Comprehensive, accessible and easy to use, Starting a Practice helps architects navigate the pitfalls associated with establishing a successful business.
This fully updated 3rd edition is mapped to the RIBA Plan of Work 2020 and approaches starting a business as if it were a design project, complete with briefing, sketching layouts and delivery. It features new material on professionalism and ethics, sustainable development and achieving a net-zero carbon emission built environment.
Invaluable for Part 3 students, early practitioners and those considering setting up from scratch or wanting to consolidate an existing business, Starting a Practice gives architects the tools they need to thrive when setting out alone.
Features essential guidance on:
- Preparing a business plan
- Choosing the right company structure
- Setting aspirations
- Monitoring finances
- Getting noticed
- Securing work
- Retaining and developing staff
- Planning for disaster.
‘Simon has always been a thinking practitioner, with architecture at the centre of all he does. This book will be an invaluable guide for anyone thinking of starting a practice. From founding it, to running it, to making sure it produces architecture and allows a practitioner to have another life. It even suggests the need to make a succession plan. Which is not something you think about when you setup, but it catches up with you surprisingly quickly!’ – Simon Allford, RIBA President
‘Simon Foxell’s insight, clarity and small practice experience has created the contemporary must-read guide
to tackling the many issues in setting up and maintaining a practice. If all practices treated their businesses as
an ongoing project, and used their briefing experience to create and review their business plans we would have a profession on top of its game, which we could be truly proud of.’ – Jane Duncan OBE PPRIBA
‘Written in crisp and direct language sprinkled with witty insights, this book is a comprehensive and highly practical guide, of value to all architectural practices; not only to those just setting up but to all wanting to do better.’ – Sunand Prasad, Principal, Penoyre & Prasad
About the author
Simon Foxell is Principal of The Architects Practice. He has designed buildings across the UK including houses, schools and offices and is a recipient of the prestigious Benedictus Prize awarded by the Union of International Architects. In recent years he has worked with schools and local authorities, designing new facilities and advising on development programmes. He was lead design adviser to Birmingham City Council's Transforming Education programme from 2007 to 2010. He is a core member and co-ordinator of the Edge, the built environment think tank. He is a former member of the RIBA Council and Board and was Chair of both Policy and Strategy and RIBA London region. He sat on the RIBA's recent Ethics and Sustainable Development Commission. He has authored multiple books, most recently Professionalism for the Built Environment (Routledge, 2019).
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