How to Win Projects in the Public Sector, ft. Be First London

From Vision to Reality_ Be First_s Role in Shaping Sustainable Cities
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Stephen Drew: Have you ever been to Barking? Things are changing and I'm going to be the first to show you. I'm not joking. Wow. That came to me that quick. It's like a dad joke, but I promise the rest of this is definitely not a dad joke. 25 seconds. We go live.

Now for all you that thought about client side, okay. And you bang the ears off the developer managers and all that stuff. You can get the information here.

Hello everyone. And welcome to this live stream special. That is right. If you're in London, you might be familiar with all the different [00:01:00] boroughs and who designs those. Maybe you thought about working for public practice. Maybe you thought about working client side. Maybe you thought what on earth do the design teams in these public spaces do?

And on that note, how do they even find work? How do they procure work? All that cool stuff. I don't know too much, but the good news is. I've got guests who do this first hand. Not just one, we've got two guests here. So you know we're going to get two different opinions, but we're all friends here. And on that note, I'm going to introduce the fantastic Jacob and Amanda Deeb at Be First London.

Gentlemen, how are you?

Jacob and Amandeep: Good day. Hi, Stephen. Good to see you. Hi.

Stephen Drew: Thank you for being here, both of you. Now, Before we carry on, and yes, Amanda, make sure no one comes in,

Jacob and Amandeep: That's what I was making sure. Somebody walked in and they're like, I have this room. I'm like, look at my name on the door. It's

Stephen Drew: yeah, exactly. We'll be

Jacob and Amandeep: the next two hours.[00:02:00]

Stephen Drew: there's a third guest coming in, only joking, but two, two's enough. I'm very happy you're here. So Jake, Jacob and Amanda first of all, maybe you can tell us a little bit about who you both are. Jacob, maybe you can say, first of all, who you are, and then we'll talk about Be First.

Be First.

Jacob and Amandeep: So Stephen, good to see you today. I'm Jacob Wilson. I'm Head of Design at BeFirst. And just a little bit about BeFirst. We're a development company. We're wholly owned by Barking and Dagenham Council. So we work nearly continually in Barking and Dagenham. That's where our kind of area is.

We're wholly owned by the council. We're developers. We work in land. So we're a commercial team. We're planners. We're both statutory planners and and planning consultancy. And we also have a design and sustainability team. So that's the team that I head up.

Stephen Drew: Excellent, excellent. And who are you joined by? Amandeep, tell us all

Jacob and Amandeep: I am joined. So I work very closely. I work very closely with Jacob. I'm an associate director in the design [00:03:00] team. And between us, I think we manage a small but very mighty team of eight people. Across those four areas on that drawing that you've just got loaded up, which I might just talk everybody through.

Yeah. We drew this, maybe In my first week, three or four, like four years ago. And to be honest, from that moment onwards to now, it still stands true. So starting from the left, so we have a design studio, which is responsible for creating master plans, strategies, capacity studies, effectively helping build a strategic brief for the client, the council.

So within that, we try and encompass. Everything that they might want to have within that project, be it community center, religious building, x amount of houses, commercial, retail space. Then in terms of planning, we support the statutory function. So we actually get to be in the privileged position of seeing every planning application that's major in the borough and have [00:04:00] And that's really helpful because we have a good overview of every little thing from private developers, other housing associations, and that quite helps us sometimes create synergies between projects that aren't directly ours, but they do And then we have the other two functions, which is design management.

So I think in that sketch, is it called guardianship management? Yeah. But that's a lot more about how we take a project and client it from the moment we've started procuring an architect, which we're going to talk a lot about in a minute, all the way through to getting planning permission procuring the contractors. the contractors and seeing that building through sample reviews, building inspections, signing off drawings, up until the moment that the keys are handed over to the residents. So we go really from the very start. I think Jacob, you always use the line from the, was it from the door handle to the master plan?

And I think that's, I think that's right. So I think what's interesting about the design team at BFIRST is that we both do design work. So we're [00:05:00] architectural, we do design studio work, we do master plans, we do design codes, we do SPDs. But then we also do what we call guardianship there, which is much more client design advice.

The commissioning and like I'm going to do, that's right from the start. So doing the commissioning right up to handing over the project to our residents. So it's the full kind of spectrum. RIBA 1 right through to handover is where we work. And this is a great page just to stop on. It shows some of the projects that we've been delivering recently.

So you can see up there, top left, you've got the Beckentry Estate Future Neighborhood. So we've been working with Central Government on a design code for the Becantry Estate. For those that haven't been to Barking, you may have heard of the Becantry Estate. It's one of the biggest council estates, I think, in the country.

So we're looking at 100 years old. It's just had its celebration at RIBA last year for its centenary. We're looking at how we can future proof it. And take it forward for another a hundred years. We're doing a lot of work in what's called the gas growing estate, so that's embarking.

So we're master planning around 3000 new homes there. And then on the right there you can see [00:06:00] industrial. That's a really cool scheme. We've opened it up last year. That was with House Tompkins. It's stacked industrial. I think it's the first stacked industrial in this country. So super exciting, innovative scheme that we've been delivering there in the south of the borough.

On site with the energy center at the you can see there at the bottom left, we've been working with Almanac Architects on that one. That's currently quite close to completion at the moment, so it's on site. That's going to be providing the heat and power for all of our new homes. And just a few others there.

I think bottom you've got House for Artists. We collaborated with the GLA and Create London and the Council to deliver. Really cool project there. It's got artist studios on grounds, on the ground floor residential above, including co living. And the artists that live there have to provide public programs, so they use that ground floor space to provide public program.

And in return, they get reduced rents in the apartments above. That one was shortlisted for the Sterling Prize. And won the Neil Brown Award in the end, I think. What that shows you is the [00:07:00] flavor of all those four themes that I was talking about. So there's projects in there that are so for example, the Beckhamtree Design Code is very much a policy document.

So as a design team, Design and Delivered, a policy which will be applicable to 40 percent of the borough of residence. Earlier on, there was a strategy that Jacob mentioned, which was the Beckham Tree Estate Neighborhood Strategy. So that's like us looking more strategically, working with central government funding.

