Following the Build The Way roundtable last week I concluded that we don’t need to spend much more time convincing people that architecture needs better and more accessible routes into the profession. The harder question is why, when there is so much agreement, it remains so difficult for practices to change their approach to recruiting for entry level position.

I run GPAD, a 30-person design studio in London, and we face the same pressures as many practices: competitive fees, tight margins, uncertain pipelines and limited visibility of where the business will be several years from now. Time and cash are tight. I understand the burden of growing a team and the risk associated with employing younger people who need more practical training and time.

The barriers are real, but if we agree that architecture needs new routes into the profession, we can’t allow them to become permanent reasons for inaction. Rather than waiting for someone else to design the perfect pathway, practices need to be part of creating what comes next: trying things, learning from them and helping shape the routes as they develop.

We started Build The Way alongside POoR Collective five years ago to try to shape a different route into the profession. We have since had four trainees at GPAD, with a fifth starting soon, and we now employ two of those people through the Level 6 apprenticeship route. Across GPAD and our partner practices, 15 trainees have now completed the programme, with another five due to start shortly.

We have some great success stories, strong partners and good supporters… this year however, its been harder than ever to secure partner practices to employ a trainee.

Through employing trainees and apprentices at GPAD, and trying to secure partner practices for Build The Way, I keep coming across the same three barriers: the maths doesn’t quite work; the commitment feels too long; and when practices get busy, training loses out to today’s fee-earning work.

The maths

If apprenticeships are genuinely intended to widen access, we need to pay people enough to make the route viable without financial support from their families. In London, that means thinking seriously about the London Living Wage.

But pay an apprentice a proper living wage and their salary is similar to that of a Part 1 who has already spent three years at university. Increase the Part 1 salary to maintain that differential and the pressure moves through Part 2 and other salaries.

I’d like all of those salaries to be higher, but ultimately someone has to pay for them. Architecture operates on tight margins and competitive fees. The apprentice wage, Part 1 salaries, fees and funding model are all connected. If we want equitable apprenticeships to work at scale, particularly for SMEs, we need funders, clients and practices working together to make the economics stack up – paying apprentices less than LLW doesn’t feel right or equitable.

The commitment

Asking an SME to employ somebody for several years when it may only have three to six months of reliable pipeline is significant. Equally, we’re asking a young person to commit an important part of their education and early career to a practice they barely know.

We make hiring decisions without knowing exactly what the future holds all the time, but the length of an apprenticeship makes the commitment feel different. There may be more flexible models that reduce some of that risk while retaining the value that comes from an apprentice staying with a practice and growing with it.

This is one reason the Build The Way traineeship works well. It gives someone proper paid experience while funding helps subsidise the wage and make the opportunity more equitable. It also allows both sides to work together before deciding whether a longer-term relationship is right. Our immediate ambition should be to grow these opportunities and, over time, see more become routes into apprenticeships and employment.

Short-term thinking and our attitude to training

When a practice is in survival mode, the opportunity cost of training somebody is very easy to see and the longer-term value much harder to measure. We are seeing trainees and apprentices contributing on projects much quicker than some would assume, bringing energy, breadth of lived experience and opportunities for us to think about how we teach the team about who we are and how we work. We learn much about ourselves and how we want to be.

A director deciding to employ an apprentice isn’t enough. The people working alongside them need to buy into it too. When everybody is busy, it is easy to look at an hour spent teaching someone and see an hour that could have been spent on fee-earning work.

We’ve experienced that at GPAD. One of the things we are only now properly understanding is that employing people through a different route isn’t enough on its own. We also need to become a better teaching environment if we want to get the best from them and properly integrate them into the team

What kind of practice do we need to be?

We talk a lot about the architects the profession needs: commercially aware, technically capable, good communicators, able to collaborate and understand clients. We also regularly hear practices complain about the gap between architectural education and the skills needed in practice.

If we know the skills we want people to have, we should advocate for universities and other educational bodies to teach them, or build practices capable of teaching them ourselves. In reality, I think we need to do both, with much tighter relationships between practices and educational bodies as architectural education changes.

That requires more than employing an apprentice and putting them into a project team. We need to think about how people learn in practice, who teaches them, whether those people have the skills and time to do it well, and how we value people who are good at developing others.

Taking on apprentices has made us look harder at ourselves at GPAD. We have traditionally been a practice that does things and works things out. We expect people to have drive, energy and take responsibility. There is a lot that is good about that culture, but taking on apprentices has made me realise that it doesn’t automatically make us a good teaching environment.

Are we explaining enough rather than simply asking someone to do something? Are we giving people the right range of experience? Do the people managing them understand what they are trying to learn? Sometimes we need to explain more, create clearer opportunities to learn and be more deliberate about people’s development.

We haven’t always got that right, but recognising it is changing how I think about the practice.

Other industries understand that developing people is part of building the capability of a business. Architecture needs to do the same. Teaching can’t be seen as time taken away from the real work. Teaching is part of the real work, and we can’t expect universities to provide the perfect person who already understands our practice and everything we need from them.

It also develops the people doing the teaching. Mentoring requires you to communicate, give feedback, explain why you make decisions and take responsibility for someone else’s development. Those are exactly the skills we need from future leaders.

Perhaps we’re much better at measuring the immediate cost of teaching somebody than the longer-term value of becoming a practice that is good at developing people.

From talking to doing

None of this means we’ve perfected the model at GPAD or Build The Way, but that’s part of the point. We should be prepared to experiment with the models, without experimenting with people’s careers. Every trainee or apprentice deserves a properly supported opportunity, but around them we can test different approaches to funding, recruitment, mentoring and training, be honest about what works and what doesn’t, and share what we learn.

Build The Way is one way to advocate for change while creating opportunities in an adaptable, action-first way.

I want GPAD to think about what we want our practice and our industry to look like in the future, and then make moves to help create it. I also want us to be a practice that acts on its values. For me that includes creating opportunities for people and helping build a more equitable profession that better represents the society it serves.

That means recognising potential earlier, teaching people what we know, learning from what they bring to us and developing people around the skills we think architects will need in the future.

Architecture already talks a lot about equity, opportunity and widening access. We now need more practices prepared to put some time and effort behind those values and try something. Take a trainee; offer meaningful work experience; mentor somebody; advocate for better training; ask what skills you wish young architects had and what your own practice could do to help develop them. Then share what you learn.

If we work together, success could be that in five years we don’t describe any of this as an “alternative” route. It is simply one of the ways talented people enter architecture and develop their careers, and practices have become better at teaching and developing them when they arrive.

The question I came away from the Build The Way roundtable asking wasn’t simply how we persuade more practices to take apprentices. It was what kind of practices do we need to become if we want to create the next generation of architects?

At GPAD we don’t have all the answers. But I would rather we try things, learn and help shape what comes next than wait for somebody else to solve it.

If we want new routes into architecture, we need to start creating them. And that means being prepared to act, take some risks and build practices capable of developing the people who come through them.