by you, a couple of senior hires that would have been, if it's too tempting. If you're, if everybody's coming through the same mechanism and you don't have that outside voice saying, I actually, by the way, we used to do things totally differently, you do need, I think, to hire in senior people who've done, who've had a different experience because otherwise it is a danger of it becoming an echo
Stephen Drew: chamber.
Oliver Lowrie: you need people to go and come in who, as Fina and Andrew have done and go, actually, guys, like the way you're doing this is mad.
There's an easier way to do this than we used to do. And you're like, Oh yeah, that makes sense. Cause otherwise nobody. Everyone's only ever drunk their AL Kool Aid. So I do think it's important to recruit at all levels.[00:34:00]
Stephen Drew: Wow. Okay. That's brilliant. We've done the 10, which is amazing. And while we were talking, we did have a comment that came in. Leonardo says, In Portugal, we charge 10 percent of our fees ahead. Otherwise, we don't open the laptop. We don't get out of bed. Makes
Oliver Lowrie: coming to Portugal. I'm coming to Portugal. No, so we, look we have always, or not always, from over the past few years, we've built in a 20 percent deposit into our fees because we are the same. We want to be able to be essentially invoicing ahead because of the time that it takes to for payment to be received.
We often will have. Started paying out money for our staff before we've received the money from the client. So we do send out a 20% invoice upfront. We don't always wait for that to be paid before we start the work slash open the laptop. I dunno if, I dunno whether Leonardo waits for the 10% to land before he opens his laptop or whether he just sends out the deposit [00:35:00] invoice.
He'd have to clarify, but look, we do try to do the same, but it's a competitive market and it is, it's difficult if there's lots of reasons why clients aren't able to pay at particular times and you don't want to miss out because they're waiting on a drawdown and you're like, nope, I'm simply not working.
And they're like great. I'll go and work for, I'll go around the corner and talk to whoever x other architect who's willing to do the first month on the promise that he'll be paid next month is a challenging balance. And that is how people get in pickles. And that's why I do think, it's hard for me to be the outlier by saying I want to be paid a hundred percent upfront, cause lots of other people won't, which is why I do think it needs RIBA to make an intervention and go, guys, everybody's going to have to do this from now.
Because if it's just one person that's trying to make the payment terms difficult, they will potentially just lose market share by being like that.
Stephen Drew: No, you're right. You're right. Leonardo thinks, yeah, he's acting like the
Oliver Lowrie: He does wait.
Stephen Drew: Good for you. We can't wait. We need the money. Thank you, [00:36:00] Leonardo. I joke around. I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts there. While we're here, we've done the 10. I wanted to ask you one or two quick questions.
It's 2024. We're hearing all this stuff about AI and stuff. Ollie, what do you think about involving AI in architecture? Is that something that we should embrace now to maybe forego a lesson of, I don't know, not catching up with it? Or at the same time, do you think it's a lot of hype? Do you think it's a waste of time?
Oliver Lowrie: I don't think that anybody's going to be able to wait. You're engaging like, I think AI like Metaverse and like surfing the internet. Are going to be words that stop being used because they'll make you sound like a granddad because AI is just going to become everywhere. It's, like it's already sounding a bit old fashioned to say, are you using AI?
You're, we're using AI now, probably. There's some vocal tuning happening on this software, probably. And that's going to be the [00:37:00] same, like Photoshop Adobe's already putting AI into. InDesign and Illustrator and Photoshop and that's, we're trying to do lots of stuff, but with, chat GPT actually for we've made our own kind of chat bot for the London plan.
So you can ask it questions, which is quite cool. Be like I've got a 60 unit scheme. How many bins, like one, twos and threes on this ratio, how many bins do I need? And that's, it's quite cool. It works all out for you. On the visualization front, we, Bee's doing a lot of stuff that's improving our rendering.
We are also engaging with an AI team. Specialist called Alistair Lewis, who's been on my podcast who's building our kind of tech stack for us so that we're able to integrate different things and automate certain processes. Ultimately, the software companies like, like Autodesk, they're going to start folding all this stuff into their software.
The main way that architects are going to end up engaging this stuff is involuntarily, because if [00:38:00] they subscribe to Revit or Archicad, Those larger companies are going to have to start buying the smaller companies that start automating your floor plans or, whatever it is they do. Automatic setting out, automatic detailing.