Then we've got projects like Industria, Gascon West 3, where we're clienting projects, we're procuring architects. And then other projects like I think there's one that's the Bitcoin Free Future House is also a strategic, like the sixth one on the right hand corner is how we. We have a pilot back entry retrofitted home that we can kickstart like a scaling of retrofit process.

So it shows you the diversity of the different types of projects that we get involved in from where we're directly designing, where we're clienting, or in all of those ways, some sort of strategic design based thinking is used. [00:08:00] And I think that's what both really attracted us to working at Be First, is that the kind of variety of projects, the variety of scales, the variety of when you're working on it in the process, the variety of stakeholders, and I think those projects demonstrate, demonstrate that, demonstrate how we work.

Stephen Drew: Very cool. And thank you for showing that it's really useful, especially to visualize at the start of this, one of the other questions that we have here, which I think is interesting is when we talk about an in house architect, what does an in house architect or design team do as opposed to an architect in the private sector, in your words, how is it different than a traditional role within an architectural practice per se?

Jacob and Amandeep: We jumped, we jumped into that earlier, didn't we? And I think we wanted

Stephen Drew: it out. How is

Jacob and Amandeep: yeah no, I'm going to flesh it out, but I think we wanted to I wanted to set the scene by also saying that historically, 50 percent of the architects did work by default in the public sector, but we're talking [00:09:00] about the heydays of the LCCC and the GLC, where there was architects departments.

And I think when Jacob first got the opportunity, and he will speak for himself, to set this team up, very much the conversations we were happening was like, we thought how incredible the kind of influence and the strategic design that thinking those amazing teams had. Way back then, and all the kind of things they've done across London, we'd still have quite a solid, lasting legacy.

So it was like, what does that mean? And I think one of the reasons I got into public sector was because I felt that as an architect, I had the power to use all my design based thinking, but within the kind of confines of a client brief, typically. And wherever I felt projects got unstuck or stuck or didn't move, I felt quite isolated from being able to get them moving or have an influence in those more complicated things that, we weren't supposed to be doing because we were not appointed to do that.

And actually, when you come into a public sector, you realize. The [00:10:00] complexity of getting something BIM or getting something designed beyond just the design stage is a very small part of the entire breadth. And I think in a nutshell, And as what we just said, we get to do all of it from, here's a new site, we could build something on this to here's your keys to, tell us how your home's been the last 12 months.

What could be changed if we redesign this? I think that's the critical bit. We're doing a lot more work upstream. So when a typical architecture practice gets a brief, we've done all that kind of pre brief work to make sure that brief is robust, it's solid, we can have a project out of it. Yeah. The architects can hit the ground running.

There is a lot of work, on some of our bigger projects. There's one to two years worth of work, testing options, testing ideas, so that we can get a brief and actually all the different stakeholders are signed up to invest in that brief, to invest in procuring an architecture team and a technical team.

There's a lot of money going in at that point and we do all that upfront work. So it's really getting into the strategic brief writing, why are we doing a project? [00:11:00] What is that brief? How many homes should we be doing? What type of homes? Where does the infrastructure go? It's all that kind of bigger picture stuff.

I think the architects in the team are, again, involved with. It's also building knowledge in one area for a large period of time. So when you're working as an architect, I used to work across internationally to different projects on a, month by month, sometimes basis, if I was doing competitions.

But for the last four years, we've literally been in the confines of the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, which means When we write these briefs we know the area so intimately, we know the residents, we know the politicians, we know the planners, we know all the schemes that are here. It just means we can bring a richness and almost expedite the process of very quickly getting to grips with what would work here in these constraints and contexts.

I think the other thing that's interesting is The design, the process and getting involved in the process. When it comes to thinking about like how we build a building, so modern methods of construction or BIM or sustainability, we're [00:12:00] working across all of those kinds of issues and thinking about how we implement them on the project.

So I think it's that kind of strategic piece as well, isn't it? That design thinking, design process, that's a big part of it. I think we like that because it means there are things that will impact the projects that you don't always in an architectural practice have time to sit outside the project.

Do something that's almost research strat slash strategic orientated, that then comes back and massively improves all other projects. Be it us, me having an overview of how our BIM strategy should be, or can we develop a DFMA patent book to roll out for our projects? I think a digital twin that you're working on at the moment is probably a good example of that, isn't it?

Yeah, we're piloting a digital twin on one of our projects. Completed schemes of 200 homes and we're installing sensors in eight flats so we can find out how warm they get, what their humidity is monitor the energy use, speak to the residents and pull all that data together to tell us is the building performing like it was designed [00:13:00] to or do we need to design it differently so it performs like it should perform.

Like you get, it's really interesting to be in a place you have the kind of tools and people around you empowering you to do things like that. Yeah.

Stephen Drew: I love it. And thank you for that. Brilliant answer. My goodness. Now as well, you have to remember audience because we got one or two questions coming in, which is great. But these two have planned this out and I am butchering it. Imagine like the part one architectural assistant who's been given the reins on the meeting and going through it.

So thank you both for persevering with me on it. Now, a question that came in and I'm going to jump ahead a little bit, but don't worry, I've got some of the questions here. Anna Moll in the audience says, what is the process of winning these projects that you talk about? And one of the themes that we wanted to talk about here is.

Procurement. And now I'm guessing that's one of the ways to win projects. Now, Jacob and Amandeep, tell me if I'm wrong. Tell me if I'm totally going [00:14:00] off kilter again and rein me back in. But how do you win these projects? And then why does procurement matter in getting this stuff going?

Jacob and Amandeep: Yes, so I think how do you win projects is, I think for a lot of people they probably perceive them. The public sector is quite difficult to win projects for. It's very different to, I think, a lot with the private sector where you may approach business development or marketing in a different way. I think with the public sector, we're bound by public sector procurement rules.

Everything's with a very straight back. You don't just take a client out for dinner and get a project that way or, it's very different. There's a lot of, there's a lot of process involved in it. I think that's often the case. Very frustrating for architects, all of that process, but we want to avoid corruption.

We want to avoid a VIP lane as we did during COVID. For maths, we want to avoid a VIP lane for an architecture project. We have to go through this process and we think it's right, we want to demonstrate value for money. We're spending taxpayers money. We're spending public money. So it's right that we [00:15:00] have value for money considerations.

