Thursday, November 7, 2013

Non-architect work within firms!

This question may be a little different, but I’m trying to research career opportunities with architecture firms for people other than architects. I have an MBA in marketing, with experience in project planning, financial analysis, product development and purchasing. For the past 6 years I have served as a project manager for the Boy Scouts of America in their store planning function. I have basic CAD skills, but have functioned primarily on my ability to communicate, decipher, coordinate and learn and use existing systems.
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As architecture firms are business, most have staff that are NOT architects but probably only the largest of firms.  This would include marketing, human resources, etc.  However, over 80% of architecture firms are small (less than 5) and the architects on staff do all of the work.

One source of information is the following - most of the members of SDA are not architects, but rather those within the firm that assist in the areas previously mentioned.

Society of Design Administration

I hope this helps!

1 comment:

Enoch said...

This is a great question, and good answer. There is a definite need for people with your skill types, but you will definitely be talking to the firms with 80+ employees (although some successful firms with as few as 20 employees have a marketing/business development person on staff).