100-Hour Weeks, Succession at 41, and a KPI That Changed Everything
An Article By: Kevin Crawford
Hi – I’m Kevin Crawford (42)
- Introduced to life in an architecture practice at 14 years of age
- 20+ Years Managing our own family practice
- Created a Succession Plan through a Transition to Employee Ownership at 41
- Founded ‘Designing Success – A Partner for Practices’
- Co-Founded ‘The Architectural Survey Company’
- Co-Founded ‘Pilotis Practice & Project Management App’
- Key to success – Being Relatable rather than Impressive
Introduction to Architecture at 14
My first experience of how an Architecture Practice was run was when I started to shadow my dad in his practice at 14 years of age – and now looking back I could see even then that my Dad worked long hard hours to try to make the business work, initially trying to be everyone before deciding to focus on running the business and employing a team of people in different roles – it should have been an easy lesson for me but I soon found myself doing exactly the same!
Relatable
I went onto run the business firstly alongside my Dad and then on my own over a 20 year period and now help owners and leaders of practices build better businesses by becoming clearer, stronger and more intentional leaders. I do this by being relatable, someone who has lived it and someone who just gets it! Someone who understands your challenges and someone who can work alongside you to find solutions.
The Frameworks
I firstly focus on the person behind the practice before any system, strategy, tool or technology is introduced – I believe from personal experience that the clearer, healthier and happier the person is – the stronger the business becomes. I have experienced burnout on multiple occasions and know firsthand how the pressures of projects, teams, clients and cashflow can impact on health, wellbeing and relationships – I was working 100 hour weeks, wearing multiple hats, reacting to everything, constantly fire fighting and the business was running me. I thought I was alone, that nobody else would have these challenges and my solution at the time was just to keep working more hours in the hope it would get better. At the time I behaved like the ostrich, burying my head in the sand, thankfully I eventually realised how to become the eagle and soar high above the business looking down on everything.
The Challenges
The challenges of running an Architecture Practice were evident to me from a young age with my Dad working long hard hours to ensure his own business was successful after starting out himself in 1987. I started my journey by going in after school at the age of 14. By 17 I was working full time in the business then tradition and peer pressure forced me into going to university – I went from being paid, working 9-5, learning every day from senior architects and technicians on real life site visits to relying on a student loan, commuting and finding myself with far more unstructured time than I was used to! Because I was fortunate enough to have experienced real practice life before university – something I’ll always be grateful to my dad for – I soon realised that although universities clearly play their part in educating budding Architecture students, no degree could prepare you for the demands of anxious clients about to spend their hard earned savings, how to prevent you from constantly undervaluing yourself when fee quoting, handling multi-platform communication, dealing with scope changes, becoming data driven or how to manage people.
Debating Titles won’t help
And it certainly couldn’t teach you how to run a business – something that many people with a qualification in Architecture or Architectural Technology jump into as they want to have their own practice. When everyone was telling me that I 100% needed to go to university for 7 years and become fully qualified – I chose to ignore this advice – I chose to get back to real life practice as soon as I could and focus on the practice as a business. I could see from an early age that a lot of the time the qualified architects that my dad employed were spending, especially in the latter stages of a project (Construction/Completion) were not profitable. There was so much time being spent on meaningless CPD hours which became tick box exercises, fee proposals that were confusing clients with legal jargon and a complete lack of understanding in trading time for money as opposed to value pricing. Being a great designer is one thing but when there is no understanding of how the amount of time spent correlates with the budget then they are always in danger of undervaluing themselves. Either fees had to increase or the time spent on each stage had to reduce. It’s ironic that for a long time I was made to feel like I made the wrong choice, even now people will tell me ‘You should have got the full qualification’ but I have learned that in life you need to choose who you take advice from. Whilst I, of course, have utmost respect for qualified architects, many don’t realise that you don’t need to be a fully qualified architect to run a successful Architecture Practice and in many cases it can be detrimental when you try to be both unless you know what you are doing. I have worked with and employed many Architects over the years and the biggest challenge was trying to control the amount of time they were amassing against what was budgeted – some great designers but just no business concept. I often found that the Architects I managed thought and operated as Architects but my job was to also make them think in a business sense – not just from the company point of view but also from a complexity/cost to client aspect aswell. Designing a project to budget needs both an Architectural and a Business Brain.
I know the challenges and my own 27-year degree, which isn’t pretty at times, and includes 4am starts, midnight finishes and multiple burnouts…….well………it just becomes my story and the way I chose to do it.
