From Inside PR, a weekly Canadian podcast about public relations, by Terry Fallis and David Jones: 30 seconds about billable hours (a rough transcript from the podcast)
"I actually hate billable hours. Don’t get me wrong – I like working – I really like bringing in the money.. but I just don’t like tracking every minute of my time – especially when it comes to multi-tasking and working on more than one thing, or often a lot of things at once. I also think billable hours aren’t a good measure of the value people bring based on experience but may just take an hour to create. I know the reason why there are billable hours and why we need to track our time and profitability but I wish there was a better model.” (source: http://www.insidepr.ca/index.php/2009/11/11/inside-pr-187-wednesday-novemeber-11-2009/)"
How does your (architectural) workspace rely on billable hours?
Great question- which architects discuss darkly in bars, eyeballing their engineers fees with jealousy. I usually use a combination method- first start with percentage based on the total construction costs as its a good measure of the level of detailing, structural issues, etc that I will face. I then compare this too similar jobs that I have done to get a sense of the hours involved. The problem arises with small jobs, because though the scale is smaller, you still have to permit the project and deal with many of the same hurdles as a big project. Here is where hourly billing starts to rear its head. Curious as to how others calculate their fees.
ReplyDeletethanks, good blog, keep posting
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