What can an architecture practice automate without touching the design?

How much of an architect's week is spent writing rather than designing?

More than most practices admit. Every commission begins with a fee proposal broken down by RIBA Plan of Work stage, with a scope of services, exclusions and a resourcing assumption. It continues with an appointment document, then a stream of written output at each stage: stage reports, design team meeting minutes, client presentations with explanatory text, planning statements and responses to consultee comments. Much of this falls to project architects and directors, the same people whose time the design needs.

The practice itself has records to keep. RIBA Chartered Practices work to the institute's practice criteria, and RIBA members keep CPD records. ARB, the statutory regulator of the title "architect", sets the professional standards architects are held to. ARB's Architects Code also puts weight on clear written terms with clients, which is why appointment letters take the care they do.

Why do architects keep rewriting the same documents?

Most practices hold a rich archive: dozens of previous fee proposals, stage reports that have been refined over years, standard minutes formats and planning statements that won consent. But it is an archive, not a system. Starting a new proposal means finding the nearest previous one, copying it and working through it line by line, removing the old client's name and adjusting the stages. The fee build-up is redone in a spreadsheet that may or may not match last time's.

Meeting minutes show the same pattern. The architect takes notes during a design team meeting, then types them up that evening into the practice template, then extracts the actions into an email. Three versions of one conversation, each written by hand.

Which architecture processes are worth rebuilding first?

• Fee proposals. The practice's stage-by-stage scope library, exclusions and fee logic are captured once, so a new proposal is assembled from the brief and reviewed rather than rewritten. Proposals and bids and fee estimating explain the approach, including drawing on how many hours past projects really took at each stage.
• Appointment documents. The agreed scope flows straight into the practice's appointment letter or schedule of services, so what was proposed and what was agreed stay consistent. See scope documents.
• Design team minutes and actions. Notes or a recording become minutes in the practice format, with actions allocated and a follow-up drafted. Meeting notes and follow-ups covers it.
• Stage reports. The report at the end of each work stage draws on what the project records already contain: the brief, decisions logged, drawing issues and the cost and programme position supplied by others.

The right starting point depends on your workload. The audit estimates which of these costs your practice the most.

Which decisions must stay with the architect?

Anything that expresses design intent or professional advice. The rebuilt process does not decide what goes into a scope, what fee to charge, how to answer a planning officer or whether a design responds to the brief. It drafts from the practice's precedents; an architect decides.

In practice that means three safeguards. Drafts show where each passage came from, so a reviewer can see which paragraphs are standard and which are new to this project. Fee figures are proposed from past projects but never sent without a director's approval. And nothing leaves the practice, whether to a client, a local planning authority or another consultant, until a named architect has read and approved it.

What does that give back to the practice?

Directors stop spending weekends on fee proposals. Project architects stop typing minutes after meetings and spend that time on the drawings. Part 1 and Part 2 assistants learn the practice's standards from consistent drafts rather than inherited files. And because proposals go out faster, the practice responds to opportunities while the client is still deciding.

The cost of the current way can be worked out as hours per architect per week on these documents, times the number of architects, times the charge-out rate, times 46 working weeks. The unbillable hours calculator does the arithmetic.

What happens in the 30 days?

Week one is spent with the architects who write the chosen document, mapping every source and every check. Weeks two and three build the process on the practice's own templates, archive and language, tested on live projects. Week four trains the team and makes it the practice's way of working, and support continues for 30 days after that.