It's all, I think it's going to happen through the larger players acquiring and then back ending it into their existing softwares. You just got to look at, where does the capital lie? Is it going to be architects who are driving this transition? Probably not because we don't have a huge amount of like venture capital lying around for us to personally invest in building these softwares.
So then you have to go who's going to be doing it? Actually potentially developers and house builders might start developing their own AI softwares that start to reduce the role that's required from the architect. And I, we are seeing that already. And then also the tech companies, the Autodesks, the I can't remember who makes Archicad now.
Graphisoft, that's our software. Graphisoft. I'll have to shout out Graphisoft actually, cause they were amazing with the AL Academy. They gave us two licenses per year [00:39:00] to use with our students. Big thanks to them. That was really great. But anyway those companies. They do have capital to invest in the next software, either by buying companies up that have developed AI, and then folding it into their softwares, or by generating their own technology, because, they are technology companies.
So those are the people that are going to make the shift. And then architects, we're quite placid in that, in what happens, because we're just there just, scrambling around to pay our monthly license fees for these pieces of software. We don't have spare capital to build our own software.
Really, although we are doing a little bit of coding because B knows how to do it, and there are actually R& D tax opportunities to get tax rebates for coding that you are doing, but you actually have to be writing the code, not just not just like using chat TPT.
Stephen Drew: No,
Oliver Lowrie: that was a very long answer to that question.
Sorry about that.
Stephen Drew: I like it. No, it's a good one. And I appreciate you sharing it. David Williams says, is this being recorded? I missed a couple of points. Yes, it [00:40:00] is. You can watch the replay afterwards. You can catch them, but we have got Oli for a few more minutes. So if you have a quick question, David, you can ask him it now.
Andrea says he gets a mobilization at the front. Help me vet the affordability of a client. Minimum 1k. There you go. So that's what Andrea does as well. So we're getting all these suggestions. Now, the last question that I was going to ask if you are, but before maybe you asked me the question and I want you to give me a zinger live, you're going to, cause we, you're going to, I know you'll throw a juggler.
You won't go slow, but I was going to say, what are you excited for in 2024? Were you excited for this year?
Oliver Lowrie: I'm excited for the same thing that everyone in the property industry is excited about, and that is interest rates
Stephen Drew: Interest rates, come on! Why are you keeping going? I know, it made me laugh that they were like, Last year it was a bit of a recession, and I'm like, You don't say!
Oliver Lowrie: Yeah, I know! I know, that was one of those things where you're like, oh yeah, I know. God, you feel it, [00:41:00] and then somebody says, that was a recession, and you're like, of course it was. Of course it was.
Stephen Drew: Really? Oh, I thought this was normal. We're supposed to suffer. Okay. Yeah. So the interest rate moving is going to be a big relief for the industry. Has that been a knock on effect for you then? Have you felt it, Oliver, in the last year or two, all jokes aside?
Oliver Lowrie: So when Russia invaded Ukraine, I said to you, this is going to have a massive impact. That was, that's why interest rates went up. Interest rates went up because there was an inflation that was caused allegedly by that war. But actually it was much more to do with the amount of money that had been pumped into the economy during COVID.
But whatever. The oil price rises that happened caused inflation that meant the interest rates had to be put up. So I was right about what I said, and we're still recovering from that. I hate being right about stuff like that, that's two years worth of basically negative growth or zero growth caused by that moment.
I don't know. [00:42:00] I'm hoping that, I think an election will help. I think that there will be renewed confidence by the end of the year that we have a government, maybe we have the same government, but I don't think we probably will. I think we'll have a different one.
And that might give some more confidence to people. I think there's a lack of. Competence in the current government in the housing in, the leveling up, whatever they called it, whatever it used to be MHC, GLC. And that's adding to the sense of kind of hopelessness slash inertia. I feel like every time Michael Gove opens his mouth, It sends tremors through the industry, his ad hoc changing of the definition of when you need a second staircase, which we still have not seen the policy around.
He just mentioned that it's going to go from 30 to 18. That was, I think, over six months ago that he said that we're still yet to see the policy, not being able to see the detail around this stuff. Things are being announced. It's like decree by press release rather than by policy. For us, it's really important to see policy.
And I think there's a sense in the [00:43:00] industry that this government hasn't got its head in the detail. And often he's issuing policy that is quite hard to make work. With the existing constraints that are already there. For example, biodiversity net gain, the stuff around nitrates, which was U turned twice.
