Survey reveals return to optimism

Architects continue to feel more positive about the months ahead, according the latest findings of the RIBA's monthly Future Trends Survey. Optimism among those working within the public sector, in particular, has bounced back to earlier levels.

The RIBA Future Trends Survey provides a monthly yardstick of workload expectations and employment prospects among architects, based on the responses of a cross-section of small, medium and large practices.

Public sector workload predictions rose from 16 per cent to 29 per cent, a 13 per cent month-on-month increase and 6 per cent up on May's high. By comparison, confidence among those specialising in the commercial sector has risen slowly but steadily from 11 per cent in May, to 13 in June and on to 16 per cent in July. Private housing sector predictions have remained unchanged at 24 per cent.

Although the number of practices expecting staff levels to remain constant over the next three months increased only marginally from 75 to 76 per cent, the number expecting staff numbers to go down continued to fall to 13 per cent. In May the figure was nearly a quarter.

Statistical analysis enables the RIBA to calculate and monitor two key confidence tracking indices relating to anticipated future workloads and staffing levels. The latest Future Trends Workload Index is +18 (compared to +10 in June) while the Staffing Index is now -2 (compared with -8 in June).

“This is the fourth month in a row to show a steady improvement in the Workload Index, which stood at a very pessimistic -31 in March 2009” says Adrian Dobson, RIBA's Director of Practice. “The practices in our survey are now predicting a modest improvement in workloads over the next quarter.

There is a significant variation in survey returns between the different UK nations and the regions, with practices based in London and the South East currently much more confident about some recovery in workloads than practices elsewhere in the UK. Clearly the autumn period will be critical in revealing the validity of this recovery in sentiment and whether there is a real sustainable increase in architects' workloads.”

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