Back in the day, like the Early '80s (1980s to be clear) as the profession was beginning to explore the use of technology many firms utilized a surcharge to fund their explorations. At that time the costs were proportionally higher than today for much less power, think original McIntosh relative to your iPhone. The results of technology far more speculative as to their benefits to deliver greater speed, efficiency, communications or collaboration then we know is possible today. In the larger firms where I was working there was some ability to leverage their larger corporate clients to accept these surcharges. Often firms offered to use CAD rather than hand drafting as an option that was accompanied by the surcharge.
It wasn't long, perhaps 5 years or so, before clients began to question such surcharges. They began to understand the advantages to architects using CAD over hand drafting but not any advantage to them. Especially when it cost them more. Even clients who had been accepting the technology surcharge began to question it. In short order clients would hear the offer of hand drafting or CAD with a surcharge and turn it back to the firms to decided how they wished to prepare the documents. "CAD or drafting, we don't really care how you do it but we aren't paying any more. Just meet the schedule and fee." became their common response.
At that point client's saw technology investments as our cost of doing business, it was overhead like rent. Their RFPs / RFQs changed to require CAD, as they now require BIM, for the preparation of the project documents. To compete for projects we were required to integrate the technology costs and work more efficiently using those technologies. That is a trend that remains with us today.
While I applaud you for trying to think of ways to address the ever rising costs of technology my experience says a surcharge won't be a productive course. Understanding how to use technology to multiple your productively seems to be the best way forward.
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RK Stewart FAIA
Founder
RK Stewart Consultants
Salt Lake City UT
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Original Message:
Sent: 10-07-2017 11:57
From: Mitchell Harding
Subject: Technology Cost pass thru to Clients
Unlike Contractors, Architectural firms do not directly pass on overhead costs to our clients. We are interested in knowing if any firms have been discussing or are currently passing on any technology costs to their clients, via contract amendments or other means. It seems with the increasing expenses for software subscriptions and hardware becoming obsolete within the lifetime of most design projects (1-2 years) that this could be an area where a client may bear the cost of depreciation for use of these items? Any thoughts would be much appreciated?
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Mitchell Harding AIA
Garland TX
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