So hopefully an election will help, in, in terms of restoring a sense of credibility plus economic growth happening. If interest rates go down, those two things will hopefully be. Positive for the industry, but I do think, that there needs to be, or there is a renewed focus on ESG, which I think is helpful for architects.
It's coming, the sustainable credentials of a building are becoming less of an afterthought and more of a, from first principles, particularly in the commercial sector. I think the residential sector has A lot has more slack to pick up. So those are the things that make me hopeful.
Stephen Drew: Yeah, fair enough. I'm hopeful too. Andrea says, I'm glad you said that. Zero grow or [00:44:00] negative growth. It looked like I was the only one suffering last year. It felt that way. Don't worry, Andrea. We were all in pain. Mega, mega pain. But
Oliver Lowrie: Yeah. Come on, we lost some good, like pH plus went bust. A lot of contractors went bust. A lot of good companies went bust last year. So if you made it through, you're doing all right.
Stephen Drew: We're here. We keep on going. You've done this for 10 years. I don't know how you've done it. I've done one and a half, one and a half, one and a half. It feels like dog years. Maybe
Oliver Lowrie: My turn to ask you a question,
Stephen Drew: yeah, it's not all about me, but ask me the questions. Come
Oliver Lowrie: ask you the question. Okay. So what's been the, so you were working for somebody else. Then for quite a long time, you were like a one man band. Then you hired a person and that doesn't quite count. Now you've got a team. What has been the hardest thing? Or the most unexpected thing about having a team.
Stephen Drew: hard for stop. I find it hard now. Learning as you're going. So I have my own advisor you mentioned, and I was partly, [00:45:00] cause I remember you've been very vocal that actually having a non executive advisor was good. So that's the first thing I've done. And that's been great because I think sometimes you're wandering in the desert yourself.
You have Oliver
Oliver Lowrie: I'm Oliver.
Stephen Drew: Yeah. You have John, and sometimes I've had a business partnership before. That can, you can butt heads, but usually at the same time, something's good come out of it. I'm on my own. So I think that's been really useful. I'm still quite learning. The other thing is, like you said before, different personalities on the team.
Sometimes you agree, sometimes you disagree. I'm trying to get the balance between making, and, because really the buck stops with you, right? And there's a lot of power that comes with that and a lot of responsibility. It's just trying to get the balance there and sometimes knowing when to listen, but sometimes knowing actually what you need to do.
So I'm still trying to work it out. It goes very, I think having two people is one thing, free, but when you go past free and before it becomes a group, a team, [00:46:00] it's it's very different. And also the thing that I've learned is that you have more people. Overheads go up, more responsibilities go up.
And then I remember when I was with you, I was like, Oh, we're a family. And it's you're like actually it's a team. And at the time I did, I looked at it differently because I was like, Oh, family's quite soft. But in reality, it is a team. And the reality is in a truth, in a brutal commercial world.
Someone's not performing on the team, it can pull everyone down. And then how you deal with that is very important as well. You mentioned earlier before, hire fast, fire fast. Okay, it's a brash sentence, but I get the gist. You have to make these decisions. You can't be rendered. You can't stop.
You've got to make tough calls. You've got to think about what to do. And I think that's been a bit of a shock for me as well, getting there. But. It's hard. And also the last thing I say on it is that again, in the business of the start of the first few hires, you, your bestie mates, you're going to conquer the world, all that [00:47:00] stuff.
But then when real life and the gruel kicks in, what you realize is that, of course, you want to have a fantastic place for everyone to be. But yeah, it's hard. It's tough. It's business. You have to make these decisions as well. So the fairytale romanticism goes slightly. So I'm just trying to work out the balance.
I'm just trying to keep going. But that's how I feel. Does any of that resonate with the first few years of what you were doing for MySanity? Does
Oliver Lowrie: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think, it really shifts. There's it's very unlikely that the people that you hire and sorry, if they're listening, but it's very unlikely if the first people you hire end up being the people that you're working with 10 years later,
And that's because the people that take the people that take a bit of punt on going to work for the guy who's just started his own business where you're the first or second hire
Are probably 10 years later going to either be running their own thing, because that's what they were about, or they're not going to fit in with the company culture that you have when you have 15 people, because, they've been there from the start.
[00:48:00] Are they you, are they a co founder? No. Are they like, so and they're just they, By the time you're a 15 person company, the people that you're hiring will have totally different experiences, behaviors and won't work very well with the type of people that would work at a startup, so you get this you get this gradual shift of people.
