APP 302

PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE 2
Administering the Regular Services of the Architect

LECTURE 8
M3. The Firm
3.1 The Firm: An Overview
 Architectural Firms
 The Small Practice
3.2 Firm Organization
 Legal Organization/Firm Start Up
 Organizational Chart
3.3 Firm Management
 Planning and Positioning
 Design Excellence and Quality Principles
 ISO 9001:1994
 Techniques for Managing Quality
3.4 Human Resources Management

THE FIRM: AN OVERVIEW

(From Wikipedia) A firm is a commercial enterprise, a company that buys and sells products and/or
services to consumers with the aim of making a profit.

A business entity such as a corporation, limited liability company, public limited company, sole
proprietorship, or partnership that has products or services for sale is a firm.

ARCHITECTURAL FIRM

(From RA 9266) a sole proprietorship, a partnership or a corporation registered with the proper
government agencies;

 Sole Proprietorship: an individual Architect practicing and delivering architectural services.

 Partnership: a group of two or more Architects practicing and delivering architectural services.
 Corporation: a group of professionals in architecture and allied professions incorporated with
Architects for delivering professional service in architecture and allied professions.
 Association: any formal grouping of two or more architects or architectural firms working joint
venture on a project basis.
(From RA 9266)

SEC. 37. Limitation to the Registration of a Firm, Company, Partnership, Corporation or Association. -
The practice of architecture is a professional service, admission to which shall be determined upon the
basis of individual personal qualifications. However, a firm, company, partnership, corporation or
association may be registered or licensed as such for the practice of architecture under the following
conditions:

 Only Filipino citizens properly registered and licensed as architects under this Act may,
among themselves, or together with allied technical professionals, form and obtain registration as
a firm, company, partnership, association or corporation for the practice of architecture;

 Registered and licensed architects shall compose at least seventy-five percent (75) of the
owners, shareholders, members, incorporators, directors, executive officers, as the case may be;

 Individual members of such firm, partnership, association or corporation shall be responsible for
their individual and collective acts as an entity and as provided by law;

 Such firm, partnership, association or corporation shall be registered with the Securities and
Exchange Commission and the Board.

THE SMALL PRACTICE

 Small firms with fewer than five people usually have no formal organizational structure, depending
on the personal relationships of the principals and employees to organize the work.

 Medium-sized firms with 5 to 50 employees are often organized departmentally in departments

such as design, production, business development, and construction administration.

 Large firms of over 50 people may be organized departmentally, regionally, or in studios

specializing in project types.
FIRM ORGANIZATION

Legal Organization/Firm Start Up

1. TYPOLOGY OF FIRM

 The first and most basic step is to identify the typology of your architectural firm. As an
entrepreneur, you must specify the services that the firm would be providing to its clients. For
example, it could be an interior designing firm, landscape design firm, conservation firm, urban
design firm etc. This decision will help you to stay on track.
 The second step is to identify the size of the firm. A small, large or humongous firm is always
dependent upon the capital you have. Although it is better to start small; after all slow and steady
wins the race.

2. GET REGISTERED AS AN ARCHITECT

 Before starting your own firm, get yourself registered as an architect by the council of architecture.
The registration gives you the license to practice architecture.

3. NETWORKING

 It is important to be identified on the grid. As an entrepreneur, you must remember that

networking is an integral part of starting a business. To do that you must take part in conferences,
workshops, seminars, competition etc. Not only will it help you to get more clients, but it may also
help you to find a set of keen applicants (who are willing to work as your employees).

4. REGISTRATION OF THE FIRM

 Such firm, partnership, association or corporation shall be registered with the Securities and
Exchange Commission and the Board.
Organizational Chart

FIRM MANAGEMENT

Planning and Positioning

What key words come to your mind when you think about companies such as Apple, Walmart and
Disney? Most consumers would say that innovative products, competitive pricing and excellent service
are synonymous with these companies. An important step in developing key operational strategies
depends upon how a company positions itself in the marketplace. Every company can't satisfy every
customer and also be competitive in areas like quality, cost, flexibility, speed, innovation and service.

A positioning strategy is when a company chooses one or two important key areas to concentrate on and
excels in those areas. A firm's positioning strategy focuses on how it will compete in the market. An
effective positioning strategy considers the strengths and weaknesses of the organization, the needs of
the customers and market and the position of competitors. The purpose of a positioning strategy is that it
allows a company to spotlight specific areas where they can outshine and beat their competition.

Let's examine the requirements needed for a company to compete in the following areas: quality, cost,
flexibility, speed, innovation and service. We will take a look at different manufacturing and service
companies to identify examples for each and how they use their positioning strategy from an operational
standpoint.

DESIGN EXCELLENCE

What is design excellence? There are many subjective aspects to great design, including the distinct
spaces and culture created within a building, the beauty of the structure as a crafted object, its technical
innovations, or the transformational role that a building plays within the community where it stands.

QUALITY PRINCIPLES

Architectural design companies increasingly recognize that time spent on management is not at the
expense of their production and there are always better ways to organize business. Although architects
have long placed a traditional emphasis on quality, quality management is still a new concept for the
majority of architectural design companies, which have to organize relatively more complicated
operations nowadays to meet their clients' expectations.

Architectural design companies define quality and explores the extent to which Total Quality
Management (TQM) principles like continual improvement, employee involvement, customer satisfaction
and others can be pertinent in these companies.

