two billion pounds of fee revenue in UK architecture is shared by 33,000 Arb-registered practitioners and 25,000 chartered architects. The vast majority are in'small'to'micro'firms according to CBI classification. The CBI has four categories of business: Micro, with 1-10 employees and less than ￡i.6m revenue; Small, with 10-50 employees and revenue between around ￡i.6m and ￡8m; Medium, with 50-250 employees and revenue of ￡8m-￡4om; and Large, bigger again in each regard. The AJ100 group is almost exclusively medium, small or micro by this measure. Only a rare handful falls into the large category — even when combined with parent companies outside the UK. While we may think architects are unique in this regard, we are not. This country's law and accountancy professions may have larger total fee revenues and so more professionals, but they have similar profiles of scale with very few large practices and a multitude of micro firms. Such scale differential is universal across the service sectors. The underlying difference between large and small is one of business management and control.
展开▼
