How much lag-time between recovery for Architects and recovery for Reprographers?

Towards the end of the AIA article (published by the AIA in August 2010) about the July 2010 ABI Index, the author of the article, Jennifer Riskus, Manager of Economic Research, reported the following:

This month’s special questions followed up on last month’s questions about the timing of project design phases. Survey respondents reported that the largest share of their projects (42%) have a design phase (defined as lasting from the awarding of the design contract to the completion of the construction documents) that lasts less than six months, while an additional 24% of projects have a design phase typically lasting between six and nine months. Small firms are much more likely to have shorter design phases than large firms, with 59% of projects at firms with less than $250,000 in annual billings having design phases of less than six months, compared to just 23% of projects at firms with annual billings of $5 million or more. Projects at firms with an institutional specialization also tend to have a slightly longer design phase, with nearly half (47%) of projects at those firms having a design phase lasting between six and 12 months.

Our panelists indicated that the complexity of a project is the most important influence on the length of the design phase, followed by project size (construction value), type of client, and scope of design services offered. The project delivery method (e.g., design-build, design-bid-build, integrated project delivery) was not considered to be a very important factor.

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Joel's comments: All this does is pretty much confirm what reprographers have been saying for years. Architects begin to recover, revenue-wise, before Reprographers do, by about 6-9 months. For Reprographers, FM (OnSite) revenue should be a leading predictor of production center (off-site) revenue recovery (or, should I say, growth.)