The Association of Consulting Architects has released the results of its second “pulse check” survey of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Australian architecture practices.
Preliminary results reveal practices have “serious concerns” about the effect of the pandemic on workflow, finances and employment. Of particular concern are the 89 percent of responding practices that have had projects cancelled or put on hold, or are anticipating projects to be cancelled, which represents a sharp rise from 57 percent of responding practices revealed in the first survey which was conducted in the second half of March.
The survey attracted responses from 777 practices employing 7,740 full-time technical staff, and more than 1,141 full-time equivalent casual technical staff. Of these, 58 percent are small practices employing five people or fewer.
Based on information provided by 333 practices, the combined value of cancelled or delayed work is more than $5 billion. Productivity is also down in most practices, although almost half are expecting to recover fairly or very quickly.
The financial impacts is also having a significant effect on employement arrangements with 78 percent of practices having to negotiating changes to employment arrangements or are expect they will need to. Of these, 259 practices have had to reduce the hours of 1,150 employees; 150 employees have been stood down by 57 practices, 46 of these practices have stood down one or two staff; 192 employees have been made redundant by 62 practices, 145 practices have made redundant or stood down 224 casual staff.
The survey took place from 29 to 31 March. The federal government announced the details of its Job Keeper wage subsidy on 30 March. In answer to the question, “Would the government wage subsidy enable you to keep people on?” 46 percent of practice responded “yes,” while a further 45.6 percent of practices responded, “We would hope so, but would need to see details of the scheme.”
A majority of respondants (468) expressed a need for further information on accessing government stimulus packages. See ArchitectureAU‘s report on the federal government stimulus package here.
The survey identified a number of significant challenges: 76 percent expressed challenges from disruptions to client processes and/or client expectations; 65 percent saw challenges from reliance on other parties (eg: consultants) and impact of carer duties on work (forexample, children, parents), which 56 percent feeling that the negative impact on office culture was a challenge.
The survey also looked into the remote working arrangements and mental health of practices. More than half (382) of responding practices have 100 percent of staff working from home while only 60 practices have no staff working from home. A high proportion of practices rated the mental wellbeing in the practices as very good, good or neutral and 40 percent of practices have processes in place to support wellbeing.
For the full results of the survey, see part one here and part two here.
Source: Architecture - architectureau