It's right that we do our due diligence on the practices that we're hiring and they're appropriate for the projects. I think the first thing to say is You know, most of our projects are large projects, and I think that dictates who we're working with quite a lot we're working with large projects, it means that the practices have to have, a fairly high turnover to be able to work on those projects.

It means that they have to have, adequate levels of PI cover to make sure that they can work on those projects, so that's not just us. Does it be first or in the design team, but that's the council managing those risks. But so we have those kind of considerations and we also procure off a framework.

So we have our own framework in place. So we've just gone through a process, which has taken us about 18 months to have a framework of architects. So those are, that's for a four year period. The architects on those frameworks will, they will get the project briefs coming through.

We do sometimes go off the framework. So recently we procured a project off GLA's is it ADUP framework? Yeah. So that, that was quite an interesting process, but [00:16:00] it tends to be going through these type of frameworks, how we commission our project. So getting on the frameworks is the key thing to to winning the work.

Stephen Drew: is there anything you'd like to add to that before I move on with the next question?

Jacob and Amandeep: Yeah, I think the winning is also. We've also labeled it as that, but that also, in a nutshell, it says there isn't going to be a phone call to an architect to basically say, can you work on this project? And that's ultimately because we're trying to generate best value of taxpayers money for the local authority and central government, which means we have to work diligently and very hard to make sure the people we've given everybody else's money to. are going to do the best for that particular project, which means that's why there's such stringent requirements. And I think something that Jacob and I talk about a lot is people view the private sector much more heterogeneously. And maybe you want to expand on this, so one client versus another client is [00:17:00] totally different, but the public sector is all bounded as one thing.

You're all the same, and it's public sector, and actually within the public sector, there is loads more diversity between one council, another council, BFIRST, somebody else, and it's very different in how we give projects, and win projects, and set up our frameworks compared to someone else. By default, many accounts Historically structured winning projects focusing on price. And maybe you want to expand on how we've flipped that on its head over time. Yeah, I guess there's two things to say. One is that, we, price is an important part of it, but we also, run design competitions. Winning a project would be first. We tend to do it, hopefully, quite efficiently, I think.

We run a competition. We often just get architects to do one or two A3 pages. One concept drawing. We often think that's enough to go on to win a project. I think, one concept drawing can really show a lot. How an architect team is responding to a site, it shows their gut response, which kind of shows, their [00:18:00] knowledge for that site.

So we're really interested in reducing the amount of information that we get from architects. I sometimes think architects can be their worst own worst enemy, just giving loads of information to the client team, like just show them everything we do, show them everything.

We've got all the ideas and we really try and reduce and say, no, just give us one idea. What is your key idea for the site? And, for a lot of the projects that we showed on the website. A lot of those have been won just with one idea, one A4 or one A3 image, a sketch, and it has won the competition, and actually that's what we're building out, and a lot of those These built projects look really similar to the competition sketch.

Exactly. I think, the Gascoigne projects, Industria, the Energy Centre ones there, all, the concept sketch, one sketch really similar, which I think also shows the kind of the maturity and the ability of a team to be able to do that in one sketch and have a robust project that can go through the development cycle.

I think the other thing just to say on when you work with us, we have been really trying to encourage small practices to come and work with me first, which has [00:19:00] been challenging. As I said, a lot of our projects are very big, which brings risk with it and means that we have to set these thresholds with what we work, how we work.

But what we've been doing is encouraging consultors. So that consultant will often be led by a large architecture practice, but they can then bring smaller architecture practices under their wing. So because we have these big projects, maybe a master plan, the master plan, and a couple of the buildings will be done by the large practice, then some of the smaller blocks will be given over to the smaller practice.

And we think that's a really nice way it brings through. Some of the practices we've got on the framework are very kind of micro practices but it's yeah, under that wing, so the kind of, the turnover, the PI requirements, the BIM requirements, the principal designer requirements are all dealt with by the larger practice, which then reduce our risk from a client perspective.

Stephen Drew: well,

Jacob and Amandeep: anything that's well done? I think the other things we've done like quite differently in the framework is weighting quality at 70 percent instead of 30 [00:20:00] percent and price at 30%. Historically, public sectors procured the other way around and that's where people get into price battles. So with us, what we always say is, Whatever you do on price, ultimately, if you've got the quality marks to win it, you're going to win it mostly on the quality, not on the price, which pushes against the kind of competitive, low balling kind of way of procuring things.

And the other thing was like, how do we know architecture is an inherently undiverse place to be, so how do we bring on not just practices that are smaller startups, SMEs, but bring more diversity because we know that we know the largest practices are generally the most undiverse practices.

But our, through the consortium we procured, actually, we've got, well over 50 percent of the smaller practices are led either by people of color. More than 50 percent are led by women as well. So we're quite proud of being able to set something up, which we do think is.

pushing the, pushing the way forward with who works with the public sector, but also getting them to input into how, what are our EDI requirements. So [00:21:00] we've got almost all eight consortiums to write a an action plan with the six key stages of an architect's career. on how they're going to break down barriers into architectural education under the Supporting Diversity Handbook that the Mayor produced a couple of years ago.

And then we'll work that through with them to see what, what things they've done, what things they've helped us with, what things they've, how they've impacted the wider built environment community.

Stephen Drew: Brilliant. Thank you. Really useful stuff. There was a lot of things that we covered there. And I, when we talk about procurement and on LinkedIn, I there was a post I think that Alex Eliat May posted talking about the cost of procurements, all that kind of stuff as well. And one of the things that We were talking about before is, do architects waste money on procurement in your opinion?

What's your thoughts on this? How do you think architects can then optimize it? Or do you have any opinions on that aspect of [00:22:00] things?

Jacob and Amandeep: Yeah, I think they waste money on it. We might disagree. I think I definitely think they waste. I remember working as a part one and part two, and I would say I spent half of my time whilst I was part one and part two just on competitions. So that's half of my time that's speculative and I remember, I think I remember counting because I think in the office, everyone needs to keep a track on which competitions you worked on and which ones made it.

And I think like maybe 10 percent to 15 percent were actually won. So I know that half my time, maybe only 40 percent of it was never actually paid for and the rest of it was. But then, yeah. There were projects that I was working on, which I was like, this is super cool. And there's other projects I was working on, and I'm like, I'm not sure why we're working on this project.

