The lead article in my local Business Journal was on the recession’s impact on our architect community. The author’s sources estimated that 30% of the city’s architects had been put out of work. AIA National estimates that 40,000 positions have been lost nation wide since July 2008.

My heart goes out to everyone who has lost their job, but it especially goes out to our architects. Few in our industry realize how hard an architectural degree is to earn and how poorly they are paid.

I will never forget my first week in college. My dorm floor was flooded with wanna be engineers who were getting settled in to our new digs, getting used to a class load of physics, chemistry, and calculus and figuring out who our new friends were. We had all received a shock at the difference between our college courses and our high school courses. But we had it easy compared to the guy that lived across the hall.

One week into school, literally our first full weekend, this guy was having to pull an all-nighter. And guess what field he was studying?

You got it.

Architecture.

His all-nighters didn’t stop that weekend. He pretty much had to pull them for five years. That degree is crazy. It takes such incredible talent and dedication to earn and when they enter the working world, they get paid peanuts.

The article went on to mention a trend that contractors have been experiencing: even when you make a selected short list, the list isn’t really very short and it is filled with competition that is every bit as qualified.

Guy’s last blog entry mentioned that his show audiences had enjoyed decent years.  Those contractors probably represent a very small segment of the industry. The cold hard data shows that the implosion of the banking industry has taken a severe toll on the construction industry.

A lot of great, hard working, salt of the earth people are struggling to get by. Hopefully, the people in D.C. and on Wall Street can get their act together and straighten this mess out.

I can’t believe it is February already! Looking back at my calendar I was amazed to see I was on the road for 19 overnights in the month of January. With that being said I have met dozens of fine contractors over the last month. I put on thirteen presentations and when I polled the attendees the majority of participants had a year in 2009 that was equal to or better than that of 2008. Even though it was a non-scientific survey it was reassuring to know that some contractors are not only surviving but also thriving.

The interesting question is what are they doing differently?

I will be sharing in an upcoming newsletter some of the informal results I have experienced as of late. One thing I can report back now,  is that the trade-show attendees were serious about getting good information and intent on learning new concepts to help further develop their business.

Stayed tuned for my next newsletter in just a couple of weeks.

Guy