"What would you say you do here?"

Recently we were given a puzzled look when we presented a proposal to a prospective client of our apparently obscure services. The proposal included numbers for mechanical electrical and plumbing engineering design consultants, structural engineering consultants, civil engineering consultants, sustainability consultants, acoustic design consultants, interior design consultants, surveyors, landscape design consultants, and, then, at the very end, our number for architectural services.

What's included in your architectural services? These were, of course, nobly defined in the proposal but with all these other team members it boiled down to coordination and permitting. Those of you who are architects and architects in Chicago, know that these are essential and painful tasks. But they are soft, tangible only when things go wrong. Do they need an architect to do this project? What are we stamping? Where does our responsibility lie? Is our stamp necessary only because the City requires it?

Good questions. Engineers stamp the MEP design, the structural design, and the civil engineering design. The architect is basically there to make sure the interior design is up to code and available to all those handicapped.

We daydream back to the heady days of architecture school. Chip board and plexi glass models abound, lofty vocabulary describing our studio projects floated high with our dreams of a professional career of half art half science. Back in front of AutoCAD, we haven't seen chip board in years, there is no art just building code, no science just coordination.

They could hire project management consultants to do the coordination and construction administration, then where would we at LWoA be?

Making a little better than $34k a year, ready to be fired at any time.