One of the most common comments when I meet someone new and they ask me what I do for a living is “I wanted to be an architect when I was a kid.” I find it very interesting that so many people wanted to be architects and so many took another route for various reasons. One of the big ones I am sure of is that most architectural schools are designed specifically to weed out those that don’t LOVE architecture. It is a tough major and limits your ability to do other things – party, hang out, sleep… Anyway, I also wonder how many people who wanted to be an architect understand what we do. So here is a description of a typical day in the life of an architect – at least as typical as a day can be with so many varied projects.
6:00 am wake up, get ready for work
7:00 am Fix breakfast
7:30 am let the dog out, eat breakfast with dad
8:00 am arrive at the office
8:00 am – 9:00 am catch up on emails from the last two days. Focus on emails from existing clients, then on to potential new clients, take care of bookkeeping.
9:00 am Morning meeting to make sure we have questions answered and clear direction for the day
10:00 am review drawings for staff to make sure all changes were made
11:30 am leave for a client meeting 30 minutes away from the office
1:00 pm Walk through the existing house to review the scope of work, discuss with the contractor and talk about the process with a new client.
2:00 pm leave project site to head to another
3:00 pm walk job site for high-performance home under construction. Answer questions for contractors. Review execution for compliance with the design intent.
3:30 pm leave the job site and head to another
4:00 pm arrive at a job site, look at the progress made over the last few days. Hoping for some dry weather so this job can get going.
4:15 pm leave the job site
4:45 pm get to the office, return phone calls and answer questions
5:00 pm arrive at home after a long day
5:15 pm make dinner for the family, eat dinner, and talk about favorite parts of our day.
6:30 pm open computer and start answering emails that were not responded to all day
7:30 pm review marketing to make sure comments get responses, the scheduled posts are ready, and maybe generate new content
8:00 pm Review drawings done through the day by others, check status of progress
10:00 pm go to bed, tomorrow is a long day!