The owner-managers of the firm would feel the pressure from the changing internal and external
environmental conditions, however few of them adopt a systematic and documented approach to quality
management.

ISO 9001: 1994

ISO 9001 is the international standard for quality management systems (QMS), published by the
International Organization for Standardization (ISO). ISO standards are the most widely used quality
management standards worldwide.

Increasingly, your customers are looking for a guarantee that the products they’re buying from you have
gone through quality management best practices. Adopting the ISO 9001 standard is one step toward
offering that guarantee. The current version is ISO 9001:2015, which was released in September 2015.

The goal of ISO 9001, part of the ISO 9000 family of quality management standards, is to help you
prevent quality issues that could affect your customers, employees, business partners, and even your
industry.

ISO 9001 defines the requirements for creating a quality management system. The QMS is a uniform and
well-organized process approach to governing quality and control objectives to ensure continual
improvement.

Before you decide to adopt ISO 9001, you should have a thorough understanding of the basics of the
standard.
Understanding ISO 9001

The ISO 9001 quality management system focuses on meeting customer requirements, customer needs,
and overall customer satisfaction rather than just adhering to product specifications and requirements.
That’s because, ultimately, the quality of your products depends on whether and how well they meet
customer needs.

At the center of the ISO 9001 are eight key principles of quality management:

Customer focus

The focus of quality management is mainly about meeting customer requirements and doing your best to
exceed your customer’s expectations. You can establish this focus by attempting to understand their
expectations and requirements.

Leadership

Organizations succeed when their leaders establish and maintain work environments that enable
employees to become fully involved in achieving the organizations’ unified quality goals. You should help
your company’s leaders at all levels establish a single purpose and direction as well as create conditions
to encourage employees to work toward your organization’s quality objectives.

Involvement of people

Engagement of people is one of ISO 9001’s most important principles. Employees who are engaged
become more empowered, more competent, more dependable and better able to help you achieve your
top objective—better meeting your customers’ needs. Engaging your employees means you should
respect them as individuals. Recognize them for their achievements, help them with their personal and
professional development, and constantly communicate with them. The way for your company to succeed
is to retain competent employees by engaging with them.

Process approach

An organization will operate more efficiently when leaders manage and control the business processes,
linking them together to form a single system. Adopting this process approach will help your company
achieve more predictable and consistent results. It will also help people focus their efforts on key
improvement processes.

System approach to management

The process approach is part of the system approach. That means you have to understand, analyze, and
manage interrelated processes so you can develop a cohesive system to attain your organizational
objectives. You’ll continue to be successful when you manage your business processes as one cohesive
quality management system.

Continual improvement

It’s critical to maintain an ongoing focus on improvement throughout your organization. Continual
improvement is an ongoing effort to enhance your company’s products, services, and processes. It
should be a key part of your quality management strategy.
Factual approach to decision-making

During the decision-making process, competent staff members should analyze and evaluate all available
data and information using the appropriate tools and methods. However, all this data should be accurate,
reliable, and secure because accurate facts and proper data analysis will allow you to make the best
business decisions.

Relationship management

Successful companies establish relationships with relevant partners, including business associates,
vendors, investors, and resellers, to ensure the continuity of the supply chain.

TECHNIQUES FOR MANAGING QUALITY

Quality management is the act of overseeing different activities and tasks within an organization to
ensure that products and services offered, as well as the means used to provide them, are consistent. It
helps to achieve and maintain a desired level of quality within the organization.

Quality management consists of four key components, which include the following:

 Quality Planning – The process of identifying the quality standards relevant to the project and
deciding how to meet them.

 Quality Improvement – The purposeful change of a process to improve the confidence or reliability
of the outcome.

 Quality Control –
The continuing
effort to uphold a
process’s integrity
and reliability in
achieving an
outcome.

 Quality Assurance
– The systematic
or planned actions
necessary to offer
sufficient reliability
so that a particular
service or product
will meet the
specified
requirements.
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

(HRM) is the practice of recruiting, hiring, deploying and managing an organization's employees. HRM is
often referred to simply as human resources (HR). A company or organization's HR department is usually
responsible for creating, putting into effect and overseeing policies governing workers and the
relationship of the organization with its employees. The term human resources was first used in the early
1900s, and then more widely in the 1960s, to describe the people who work for the organization, in
aggregate.

HRM is employee management with an emphasis on those employees as assets of the business. In this
context, employees are sometimes referred to as human capital. As with other business assets, the goal
is to make effective use of employees, reducing risk and maximizing return on investment (ROI).

The modern HR technology term human capital management (HCM) has been used more frequently
compared to the term HRM. The term HCM has had widespread adoption by large and midsize
companies and other organizations of software to manage many HR functions.

Objectives of human resource management

The objectives of HRM can be broken down into four broad categories:

 Societal objectives: Measures put into place that responds to the ethical and social needs or
challenges of the company and its employees. This includes legal issues such as equal
opportunity and equal pay for equal work.

 Organizational objectives: Actions taken that help to ensure the efficiency of the organization.
This includes providing training, hiring the right number of employees for a given task or
maintaining high employee retention rates.

 Functional objectives: Guidelines used to keep HR functioning properly within the organization
as a whole. This includes making sure that all of HR's resources are being allocated to their full
potential.

 Personal objectives: Resources used to support the personal goals of each employee. This
includes offering the opportunity for education or career development as well as maintaining
employee satisfaction.