And I, we don't have a single person left over from when we made our first round of hiring. 10 years ago, and that's, I think that would always be the case. You will get different people that are attracted to you and they will get, as soon as you start to grow to the next phase, the people that are loving it now because it's a bit of seat in your pants, won't like it because it starts to become more stable.
Stephen Drew: policy procedures. Yeah. And it's whoa,
Oliver Lowrie: Yeah. And they just won't enjoy it. Yeah. Yeah. And it's whether you enjoy it, cause for us I think I, I loved it back in the day. When I was like in my early thirties and I loved, startup phase was awesome, but now I'm 40, I probably wouldn't want to do it [00:49:00] again. But I loved it back then.
So that's cool. But would I go and work for a startup? Me? Maybe. Would I go and hire? Would I go and work for a 25 person architecture practice only if I could go in as a director? Do you know what I mean? So like it's you get different people at different phases of the company's existence, but everything you said is true.
And
Stephen Drew: I'm still working it out. I'm in the middle of it. I don't have a conclusive and it's work in progress. And I make a lot of mistakes all the time before we go last, last thing. Do you work, do you want to ask one more question to me? Maybe less about. The social, maybe more about the architectural recruitment or anything on my views and that kind of stuff, or are
Oliver Lowrie: about your views about architecture. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So how are you saying yours? How are you seeing the market? So you said in COVID there were lots of people looking for jobs and now there aren't. That the economic data. Around architecture, it does suggest there's quite a lot of people are employed, but like the wages aren't going [00:50:00] up.
Stephen Drew: yeah. Let me put clarity in what I meant there. People are looking, but they're in jobs, they're being fussy. There were, it's about the next move, something substantial. And I think that there's also a shift there right now with some people going Oh, I will leave where I am for 10, 12k more.
And actually, that bubble, that, when there was a mega skill shortage. Business owners were making that difficult decision of overpaying salaries, which kind of skewed the market. That's all calmed down now. So I think that there's unrealistic expectations of people thinking what they're worth.
And when I say that, I don't mean they're not good. What the market will pay for is what they're looking for. But so the right now it's a bit janky, but I do think other sectors have been screwed over. You mentioned about Michael Garvin and the this, the, yeah, old Oh second Sta.
Oh, second stairwell guy. That whole comment just screwed over residential. We just don't get any clients in that area. So like our [00:51:00] most busy clients right now are like in the Red Sea doing the line or whatever, and it's Hey, if you are prepared to go to the desert. We'll pay you. And so it's it's interesting that shift.
And so we're seeing as well for example, data centers is a very strong market. It just keeps going bigger because everyone's on their phones. Everyone's, we're all these companies are collecting data. And so they've used to be a bit more like a shed in the field, and it was more about getting the power there and stuff, but actually they've become in places of work, so it's blown with commercial, so data centers, very strong.
Overseas, kind of luxury islands in in, different kinds of worlds. Amazingly strong, but again.
Oliver Lowrie: so this is the thing about the RIBA proudly said, oh, revenue in architects has gone up since 2022 or something like that. But the data, it was totally skewed. Yeah. It was all, it was the largest 30 companies were contributing an enormous amount to that revenue growth. And [00:52:00] they were saying that half of their money was coming from, as you say, the Middle East or America.
So if you're a small business and you're not accessing this funding that's outside of the UK, then it's exactly the opposite. Like revenue is down significantly, but RIBA are blindfolded to it. And, willingly not looking at the issue that is affecting small businesses, which is wage deflation and poor payment terms.
And, it will filter through because we employ lots of people and we employ lots of, not just our direct staff, but people like yourself, recruiters, there's a whole supply chain around us, everybody's suffering from these two issues. And I wish that there was a more unionized representative that was willing to actually do something about it.
Stephen Drew: Yeah, no, said. And I think the last point before we go, and you, cause you kindly introduced me to the Financial Times, Mr. Connections over here. Thank you so much. But the topic of that was about skilled worker visas going up from 20K or whatever it is now [00:53:00] to 37, 38K. That's going to have a huge, that's going to cause huge problems because Like we talked about in there we have all these amazing people.
We're lucky to come to the UK to work on all these projects and it really adds a, I think, a net positive to architecture than not. However, the salaries are not all there yet. A part two is very unlikely to be getting 38k unless they've been, I don't know, part two for donkey's years, and even an architect there is touch and go.
