Strategies for the architectural firm: risk- and flexibility management at Wiegerinck Architecten

Wiegerinck Architecten (WA) is an integral architectural office, specialized in hospital buildings. WA wants to have a strategic competitive advantage over their competitors in the hospital building sector. They want to create a competitive strategic advantage through improving both their knowledge in and experience of the hospital building sector and their architectural quality. In the future, the role of an architect in hospital building projects will possibly change. The consequences of this possible role change for the architectural ambition of WA is not clear.Architectural ambition can be described by the wish and the possibility of an architectural firm to realize architectural quality on the aspects of functional, technical and esthetical quality. The architectural quality ambition of WA can be described as realizing a natural and introvert design based on a contextual analysis with future value.In the future the traditional designer's role of WA will possibly change into other roles. The reasons for change are: • Traditional procurement models are changing into innovative procurementmodels;• The architect is becoming a specialist;• Withdrawal of government in hospital building regulations.The possible roles WA can fulfill besides the traditional designers role are: building consultant, researcher, conceptual designer, draughtsman and supervisor. The question is: Do these new roles match with the ambition of WA to realize a higher level of architectural quality? Does WA have the possibility to realize the wish to realize their architectural quality in one of the above-mentioned roles? Based on the differences between the traditional role WA fulfills and the new role, risk profiles for every new role are made.Based on the diagnoses of the architectural ambition and role change of WA, we developed a risk management instrument. This risk management instrument consists of four steps, namely: identifying risks, analyzing risks, determining risk attitude and control of risks.