Has anyone out there had success with outsourcing in an effort to stay lean?
I was "given the opportunity" just over 3 years ago to start my own practice, and didn't know how long I'd be in survival mode. We've never been without work, and after nearly 30 years with a firm that ranged between 15 and 40 people, have enjoyed the life of a sole practitioner immensely. I'd begun to think I could just ride this into the sunset.
The good news (and the challenge) is that we've got a tremendous amount of work. I've raised fees and turned down some off-mission opportunities in response. I confess that I suffer from a kind of Depression-baby/architect's mindset that no matter how well things are going, I'm may never eat again.
I'd like to avoid hiring permanent staff if at all possible (I also love working from home, so staffing up has other traumatic implications). We
've outsourced a some production work, but with mixed success. I can't help but feeling that we're paying too much for mediocre results and spending way too much time fixing it.
I believe the solution lies in adopting a franchising mentality - developing standards, checklists and templates that can be embedded in an agreement - that will make it easier for these "ghost architects" to consistently produce what I need and expect. I'm coming up dry in my search for models. Can anyone point me to some helpful resources?
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Ronald Geyer AIA, NCIDQ, Principal
Good City Architects LLC
goodcityarch.com -------------------------------------------