It doesn't seem to like align with, what I want to work on or what the practice should. So my thing was always like, I think we could have been more specific with the competitions when I was, working in traditional practice, which projects we chose to bid on that aligned with the [00:23:00] practice's values.

But also which client we want to work with. If there's a client, we're like, this client is doing some really cool stuff. I want to work with them because our values align with theirs. So more targeted. Yeah. Yeah. Doing it more targeted than this scattergun on every competition that's out there. Let's just throw a resource at it because hoping that one will land rather look, we really want to work with these people.

Let's keep working hard until we can work with them. I think that's, yeah, I think that's right. Obviously there is a lot of waste in the industry around procurement. I think I think there's a lot of examples of poor public practice in terms of procurement. I think that can be improved a lot.

But I think ultimately it's a very competitive market. I think there's, there's a lot of very good architects, we work particularly in affordable housing. There are a lot of very good architects working in this field. It's hugely competitive, and I think, yeah, it probably comes down to your point about being selective choosing the right one.

And that's not to deny, the public sector, I think, can be more efficient. But I do think, public sector [00:24:00] procurement is, we do need it. We don't want to reduce governance in a way. We don't want to it's an, I think it's a really important process. And I think all the things that Amandeep was saying about bringing smaller micro practices through, supporting EDI, all of that requires that procurement process.

So it's worth investing in. But yeah, I think there's lessons for both. I think there's lessons for the public sector in terms of, can we improve it? Can we make it more, more streamlined? Can we make it more proportional? I think we need skills, capacity in the public sector to do that.

But also, can architects be maybe more selective? Sometimes, do less in terms of their bids. I think we've both experienced before bids which have been given as far too much information. So yeah, I think there's probably lessons on both sides in terms of reducing the amount of waste in the procurement sector.

Stephen Drew: Very good. Okay. So they, we covered a little bit there about why Procurement matters as well as those really useful tips earlier. You mentioned for Be First, it's important to involve small [00:25:00] practices where you can. More diverse practices as well. So do you have advice for small practices? How they can get involved with the public sector, maybe along the wavelength of what you just talked about?

How are they not spending too much money? How can they get involved? What's your, both of your opinions on that?

Jacob and Amandeep: It's tricky because more recently we also know that a lot of small practices have been criticizing this kind of new mode of pairing big with small and feeling like they've been asked to bid on lots of things. Particularly, some of the more recognized names of smaller practices that are growing and they're out there, they've been approached by lots of large practices and then they're overwhelmed between where to choose what to do.

I think I'd always go back to the similar thing like who are the larger practices you want to work with whose values align to yours. You may not always get the choice but when you have the choice pick and choose the ones that you can genuinely see working and creating a relationship with [00:26:00] and then you know work to your terms right.

Work with as many as you can if you want to maximize your chances and if they do all align with your values because they might have one go at this but you might be able to have many goes at this in different teams. The challenge with us is, once we formed a framework, our bigger schemes are locked into that framework.

So if you're not on that framework, the only other way of working, with us is either when that framework refreshes, which is several years later, or when we have smaller, more bespoke, direct mini competition projects. And I've had several of those over the last two years. We're working on a small site.

Patent Book with the GLA where we're working with some SME engineers, and then we also worked on the Beck and Tree State Retrofit Guide where we worked with smaller practices outside of our main framework. So I think there is always opportunity, but one And that is quite frequent.

Over the last couple of years, we've had a lot of projects Yeah, GLA framework as well. Yeah. Which I think gives them really good experience of working with a larger public sector client [00:27:00] body that they can build on. Yeah. And the only other proactive thing I would suggest is there is so many grants and funds out there and the amount of resource sometimes it requires a council to win that, from central government is very difficult.

I've seen some very proactive small practices that would see something, know that it requires a local authority to actually win the money, but they obviously can't win it on their own. So suggesting, speaking with local authorities saying, we've got a good idea. Shall we partner with you? Obviously, we've recently done that. We've recently won funding where an architectural practice came to us and said, do you want to partner with us? They'll be the lead. We went to them. They're our client. Flipping that traditional relationship around, but what Amandeep was saying at the start, we, we're both client, but, and we've got a design studio.

Flipping that relationship around, we're both clients. And that was really innovative with them. They came to us we're now working for them. So it's, it's not all just these kinds of larger projects. There's a lot of kind of these smaller ones. And like you say, like funds and grants available that we're happy to work with teams on.

And our [00:28:00] resource is sometimes really limited. So if somebody can offload the application and lead that, and actually, we become their sub consultant through the partnership. A, that shows a really proactive team that just gets us and knows we might want something, and they've just created an in for themselves, right?

It's almost a no win, no fee type thing almost, but I'm not, again, I'm not encouraging, people doing stuff without a fee, but it just means if people are looking more proactively to engage with people they really like, there are other avenues to explore that, when you feel like the beast of a public sector is difficult to penetrate, this is a really easy example of, A seven, eight person practice just coming to us and saying, how about this?

I should also promote our ISP. So we have an innovative sites program, which is for small sites in the borough. So Celeste is managing that in the team. And yesterday they had the workshop ahead of the first round of those sites going out. So they're looking for small builders and those small builders will be partnering with small architecture practices.

That's all going to come live. This month, the first tranche is coming live. So again, that's other [00:29:00] opportunities within the borough that's outside of the framework. That's all happening at the moment. So again, it's about finding those right partners, looking for the small builders, contacting them, bidding for those sites.

All of that is available within the borough. Yes

it's a tricky

Stephen Drew: very interesting to hear now, but we've had a few other things coming while we're talking. We've had a few people saying hello to Sonda. Welcome. Any questions? Just ask while they're here. Remember, nice questions now. We're all nice people here. No weird questions, everyone. I'm just joking. In the meantime, though, I have a question here as well.

So how do clients set budgets? For working with architects. Can you demystify that both for us?

Jacob and Amandeep: there has been a lot of conversation around this. Recently in whether there should be, that whether there should be RIBA scales, I think from our point of view, we've always [00:30:00] traditionally set a budget of around, 11 to 13 percent for kind of professional services throughout the, throughout RIBA stages.

