Francesca Bettridge
Principal Cline Bettridge Bernstein Lighting Design
In my experience I think New York is always a little more on a lag time from the rest of the country in terms of the slowdown of the economy and how it hits. The first thing we saw was some jobs that we were expecting to start either being put on hold, being postponed, or becoming slower to start. We have had some projects where the client is downsizing the building and the architect is redesigning. Those are obvious reactions to the economy.
Strangely enough, we have had nonstop requests for proposals (RFPs). That seems to be saying there is a lot of activity going on. But with all of these RFPs, the schedules are even tighter than usual. It has been that way for the past five to six years. We are more likely to hear that design documents for a large job are wanted in two to three weeks. That puts a lot more stress on offices. You have commitments, but at the same time you are anxiously looking at the economy and you don’t want to say no to potential work.
The other thing about the proposals, and I see this because I’ve been doing this a long time, is that we are getting answers back that say we are too expensive. We are trying to “sharpen our pencils,” but now we are hearing that people are accepting offers for amounts that we know just cannot be accomplished. This speaks to the demands for our services. The scope of our services is expanding and clients and architects have not yet acknowledged that if, for example, you do a LEED project, it requires more fee in terms of coordination, meetings, energy calculations, proving your energy allowances, etc. There is a lag time acknowledging that it costs us more to be energy ef-ficient in our design while still trying to define a design that is innovative and thoughtful. The RFPs also are being written in such a way that it is almost eliminating your ability to go back for additional services. Customary practice is being changed without our input, unless we speak up.
What this all boils down to is people are getting more and more caught up in the demands of what clients are asking for, which seems to be an expanding scope of services—services that are not traditionally the responsibility of the consultants, but rather are supposed to be overseen by the architect and contractor. I think the more experienced you are, the more you are caught in a vice because you know all the things that can go wrong. It is very hard to make a decision on how you are going to handle this. I see the present situation not so much as a slowdown but as hysteria in RFPs. There is a tremendous amount of transition and anxiety going on. This atmosphere makes you ask some important questions and asks you to look at your business, your company image, and what you can do to reposition yourself, if need be.