Gov Committee,

Don’t take this as confrontational or critical…these are thoughts from an owner of a 15 person private sector firm out in the trenches…

I work solely in the private sector so the issue of QBS doesn’t affect me every day.  It is worth pointing out, however, in the private sector, low fee is almost never the criteria for seasoned developer or business clients. Most have suffered the consequences of bottom feeding architects who couldn’t get the job done at low rates or worse, produced a failure of a project; then went belly up.

With that said, QBS seems to be a surefire way to quickly conglomerate all contract winners into a very small and continually self fulfilling clique.  Service and quality must certainly decline due to the super-specialization and creativity would also have to dilute into a pool of “low risk solutions”.  Don’t get me wrong, right now this is great for me because the supply of would-be competition is soaked up into the mega-firm blob.  I just don’t see enough of the institutional money asking for inspiring projects…just safety behind specialists. I also don’t see a path anymore for me (or others like me) to do fire stations, schools, courthouses, city halls, etc..all of which have such a small sliver of design criteria variation from each other and what I design that I could credit back the client for the 30 minutes of research it takes to get up to speed:).  15 years ago, it was easier to break through and get these jobs…now the juggernauts have barricaded the door, in part, using QBS type of tactics and giant marketing departments funded by the giant profits.

I recently lost a job to design a prengineered barn at Selfridge for 125,000 dollars to the blob who got the contract for 450,000 (A/E only).  I assure you, the construction was less than the fee, but the qualifications were all that could be evaluated.

Will it really cause corruption if a government agency can choose an architect using subjective, relationship, or even criteria based on the architect’s operational structure?  Even price should be considered (especially if a lower fee is clearly justified by a physical solution, not just the size of the endeavor..ie modular vs amorphic.) ? Of course it would, but at least the corruption of portfolio padding, fake acquisitions and uninvolved principals could be avoided by the A/E’s.

Would we not be smarter with a firm that has designed two good schools vs one that has designed 200 mediocre schools and has a revolving door staff?

How can the lobbying activities of the AIA reconcile this?

Regards,

 Peter Stuhlreyer, AIA