So obviously the architecture is only one component of that. We've collected a lot of data over the years, so we've got this kind of big bank of fees that we can benchmark against, so that also informs how we set budgets. I think it's really interesting what we're actually focusing more on is setting robust briefs.

So we, we want to set a really robust brief because we think if we do that, then the architecture team can price it. They can price it accordingly. And then there is competition, like Amandeep said, 70 percent is on quality, 30 percent on price, typically for a BFIRST project. So they can price that brief.

And I think in the past, we always haven't had clear briefs. I think a lot of other public sector organizations I've seen haven't had clear briefs. It makes it really tricky for an architect to price it. And you'll see architects come back, some fees are, twice as much as the other. You may lowball it, go low and then say, Oh, we'll claim some fees late on in the process, which is really [00:31:00] frustrating to the client.

So I think from my point of view, it's we'll set a really clear brief and then you can price it accordingly, but we'll hold you to that brief. We will be strict with that brief cause we put a lot of work in, we put years of work into that brief. That's not to say things don't change.

Obviously they do, I think that's really important for us for having that fair competition on the price. I think it's also, we're putting a lot more emphasis, I think, on placemaking. We're putting a lot more emphasis on community engagement and co designing our projects. We're putting a lot more emphasis on social value. And I think it's really interesting to see how architecture fees, A changing and adapting principle design is another one. How architecture fees are changing and adapting. Obviously, AI is coming into this as well. What of the architecture services can be automated?

Where can savings be made? And does this free up fee to be spent elsewhere on, on like engagement with residents? Which actually adds, a lot of value for us because we're embedded within our community. It's a really important part of the process for us. So, in one way it's almost becoming, more [00:32:00] fragmented landscape for how architects can set their feet for a project but actually there's a lot of there's a lot of opportunity there you know we say like architects should own this space we're demanding you know we're fairly demanding this is what we want but then that i think that breeds you know this kind of opportunity that architects can fill and say yes there's a fee for it there's a fee for it here and sometimes so there's projects that we're doing direct delivery where we try and follow benchmarking of previous projects and construction percentages there's other projects where we've received A very fixed central government or other pot of money, and then, the budget literally comes from that.

So that has to be split, and I'm usually quite transparent with these smaller bids. I will put the maximum budget we have available. Not only does, as Jacob said, we provide the robust scope of what we want and the outputs we want in the timeframe we want it. We'll also often more recently have put the actual budget.

This is what we can pay as a maximum. And then for me, we've almost, given the most transparent job description of a job, right? You see what you have to [00:33:00] do and the money you have to do it. And then it's your decision, right? Do you think as a practice, I can do it for that? And it's worth my while, or actually, no, that's not enough money for us.

And you have the choice. You're not then shooting in the dark for the project looks really cool. Then you pitch for it and you're actually way off, or you don't know where you might stand from a price point of view. And I've collected feedback from architects that have seen that way of us.

Reading and they've actually felt how they've told me at least how refreshing it was for them to know, actually we're all pitching at a similar area and we're not trying to second guess, is somebody else going to pitch twice as much or half? And they found that they could then relax and just focus on the quality submission knowing that's the budget and that's, more or less, we're going to be trying to target that fee.

So that, that's different ways of us, I think, working that out.

Stephen Drew: Yeah makes complete sense. In that you touched upon the 11 to 13%. I think that's the numbers you said. You're very transparent with the prices of the projects. Now in there, you talked about the low bowling in there. You talked about all [00:34:00] this kind of stuff as well. One of the frustration with architects is fees. How? How does an architect increase a fee? Or is it as straightforward as that? Do you have any practical advice you'd give someone for maybe getting the most outta the fee? Anything like that? Mandeep, you mentioned you were in practice before. Jacob, you've seen it all as well. What are your thoughts on architects improving their fees?

Jacob and Amandeep: I think there's quite a bit, they could do. And a lot, this is probably us, and you've got to bear this in mind, Jacob and I have, are both designers and we've worked in traditional practice for Almost, a decade before being in the public sector. So we, this isn't just us from a client chain do this, do that.

It's us both spending so much time there and also so much time on this side. So I'm going to caveat it with what we've learned by being on both sides of the coin. But I definitely think something Jacob touched on earlier, which was about. Can you bring in a USP of expertise that other architecture practices don't offer?[00:35:00]

And that is really interesting to me. So I've had practices recently that have brought in house, passive house accredited designers as part of their offer. And, Similarly, another practice of bidding for that same job has had to sub consult that out. So they're all automatically going to have a lower fee because they're sub consulting that out.

That other company is going to have their overheads, their profits, higher day rates. Whereas the team that has it in house, they can even give me an even more competitive fee while making a larger profit for themselves. And also it's a better offer for me because it's the same one team. That's getting the design, doing the kind of passive house led design.

And so you mentioned engagement. There are the practices that build that ethos of engaging with residents into how they work. So they're not sub consulting that out. So I think for me, bring in other cool, unique expertise that, that build us as clients are after, bring it into your own. And actually, then we go, actually, this practice falls.

So it does all these things [00:36:00] in the way that they work, and actually that's more integrated than it's, embedded in the other thing. Bringing those opportunities. Yeah. You also talk about I thought you were going to talk about not going off piste, which is one of your favourite topics. That's I'm going to be going off piste as well, yeah, I want to talk about that as well.

But off piste. Yeah, architect's going off piste. Architect's going off piste. But that's more about like, how do you spend your fees? Wisely, that might be like, how do you increase your profit? Because I think one of the challenging things is because of the background Jacob and I come with, when we do set briefs, sometimes Jacob mentioned as a year history before that, where we as a design team has tested 10 options, got to one because it's the only one that's viable.

It's the only one that can get funding. It avoids all the utilities. The residents like it. So we're like we don't need to optioneer and test that. Let's go and take that to the next stage with designers. And then I think the challenge is perhaps not all teams recognize how much work that's been done before getting to that point might restart the entire process.

and do things off [00:37:00] piste that maybe we've not necessarily always asked for and that just that means actually you're spending a load of time that we've already spent 12 months ago that we've not thought that we would pay for again and then actually what happens is you've started really diminishing your time progressing the project by taking the project one step back.

