Week in the life of a 22-Year old Architectural Assistant working in London
Written by Sude, Edited by Aliya @archistudentnotes
This week we have a submission from Sude, a 22 year old Architectural Assistant living and working in London who is also one of two of the ArchiDabble founders!
ArchiDabble is an amazing platform and resource for all architecture students and architectural assistants currently run by Sude and Elifnur who provide incredibly helpful blog posts, detailed CAD packs and 1:1 portfolio mark ups!
This post was written by Sude currently working in an architecture office based in London as a Part 1 Architectural Assistant!
Would you have tackled the week any differently?
Monday
Mondays & Fridays are working-from-home days.
To debrief, we always have a team meeting in the morning at 9:30am. During this meeting, we get a good insight into what we will be working on throughout the day and any deadlines that urgently need to be met. In the context of this week, there weren't many items to action urgently and instead it should be a calmer week ahead, or so I thought.
The majority of this day was spent working on drawings for the website as well as solving an issue raised by Maxlight (window company). It seemed as though the installation dates were delayed by the company due to a miscommunication with our contractor. Annoyingly this did cause a problem with the scaffolding up at the site which was going to be taken down sooner but now had to be extended time-wise. The contractor for the project was also on annual leave which meant replies and progress on sorting the issue imminently was slow.
Although I would regard this day as quite calm, it did contain a rollercoaster of emotions due to the delays caused and the helpless situation we were in considering nothing could be done on our side of things.
Tuesday
I arrived at the office on Tuesday with an email regarding an EPC from our heating consultant. I was quite confused because I had no idea what an EPC was and what it entailed for the client. After a quick Google search, I figured out that it is an energy performance certificate needed to indicate the energy efficiency of a home when it is being sold/bought. This was quickly resolved with the client contacting an assessor recommended by the heating consultant.
Fun fact: For individuals switching to a boiler-free home, in order to take advantage of the boiler upgrade scheme grant you need a valid EPC, of which the score has no impact on whether you are eligible for the grant.
On a completely different note, I spent the rest of the day struggling to get ahold of a microcement company, recommended by the quantity surveyor for the project, for a revised quote. You would be surprised how annoying some people can be.
Lo and behold, we decided to start from scratch with a new company which meant a full round of new quotes, and new information about installation and substrates. What ended up happening was that the two companies had different substrate guides for the microcement but the site could only adopt the new substrate guide. Lots of conversations took place between me, the contractor and the new microcement company in order to sort out and come to a conclusion regarding the discrepancies caused by the previous company.
Wednesday
Last week I had a client meeting on Friday with the client, contractor and my director for a construction update on the project I'm leading. Some chips & cracks were reported with regards to the polished concrete installation that had taken place recently. The contractor was hesitant to leave it to be fixed during snags (after completion) especially because of the risk it holds not knowing who was responsible for the damage after a long time had passed.
So today, I contacted our correspondent at the installation company to schedule in someone to come out and fix the evident damage. Thankfully, this was smoothly sorted out and we should have a repaired concrete floor in the next coming weeks.
For our second project in construction, I had recently been communicating with the clients in order to finalise the second fix electrics, more specifically all sockets & switches. I had reached out to them a couple months ago with company recommendations to look at fittings so luckily the conversation was short and only covered a confirmation on quantities and creating a brief schedule for the contract to make the order.
After a couple more emails catching up with supply companies, I signed off for the day.
Mid Week Plug
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Thursday
Thursday morning: I continued where I had left off with the marketing material which I was working on passively throughout the week in the background.
To give some context, we share our office with a design & build company who also has an architect in their team who had invited me to a CPD being held at the office from Solus. It was a really informative presentation on Solus's new products in tackling sustainability and the process of their tile fabrication. Considering we had specified their products for the project that I'm leading, it gave me an opportunity to;
1. create new contacts and
2. ask any questions specific to the project.
Soon after this CPD was completed, my director and I had a quick briefing on some joinery drawings that need updating. Our new senior architect, was on leave so I had to jump in and amend her drawings so they could be issued to the client & contractor.
Right before I left, a typical move from my directors, I was asked last minute to export a BIMx model (interactive 3D program which allows our clients to view drawings and our ArchiCAD model on a smart device) of the most recent variation of drawings and models. Since this process takes about 30 minutes, as you could predict, I exported the BIMx file once I arrived home from work on my work laptop.
Friday
Fridays tend to be more chill until the last hour of the day.
We all work from home on Fridays, and surprisingly we communicate less via our messaging platform since everyone has a gist of what each of us is working on due to our to-do list system & google calendar.
In the morning, I was working on marketing material that'll be used on our website to communicate passive house principles to clients concisely. Later on in the evening, I had my final site meeting with clients for a private residential project which has been in construction since last year November. I have been assisting with this project alongside my directors since the beginning of this year and it has come a long way with such a small team (myself & my two directors). To round off the afternoon, I returned from the site meeting and filled in my timesheets as well as made any notes of items to action urgently on Monday morning, which in this case there weren't any :)
And that’s the week!
Thank you so much to Sude from ArchiDabble for this weeks submission here at ArchiWeek!
Check out ArchiDabble on their Website, Instagram and on LinkedIn where you will find incredibly helpful content for architecture students!
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