The Best Advice
I spent a lot of time trying to balance working in the business and on the business before finally appreciating the best advice that my dad ever gave me “you can’t be everyone”. I then chose to focus on the practice as a business and managed a multi-disciplinary team of Architects and Technologists for over 20 years before crafting a Succession Plan which allowed me to step back as part of a Transition to Employee Ownership at the age of 41.
Being an Architect v Running a Business
The reality is this: most people who find themselves running an architecture practice were never taught how to run a business. They were taught how to design, how to detail, how to pass exams — but not how to price confidently, lead teams, protect margin, or step away without everything slowing down. So they work harder. And harder. Until the business quietly starts running them. They end up feeling overworked, undervalued, and constantly reacting — so busy designing for their clients that they never take time to design their own business or lifestyle. They lack clarity on where the business is heading, don’t have time to create 1, 3 & 5 year plans, they make decisions based on emotion rather than data, think they have a marketing strategy but don’t know what projects are right for their business and just continue to do what they’ve always done, the hamster wheel keeps spinning, they continue to take on more projects without truly knowing profit margins. That’s when burnout creeps in. Projects pile up, energy drains, and clarity becomes impossible. It’s easy to make an Architecture Business look successful on social media but hiding behind these amazing designs that everyone sees is often the worries of cashflow, deadlines and long hours! Burnout in architecture rarely comes from lack of passion — it comes from lack of clarity.
Passion
My passion is now in working with owners and leaders of Architecture Practices – who share a similar mindset to myself and want to take time to design their business like it was a project. Bemoaning value, disputing titles and delaying succession planning doesn’t equal success.
Once the succession plan had been implemented, I then realised a lifetime ambition of becoming free and able to choose what I worked on each day, whilst still being able to guide the next generation of leadership at Crawford Architecture. I have continually invested in all areas of my life, learned from mentors and my entrepreneurial journey has seen me found 3 businesses that form part of my ecosystem – created to help owners and leaders of architecture practices become more efficient and more profitable.
Designing Success – A Partner for Practices
A consultancy with 2 Frameworks, one aimed at helping the owners step back and evaluate how they’re performing in all areas of life — health & wellbeing, wealth & finance, self-development, entrepreneurship and lifestyle — and a second where we look at how the business is performing and where it’s heading.
From there, we help them gain clarity, have more freedom, and build profit — so they can lead with purpose, reclaim 7-10 hours a week, avoid being a bottleneck and enjoy doing what they are good at!
Our monthly in-person sessions are designed for owners who want space to think clearly again and have provided some incredible days of collaboration so far.
We operate in an industry where human connection is so important, but in a world where AI and Technology is dominating – in my opinion we need the power of collaboration more than ever!
I believe that when you take time to step back and invest in yourself, you stop reacting and start designing — not just great buildings, but a better business and a balanced life that you might otherwise only dream of.
The Architectural Survey Company
My long-term business partner and I formed ASC in April 2025 as part of our commitment to clients to improve efficiency and profitability in the early stages of projects – I knew from experience that many early stage fees were unwittingly being eroded by time consuming manual surveys, leaving very little for actually designing – this caused frustration from the start of the project. We now educate our clients on how to strategically position the fee of the outsourced survey and ensure they protect the early stage fee for high value design – that’s their speciality, that’s what they enjoy and that’s where clients need value so why does tradition tell us that the early-stage fee should also include also becoming a surveyor aswell? We committed to building a team that had all worked in architecture practices, either as architects or technologists so they knew what was required.
Pilotis – Practice & Project Management App
Finally, we are currently developing Pilotis – an all-in-one project and practice management app designed specifically for Architecture Practices. A solution which will contain a main engine (Pilotis Studio), an Employee Portal and a Client Portal. Currently we are in Beta testing and offering the opportunity for a select number of beta testers to try out at no cost – a unique opportunity to shape the app and be part of the development. Everything we are doing is designed to help Practices run as better businesses and most importantly give the people behind the businesses a better lifestyle – full of fun, fulfilment and freedom.
You’ve spent your career designing for others – now it’s time to design a business that gives you the lifestyle you truly dream of.
Kevin Crawford is the founder of Designing Success, co-founder of The Architectural Survey Company, and co-founder of Pilotis App.
Connect via LinkedIn or learn more at archsurvey.co.uk and pilotis.com.