There's going off piste and there's going off piste. I think like we want Oh yeah. We want architects to challenge the brief. That's really important. They own the design. There's a competition. It's their design. So that challenging is really important, but I think it's more taking the scope in a different direction.

That's it, yeah. Brief challenging we're all about. But brief challenging to verify and then move forward. Yeah. Then going off piste, I think. Yeah. I think the other thing is that we often see, I touched on it before with the procurement is, and again, this is less about increasing fees, but more about increasing margins.

It's just the amount sometimes of work that architects do. And we see a lot of different, Practices, that we're client side for, and it really varies, in the quantum of work [00:38:00] that they're producing for the same output. And I think just, maybe a level of standardization or just reflecting on that for the practice could help increase margins, not necessarily just monitoring that and being aware of that.

You know, it's not always in terms of the quantum of work. It's not always what we're looking for. It's, we want the kind of, the single vision drawing is really important to us and can carry a project through, for example. Yeah, totally. And then that goes back to the point Jacob mentioned about how we weight quality.

More than fees, right? If you've done a really robust qualities, pitch and submission, if your fees are higher than somebody else's, who's got a poorer quality submission, you're still going to win the job, which means you've won a higher fee because you've got a higher quality submission.

You've got a more interesting team, more expertise, you're bringing something that others aren't. And I think focusing on that element. As well as spending time wisely and those things I think would just mean you're able to command higher fees or even make more profit on those fees. [00:39:00] Yeah.

Stephen Drew: Wow. Okay. Wow. That's really useful. This is vastly becoming like the how to win work guide in architecture. It's a trademark here, printed as a book. We'll put it in AI after this and we'll make a fortune. However, if you are bidding for work, be first, and you haven't watched this and you haven't got the stuff, Gentlemen, there's no excuse.

On that note though, less is more, practical tips here. Let's fill the tea really quickly. What are other do's and don'ts when pitching for work? You've seen the good ones, you've seen the, it's okay, you've seen the ones that go off piste, you've seen the ones that didn't win, but you've also seen the ones that you were like, wow, these are the architects we need.

to do this project. What are your do's and don'ts?

Jacob and Amandeep: I guess one of each for me. One on the dos, I think, and it's been my theme throughout this conversation is just the strength of the vision, the single diagram. [00:40:00] I think the vision of a project is so important I think on big projects like the ones that we're working on, there are so many stakeholders, there are so many people with a view of how it should look, how, what it should be, yes, engagement is really important, co design is really important, but we also want the architect to drive, drive through that as well, taking on what's important, not taking on what's not important or not relevant and really having it.

Having that vision and purpose through the projects and I see that right from the start. I see that at the pitch in terms of their, how much conviction they have. And that really varies. I think one of the don'ts for me is maybe, I don't know if it's the kind of architect ego, but it's like relying on the past.

I see so many I've had one like who's landed a massive book that they've written on the table. This is me. This is my book, that's all I need to do. And that's the mic drop and walk out, and I'm like, okay, what about the project? What's the approach to the projects?

And so for me, it's focus less on, on your history, on your kind of, the past experience is important, you, what, how is it relevant to the project? [00:41:00] How is it relevant to the brief that we've created? Really focusing on that vision. Yeah, I think just a couple there for me, Stephen. Ah, they're good ones. They're really good ones. I've got some as well. One thing in pitching I've found is use the best person for the job. I think that goes for everything, but particularly in pitching. Where I've found some really successful ones is where actually the project architect has done the pitch and the director is in the room, but you can clearly see the project architect is somebody who's charming characteristics, knows the project and actually conveys it really clearly.

And there's other projects where I know there's an eager project architect sitting on the side in the room, but it's the director. Who's often been, throwing a presentation 5 minutes before the pitch is coming in to lead that, actually knows very little about the project, but is expected to be the one doing the pitch because their name is on the door.

And I would argue that for me, them being in the room is important, not necessarily the person doing the pitch. actually doing the pitch. And then what [00:42:00] that's meant is exactly what Jacob said has happened. What they know about is their book. They'll come in and be like, yep, I've done these 20. And then actually the actual project, because they haven't actually prepared or planned that, they just don't talk about it.

So for me, that just looks like a very generic pitch. And then I'm like what have I what have you done that tells me, us and our needs. So there's do's and don'ts within that. So be bespoke, not off the shelf and pick the right person for the job. The other thing is, and I used to do this a lot, and I think I still sometimes do this, is don't get into the RKE speak mode.

We all know about this, Stephen, you must know about this as well, right? We'll go off on to we'll go off, we'll start slowly, and then it'll be like in this context, through this wilderness, emerges this thing, and it's, this left flank elevation and I think what's important with that is I sometimes catch, when I first started presenting to all sorts of stakeholders, politicians, residents, And I used to catch myself going all off onto this and just reading the [00:43:00] room and going, yeah, that's not, that's no one's, no one is seeing where I'm going.

It's the safety net from the architect. It's the safety net, yeah. But I'm like, that language is not, does not land with 90 percent of people, basically. It lands from architect to architect. And for me, like me and Jacob get that language, but when we put some of those people in rooms where we've got our board or our MD, or CEO, and they're just interested in give us the nutshell of what you've developed and how we're going to get there.

Because we're only one cog on the panel, the panel is the commercial team, it's the politicians, it's, it's divergent, isn't it, in terms of who the characteristics are. But read the room, I think, ask who's there, who's interested, and then what you can do is tailor your pitch to who's in there.

So if you know there's somebody in there that's the engagement specialist or somebody that's the try and tweak your pitch so it lands with everyone. And I think that's what I felt time after time again, that doesn't always happen. Sometimes me and Jacob would be like, Oh, that architect was great.

And then other team members are like, what are you talking about? The commercials and the funds are like, Oh, we really didn't that person. And we're like, [00:44:00] Oh, okay. I see why you didn't like them. So then, yeah, I think that's really important. Reading the room and pitching it right. And not getting into the Archie speak mode.

Probably some of the do's and don'ts.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. And thank you for sharing that. Now, I know we've got you for a few more minutes, but just winding down, you mentioned both your former lives in maybe in the private sector. Amanda, have you talked about competition deadlines? Jacob, you've also worked in the space as well.