It's all about experience. And then if it's your first job in the UK. Then you got to prove yourself here. You got to learn all the regs. You got to do all that stuff. So I think that's going to cut people out bizarrely. Could be great for recruitment if I'm putting that hat on, because I've got, suddenly, when you close off the pool, it's all about finding people in the pool, but it's going to be terrible for the architecture industry, because all these good talented people won't be able to work here anymore.
That's [00:54:00] my thoughts, but how do you feel about it, Oliver?
Oliver Lowrie: I feel the same as you, but in a sort of macro way, at the moment, one of the few export things where Britain has a really great international reputation and we export it is design services. Probably, financial services as well and law, but that's not my world. But like we are as you say, regarded in the world and we export a lot of these design services around the world and charge a lot of money for it.
But in return, what we require is the most talented students and pupils and whatever, like young candidates, young employees, young architects, to want to come to the UK or, and or to London to work for these businesses. If you get rid of that by arbitrarily saying, no, you can't have your first job here, realistically, 38 grand, you're not going to get your first job in London.
And who's going to want to spend 38 grand on an architect that's not been tested for COVID 19? on any UK projects, they're going to have to be very good. So you're just disrupting an ecosystem that already works quite well. Okay, it doesn't work for everyone, but for the biggest companies, it works pretty well.
[00:55:00] If you take away the, I just, it just seems an unnecessary thing. But, as I said to the journalist who interviewed me as well it's just politics. It's trying as much as possible to create a culture war. I think a really important item around something that doesn't need to be anywhere near this culture war topic of immigration.
You're seeing it with housing as well. So Michael Gove, as you've now called him, but used to be called Michael Gove saying social housing for Britain's first, so affordable housing will only be, will be provided to British people before others. It's, you're taking housing and you're like politicizing it into this.
Anti or pro immigration thing, you're making it part of this culture wars conversation. It doesn't need to be there. And nor does, this immigration change to skilled workers will make such a negligible change to the net migration figures. It's really not the thing that's going to solve the problem.
But it will have a damaging impact on lots of industries, architecture included.
Stephen Drew: Yeah, no really well said. It's and the only one last thing I'd say on what you said is you [00:56:00] mentioned an architect's salary in the UK will struggle to get that. In London will struggle to get that. What about the rest of the UK? We know London pays the highest salaries, probably.
So it's just not gonna, it's not gonna work. But thank you for sharing that. I'll do the last quick rundown of what everyone said. So I have to let you go back to your business in a second. But Leo says, wish you a great year ahead. Mr. and Mrs. Anonymous says, great session guys. Leo asks, did Brexit have any impact on the hiring process in Europe?
I'll say yes, but we will go into that at a more time. And David Williams says, Mr. Lowry should seriously consider. RIBA membership and a presidential campaign. Thank you, David, for that very original idea. And I'm going to hold Oliver to that in the future as well. But thank you as well for everyone in the audience for participating, because it really makes a big difference.
Oliver, just before you go, the last thing, where can people find you? Where can they find about AcroLarry if they want to get in touch and learn [00:57:00] about all the work that you do?
Oliver Lowrie: That is our website, but I would go to LinkedIn. I'm always on LinkedIn. I like chatting away on LinkedIn, message me, connect with me, comment on my things that I post. LinkedIn's I said, so one of the one of these people that we had from our academy who was like 17 I was like LinkedIn.
And they were like, LinkedIn? I was like, it's the second largest, fastest growing social media in the world, actually. And they were like, all right, grandpa. Like they, if you're not on TikTok, you're nowhere. But I'm on LinkedIn. I'm not on TikTok.
Stephen Drew: Nah, me neither. I've done one or two reels lately. It's not for me. I'll try
Oliver Lowrie: You're looking good, mate. You've lost the, you've lost the stone.
Stephen Drew: Oh, I'll keep going. I'm gonna keep going. I'm gonna keep going. By the time the interest rate is down, let's see what my weight is. Let's
Oliver Lowrie: you're deflating like interest rates?
Stephen Drew: That would be good. That would be good.
If it goes up again, though, and I go up, then we're in a we're in a world of pain. We're in the world of pain. [00:58:00] Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. And for you in the audience. Thank you so much. I'm going to end the live stream now. Have a fantastic day. Take care, everyone. Bye bye now.
Bye bye.