Singapore’s architecture blueprint spurs push to tackle brain drain in other sectors

Paying the city-state’s architects just right will hopefully stop the brain drain.

A framework issued by Singapore’s architecture body in May to address low pay, brain drain and falling fees has spawned a similar push in other industries, including engineering and consultancy, as they try to retain young talent spooked by scope creep.

“The public sector and government agencies are also considering the blueprint as a way to articulate fair fees,” architect Melvin HJ Tan, president of the Singapore Institute of Architects (SIA), told Singapore Business Review.

“Scope creep can happen in small amounts and large scales,” he said, noting that when an architectural firm lands a client, the architect in charge must attend every single meeting with every other sub-consultant. “Automatically, the time that we put out or get involved with increases manyfold.”

Tan said architects now get a quarter of what they used to earn two or three decades ago even if architectural work has become more complex and work-heavy. SIA issued the framework to guide architects in pricing their services more accurately and ensure they are paid correctly.

Retaining architects, especially the younger ones, has become harder in recent years given an unhealthy work culture, where clients expect them to be on call almost 24 hours a day — without the extra pay. The average monthly salary of an architect in Singapore is $4,500 to $7,000, according to Jobstreet.

Only seven in 100 architecture graduates plan to stay in the profession in the long term, a survey by the institute in 2022 showed.

The new structure has made it easier for architectural clients to “understand and appreciate project scopes and costs,” Jireh Lee, an associate at DP Architects, told Singapore Business Review. 

“The greater transparency and clearer standards have allowed them to better recognise the added value of some of our services in terms of quality and sustainability, eventually justifying the higher fees,” he added.

Lee said DP Architects has had a structured project management framework to streamline their workflow even before SIA came out with the guidance. “The blueprint reinforces some of these workflows but also allows us to fine-tune others which could have been outdated,” he added.

SIA’s so-called value articulation framework lets architects define the scope of work for each project, whilst also documenting their liabilities, responsibilities, and duties. A firm can assign the person who will estimate the project cost and another who will evaluate the site for feasibility.

“The blueprint outlines all the tasks we are expected to perform and identifies what has or has not been provided,” Tan said. He also said they hope to prevent fee-diving, where firms or architects quote well below market rates to win a project.

Low wages equal brain drain

“Architects today are competing on price,” the SIA president said. “At any point in the competition, you will find that sometimes we have to make sacrifices and decide to just win a job.”

“But going ahead, we hope that architects will be empowered through the blueprint to be able to stand firm on the kind of fees they need, not to profiteer, but to ensure that [everybody] downstream is paid well,” he added.

Tan said getting paid right means having the budget to train staff properly. “The first sacrificial lamb is always the training of your staff. Now, if fees go up, we’re able to then develop our staff, especially competencies that would eventually allow the firm to compete on quality,” he added.

Md Shaziran Bin Md Shahabdeen, a senior architect at RSP Architects, said architects are not paid as high as their peers in other industries.

“It’s a bit demoralising for younger architects or fresh graduates who are in the industry,” Shaziran, one of Singapore Business Review’s outstanding architects under 40 this year, said. “The issue of low fees cascades down to low wages and eventually leads to brain drain.”

He said the SIA blueprint is a welcome move even if his firm already has a robust framework in place that adopts best practices in fee structures.

Lee urged his fellow architects to continue giving feedback to ensure the blueprint is fine-tuned to deal with the industry’s evolution. SIA’s Tan, for his part, said the institute would continue updating it so it remains relevant.