For those thinking about going into the public sector or potentially people are interested in joining your team and all that kind of stuff, do you regret the move? Do you love the move? Would you ever go back to the private sector or are you firmly embarking and dagging them now? Mm.

Jacob and Amandeep: I think, I quite, throughout my career, I've worked in both. I've gone between I don't see one or the other. I think it's slightly problematic just being one or the other. I think both have amazing lessons for each other. And I think, if you've worked in private practice, you'll have a lot of value to public.

And vice versa. [00:45:00] I know you'd be great to see more. Maybe already happening. I don't know private practices employing from the public sector. I know public sector, public practice was draining a lot of private practice at one point. So maybe needs to reverse now. But I think, going between the two.

It's really important. I think it's really important for the sector to understand each other's kind of priorities. I do think in the public sector it's naturally, it's more political. There's more governance. It's more bureaucratic. It's the nature of the organization. You're working in local government.

I think you've got to be prepared to deal with that. At BFIRST, what we've done is we brought in, a lot of local authorities have designers in different teams, so the housing team may have an architect, the planning team may have an architect, the region team may have someone, the schools team may have someone, so we brought everyone into a single team that then services those different departments so that we could bring a bit of the kind of, bring a bit of culture, kind of design culture to the team.

I think that's really important. And I think, I do think a lot of local authorities don't have that. That kind of culture where maybe a lot of [00:46:00] designers like to thrive. I think maybe that's one, one issue. But yeah, for me, I think, I'm fine with going between the two. I don't think I'm resolutely public sector all the way.

I want to see more cross versatilization between the two, but I would always encourage people to do it, to go into the public sector. I think if it's the right role in the right organization yeah, I think it's, it can be really rewarding. I think I have a similar experience, but perhaps I think I'd be less interested in working back in traditional practice, which is different to, I think private sector, public, I think I'm still, both have their, your job for life now, not necessarily a job for life in public sector, but I think for me, I agree with you though.

I think the way we built this team and how interesting and Deeply embedded it's become. It's because most of our team comes from the private sector. All the tools we've learned there, the commerciality, managing people, running projects, having that commercial acumen I think is what's made us bring all of that into kind of the public sector and try and marry both [00:47:00] worlds.

So I think, had I not had that experience and I jumped in straight here, I'm not sure It would have been the same thing. So I think there's a lot of lessons that public sector can learn from private and vice versa. But I agree. I'm not sure how many then do go from here back to private. And I think, yeah, people thinking about careers in the public sector, I think massively, I think I really love my time here.

Massive. When I first joined, I think it was a huge shock to my system in terms of how politically connected development, you know that when you're in practice and you hear about it when you're working that, oh, there's MPs or there's, politicians commenting on things. But when you're really in it, then you really understand the complex complexity of how this organization is set up.

And then you are, people either get really scared of that and immediately leave. Or you got to stick with it and figure your way out through this and see what can be done and then it's really rewarding and fruitful so I definitely encourage people to do it and I think if public practice is a big route [00:48:00] for people to take this but actually what's been difficult up until public practice for architects again to the public sector is because you.

There isn't the title architect when you go search on a local authority's website. There's going to be a lot of transferable skills architects can apply, I would say, to pretty much every job you could do in the local authority. However, you have to just brace yourself for applying the titles that you think you'd never work in as, for example, a region manager or a policy officer or a principal design officer or something like that.

So you it's. You've got to destigmatize yourself from strange titles and then actually learn what they're about if you're interested in breaking into the public sector, outside of public practice, which is providing, a more direct funnel. I think you're right. There's a lot of transferable skills, especially around kind of strategic thinking and, having that kind of design head, design mind in that world, I think is really powerful. That is the one of the biggest things I learned here is how much of your hours, we're [00:49:00] always, I think, I always say architects are always told to just zoom out, always told to zoom out and come back in. And I think if you take that outside of a drawing and apply it to other situations, you can just see how much value you can quickly add when you go this problem, let me look at it from here, what else, and then come back in.

I think that's a lot of what Jacob and I have been adding is thinking about something, zooming out, interconnecting other things. Coming back in and then crunching that problem. Yeah, but also as part of that is visualizing the issue. I think that's, a lot of what we've brought to the local authority as well is using architects to visualize the problem.

Like so many local authorities have traditionally just produced like, loads of reports, massive reports, really long reports, obsessive reports. And I just think having, architects, create great graphics, think really visually, visual communication. Communication is so important and you can transfer that to any part of where the council's working.

I think it offers loads of value.

Stephen Drew: Wow.

Jacob and Amandeep: So much of what we've done has been getting out of these PowerPoint slides and thinking [00:50:00] about how do we turn this wad of two paragraphs of text into a cool icon that we can explain to other people? Yeah. So yeah, visualizing and vision, man, that's what you kept coming back to vision.

And it's the same thing for me. Like you need a design champion that can illustrate a vision Champion it, and then take everybody else on that journey with them for the duration of the project.

Stephen Drew: Makes complete sense. The last question before you go back to building Barking and Dagenham from me, what you talked about earlier, digital twins, you talked about earlier AI. I'm just curious what you are both excited for in the next year or two. Is it the technology? Is it the projects you're working on?

Is it the state of the industry changing? What excites you both at the moment looking forward in the future?

Jacob and Amandeep: Question. Quite a lot, I think. Yeah.

Stephen Drew: Oh, good.

Jacob and Amandeep: Do you know what's hard

Stephen Drew: worried you'd say nothing then.

Jacob and Amandeep: [00:51:00] No, I think it's because, yeah, absolutely nothing, Stephen. Close. Do you know I think one of the most difficult things to visualize with AI is. People, a lot of things I've been reading and listening to is it, we don't have the level of knowledge required to even understand the difference AI is going to make in five years time.

And that's quite challenging. It's quite nerve wracking, but it's also quite exciting because it's often difficult to predict what that is. But you've got all these interesting tools and things and visuals coming out that are penetrating loads of different other markets like journalism or, video editing, etc.

You can just see. When I worked in practice, the amount of stuff I was like, we should not be doing this again, project by project, or actually this, there would be definitely a simpler way for somebody to calculate this. So I think there's that stuff, but I'm also thinking for that affordable housing sector, I'm actually thinking we should be able to develop even more interesting and more bespoke buildings [00:52:00] in, but still in an affordable, efficient way, because we're able to harness these tools that can, you know, massively.

