What if?, When?, They should…., but what IS?

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

There is a consistent pattern to many of the most active threads that I have noticed. They are about how one thing or another has to be changed in order to make the success of landscape architects more guaranteed. While there is no doubt that it is within every profession’s best interest to look for opportunities that can be exploited, for lack of a better word, we need to start by looking around to see what IS making up the majority of work within the profession right now?

 

So many of us are either in school or just a year or two separated from school. Much of what gets discussed seems more like a continuation of what is talked about in school and not so much based on what the majority of people in our profession are doing.

 

I don’t claim to know what IS making up the majority of work out there, but these are questions that I think need to asked and I would like to know the answers to:

 

What is going on in the green energy world that landscape architects ARE working on?

How much work is being generated exclusively for LEED certified LAs?

How are the one person or small offices bearing up under the current circumstances vs. the big boys?

Is residential any more viable or any less viable than other types of practices currently?

Is the “green economy” a growing segment or a shrinking segment of LA work in terms of numbers of projects and/or dollars?

Is regulation that requires higher landscape and green standards adding more work for LAs or is it costing us more by killing more  projects for each of those that do give us added scope?

Just how many “green roofs” were built last year and how many were in control of landscape architects (a dollar amount would not be bad to know either).

How many people graduated with LA degrees in each year over the last twenty years?

Are there non-flashy good paying jobs for people with LA degrees right now?

What clients are actually hiring LAs as individuals or firms?

What, if any, clients prefer to avoid LAs and why?

 

I’m hoping some of these questions can be added by people with direct experience, or hard numbers, and not just from philosophers and academic parrots.

 

[Chupacabra]

“What is going on in the green energy world that landscape architects ARE working on?”

Hundreds of thousands of acres of public lands are targeted for the development of solar and wind farms.  LAs are being hired to do the visual resource management and some mitigation work that is related as part of the permitting process.  VRM is required for these types of projects and VRM is our “thing”.  I know of several medium sized firms in the Southwest who pay the rent and keep the lights on by doing VRM stuff (same rules apply for oil and gas, utility corridors, etc. on federal lands), and a couple of those have expanded since the start of the recession.  Some of the massive A/E conglomerates and doing this work now as well.  From what I’ve heard, BLM has a major backlog because of the surge in applications.  However, some of this growth is a bubble as some of the energy developers are really only doing it because of federal grants and those grants will eventually end.

[mark foster]

A lot of questions!  I will give a partial answer to three:

 Is residential any more viable or any less viable than other types of practices currently?

What clients are actually hiring LAs as individuals or firms?

What, if any, clients prefer to avoid LAs and why?

Based on my experience, I believe design build firms will continue to dominate the residential markets.  I see increasing market share in the commercial sectors too.  At some project scales,  D/B  is just a better business model then the traditional adversarial “professional vs. tradesman” model . Less defensive drawing, more flexibility in implementation, and one direction for the client to point in.

Unfortunately, I see LA missing this boat–too few of us are starting,  these types of firms and “landscapers” are filling the void.  But they are hiring.

 

  

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

What did you do?

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