With smaller architecture firms often unable to compete for big-ticket contracts, one local firm is joining forces with a longtime partner to gain a competitive edge over multinational companies. <\/p>\n
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With smaller architecture firms often unable to compete for big-ticket contracts, one local firm is joining forces with a longtime partner to gain a competitive edge over multinational companies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a trend that could become more common in the profession as projects become larger and more complex, industry watchers say.<\/p>\n
For nearly two decades, Ottawa-based Watson MacEwen Teramura Architects (WMTA) has worked with mcCallumSather, which was founded in Hamilton and now operates an office in the capital.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, the two firms announced a formal strategic partnership that will allow them to share expertise and pursue larger, more complex projects.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNow it\u2019s at a point where, in order to be competitive, we need to have a little more robustness,\u201d Drew Hauser, architect and board chair at mcCallumSather, told OBJ.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt used to be that a large project was $100 million and now a large project is a billion dollars. It\u2019s like, holy smokes. And with the complexity, many of them don\u2019t have a precedent. The Canadian government, in some cases, might really feel they have to look abroad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Large U.S. firms tend to dominate the Canadian architecture landscape, winning more major contracts over Canadian SMEs, said Allan Teramura, architect and partner at WMTA.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe largest firms in Canada at the moment are all based in the United States,\u201d he said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t an invasion of architects coming across the border, it was them acquiring local firms, for the most part. But the reality is that the profits and the knowledge and the credentials and the experience end up going to a firm that has its head office somewhere in the States.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCallumSather, a 30\u2011year\u2011old firm founded on sustainable design with in\u2011house mechanical engineering, has a national portfolio that includes mass timber, affordable housing and lab facility projects.\u00a0<\/p>\n
WMTA, meanwhile, has prioritized projects that require specialized expertise for the public sector, heritage and research facilities. It has also broken into the defence sector, where its security credentials have been a major asset.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The firms first worked together on a municipal water quality lab in Hamilton, said Hauser, and the relationship developed from there.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were starting to win some government work but, in all honesty, everything that we were winning, we’d be like, \u2018Hi Allan, hi (partner Rick MacEwen), what do we do? How do we do this?\u2019\u201d said Hauser. \u201cThey were very helpful in helping us navigate that. Now with that alignment, it just allows us to be much more effective.\u201d<\/p>\n
The formalized partnership gives each firm a partial ownership stake in the other, allowing them to share knowledge and expertise more easily. For the time being, the firms will continue operating under their own names.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess we\u2019re trying to form a kind of resistance, to build a homegrown entity that can compete with these huge firms that have thousands of employees,\u201d said Teramura. \u201cThat\u2019s part of the strategy, I think, in surviving in this market.\u201d
\nPartnerships may become more common
\nAs projects become more expensive and complex, local architect Andrew Reeves, owner of Linebox Studios, said small firms often struggle to secure contracts, usually because they can\u2019t meet qualification requirements that he calls unrealistic.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSay they\u2019re doing a school,\u201d he said. \u201cYou cannot qualify unless you\u2019ve done 10 prior schools. So a firm like Linebox will never qualify for 90 per cent of the stuff out there, because we haven\u2019t done 10. Guess what? There\u2019s only like three firms that have.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reeves said it’s a problem that exists across the board, including at the municipal and federal levels. Only a few Canadian cities, such as Edmonton, use a different approach that gives small firms a fighting chance, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have a value-based procurement process,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat they\u2019ve done for procurement \u2014 and it\u2019s not just architecture \u2014 is they allow for the opportunity to prove your value in a particular project. If they\u2019re doing a school, they’ll shortlist (qualifying firms) and give them a small amount of money so they can come up with what they feel is the best solution for this particular process. Then they\u2019ll pick not necessarily based on the lowest fee, but on the actual value.\u201d<\/p>\n
Toon Dreessen, president of Architects DCA in Ottawa, has long criticized the current procurement process. Though he said he understands the buyer perspective of wanting competence and deep expertise, he said the criteria can become unnecessarily convoluted and challenging.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019ve got to demonstrate that you\u2019ve done three buildings of $50 million or more in the last five years and you\u2019ve won a Governor General\u2019s Award in architecture, well, how many firms have that?\u201d he said. \u201cIt becomes such a tight criteria that it\u2019s really hard for small to medium-sized firms to compete.\u201d<\/p>\n
For that reason, Dreessen said partnerships like the one between mcCallumSather and WMTA could become more common.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you\u2019ll start to see the 10- to 30-person firms either disappear, as many have over the years, or starting to form partnerships and relationships with each other,\u201d he said. \u201cAt Architects DCA, we have two or three partners we work with regularly and that gives us added capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n
But in order for small firms to truly stand a chance, he said procurement policies need to change. That could be an SME policy to better engage boutique firms on federal contracts, or a design competition model that prioritizes the best designs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHere I am, a little architecture firm out of Ottawa, and we have contracts in Newfoundland, B.C., Quebec, Toronto, Kingston,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have all of these contracts because we compete at a fair level. We compete with the big guys and we win.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With smaller architecture firms often unable to compete for big-ticket contracts, one local firm is joining forces with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":772408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":["post-772407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=772407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/772408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=772407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=772407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=772407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}