Reduce costs or be more efficient, yet create quite unique, interesting projects that impact people around them. So I'm hoping actually the landscape of London architecture can transform in a positive way because we're able to use these other tools that help expedite how efficient and cost effectively we can build these things whilst creating a really cool ambition.

I think for me, I think similar thinking about how architecture could change or especially relating it to us and our client team and our. Our kind of priorities. I think I'm really interested in material passports and thinking about buildings as material banks. So for the council, we own the housing in perpetuity.

We think about it as a kind of long term asset. We're going to, we're going to own this for the long term. We don't sell the properties. I think, we invest a lot in BIM. We're talking about digital twins. I think, thinking about the material, And how it relates to our sustainability strategy and having, all the kind of components of the building, having [00:53:00] material passports for those, thinking about this bank of material that can be disassembled or, think about how we manage it as an asset.

I think it's really exciting from the client side of thinking about the long term value of the building. Yeah, agreed. It would be really good because all this kind of digital twin work we're doing connecting all of that real life data we're collating about performance, comfort, monitoring.

Imagine something that could just almost use a model you've built somewhere to recreate a brief for you, knowing what is the output you want? You've got data and sensors that have collated and calculated what's required and almost help us establish briefs in quite an automated way that's based on digital twins.

We've got say, we've got 10 digital twins. We know how efficient those buildings are, how they're performing and have got the qualitative information of how people live in them. Just imagine the power of consolidating that into like really dynamic briefs. That would be so cool as a clienting tool as well.[00:54:00]

Stephen Drew: We've all got it to look ahead for, but I'm also excited where AI is going. But before we go, cause I know you need to go in a minute, I was just going to say, it's not fair that I get to ask all the questions or butcher your questions. But do you have any questions for me? Before we go.

Jacob and Amandeep: Yeah, Steve, I've got one. What do you think is the most exciting for kind of more junior architects working in the profession? Where do you think, when you're talking to junior architects, where do you think their kind of excitement lies for the future direction of the profession?

Stephen Drew: Oh, that is a good one. Where's the excitement right now? I think a lot of architects, a lot of it has been unrest, to be honest, because it's more, expensive, architecture is, it's difficult to get into the car, the course is going up. But I think at the moment, different ways of learning is probably the most exciting thing.

I think architectural apprenticeships are going to be great because you can get paid [00:55:00] while you're working, which I think is really cool, is that you can actually You don't include this huge amount of debt. I think that's probably the most revolutionary thing I've seen in architecture for years, because it was.

The hardcore part one, part two, part three model, right? Which is like seven years in architectural practice and takes a long time. So I think that's really cool. I do see a lot of future students. I can imagine them going to crits for some AI. generated thing and get absolutely annihilated by the tutor.

Can see that happening, but wouldn't it be great even just to use little bits of the tool to help design? So I think, yeah, I think if AI is used properly, actually it gets rid of all the mundane stuff and can actually help you design. So who knows? I think It would be cool to see if architecture students can get to become an architect quicker and have more money in the bank by the time they come out, rather than being in debt.

So I know it [00:56:00] was a boring answer, but for me, that's the most important thing. Cause when I was doing it, it was three grand a year. Now it's nine grand, it's crazy. And Mandeep, you talked earlier

Jacob and Amandeep: You were on like two pounds a year, mate. Was on three. Showing all your

Stephen Drew: 5k I think it was for the generation

Jacob and Amandeep: was the 1. 5 for you, three grand for me. Oh yeah, that was what it was.

Stephen Drew: Now, we're not

Jacob and Amandeep: It's all coming out now.

Stephen Drew: age here, we're not ageist in here, we, it doesn't matter what band you are, we're all friends here. But yeah, that's, I think that's the most thing I'm excited for, and I think that Maybe programming and the AI will take take who knows where it will go.

I guess, watch this space. I think it's exponentially gone faster than we can all keep up is the reality, but let's see what happens. I hope. Was that a good answer? Was that passable? Was that okay?

Jacob and Amandeep: Very good, Stephen. Very good.

Stephen Drew: The presentation skills.

Jacob and Amandeep: press the bell if I had it, but where's

Stephen Drew: There we go.

Jacob and Amandeep: Yeah, [00:57:00] there you go.

Stephen Drew: go. Thank you so much, both. I really appreciate you being here, persevering with people coming in the meeting rooms, because it's all happening in the BIFA studio, dealing with it, dealing with my madness, dealing with the questions, but actually, all jokes aside, I think that was a really good episode, and really informative, and the kind of things that a lot of Architects ask and want to get the answers for, but it was all in this episode.

So I will be rebranding this to How to Win Architecture Projects, spoken by Bee First after this. And if you're seeing that now, there you go. But on that note, I'm going to end the live stream here. Thank you to all of you that tuned in on the live. I can see lots of things came in. I can see lots of things coming in.

Sondra's all excited. We had laughs. There was hellos. There was all these questions earlier. If you're also watching the replay though, that's fine too. Last thing, gentlemen, before you go, where do people find you if they want to get in touch with you? The

Jacob and Amandeep: That's a good spot, but that, yeah, [00:58:00] that's good, but we've got we've got our Instagram channel, which we are directly linked in with, so if they want to slide in to our DMs, it's BFIRSTdesign. On Instagram. So you can find us straight there. LinkedIn as well. The team's quite active on LinkedIn.

Stephen Drew: Slide into the DMs. The do's and don'ts in pitching. Get your pitch right. Maybe slide into the DMs if you've done a good job. But thank you so much, Jacob and Amanda. You're absolutely, both of you are amazing. I'll just try and stop making you laugh, Jacob. I don't know why you just got that. You just make me wanna, I don't know, get all the questions in the wrong order.

But we did it! We've got them all there. Thank you so much to the audience. I'm going to end the live stream now. Be first. I can't wait to see what's happening in Barking and Daggingham. And if you're pitching the projects and you haven't followed the guide yet, then the joke's on you. Thank you so much everyone.

I'm going to end the live stream now. Take care. Bye bye. [00:59:00]