When to hire? How to Hire? And when to think about renting office space.

[Jamie Chen]

I think if you are working late and the amount of extra hours that you are working above 40 hours adds up to at least a part time job, then why not hire somebody?

I remember going to a presentation at one of the ASLA Expos where the presenter noted that when principals spend time doing labor that can best be delegated for hourly paid workers, the company loses in the long run. Assume you are on a salary; what’s a better use of your time, interfacing with clients, actually coming up with the designs, vs. drafting and doing details, totaling up billable hours, and typing up invoices?

If you adopt a project management system like Trello, Asana, Basecamp, or Do.com, then collaboration can happen and you wouldn’t need to feel nervous about somebody else answering phone calls for you while you are busy.

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

The hard thing is that the drafter is extremely limited without the input of the person in charge.

 

It is oftened assumed that you can grab a trained person or one with several years of experience, throw him or her into a chair and they will produce the plans in the absence of the principal. That can work for existing conditions plans and cookie cutter parts of a design, but in custom landscape design that person either needs a lot of latitude on what (s)he can do or a lot of timely input from the project manager. This is with the assumption that the employee is already fully trained and knows the office standards.

 

NCA777 said right out that he wants or is compelled to have his hand on all of it. I have worked in a civil office with a “hands on” CE which is far less of a profession that runs on creative input than LA. There is only so far you can go in that person’s absence before you cross the point of working against their wishes which not only wastes the time invested, but often undoes things that need to be re-created. The result was and still is staff whose production is limited by the input of the PM.

 

The whole point is that, especially with a first employee, you need a big part of each day committed to managing the employee which is an addition to your work load. The end result needs to be a better overall output from the office, but it is a far different thing than the expected gain of a ton of extra time to pursue clients and other more important use of time. Managing the employee(s) will become one of THE most important uses of time and in a territory that is likely unfamiliar.

[Author]

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