The life of an Architectural Technologist constantly working on multi million pound projects is a glamorous one, I would imagine.

For the rest of us, however, life is more mundane but that does not mean it is any less challenging or rewarding. In fact it is probably wrong to base the value of a project purely on the amount it cost to complete, as many jobs have little value in monetary terms. One example of this is the current DDA regulations or Asbestos registers, where a company’s entire property portfolio has to be inspected in order to check for compliance with regulations and of course follow up with any repairs or upgrades which may be required.

With these comments, I am referring to a typical week in my own job as a Manager with Stafford and Rural Homes, where my day to day duties can range from improving the Association’s Sheltered Housing schemes, all the way to altering a person’s home with the ubiquitous bath-out-shower-in conversions. With the latter, the job itself may only cost a few thousand pounds but the benefits for the client are priceless. Another aspect of my job is training staff to be able to use AutoCAD, which is not always an easy task! This ensures that the knowledge is shared and not confined to one or two experts.

In the past though, things were different. I had my share of working on ‘high value’ projects where drawings were done on a drawing board. I worked with many more people than I do now, and the only use of IT was by secretaries who used word processors to type up specifications from the Architectural Technologist's notes.