As someone who runs a small practice, I must start by saying that I am as alarmed and concerned about the erosion of architects’ fees as anyone.

Which leads on to my next point. I wrote a slightly controversial article on LinkedIn recently saying that architects should give away work for free. To be very clear, I was advocating for doing initial capacity studies for developer clients to allow them to assess the high level viability of a site.

‘Why would you give away this valued service for free’? came the predictable comments in response to my post. My reply to them is that this ‘free’ service is actually a ‘monkey’s fist’. This an expression taken from the nautical world to describe the knot tied to a string that sailors throw to the dock worker when mooring a large ship. The dock worker catches the knot, pulls in the string, which is attached to a rope, which leads to a chain. And once you pull the chain, you land the vessel.

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