Our first chart breaks down the age groups of the respondents. As was the case last year, the majority of responses were from men, although female response rose from 12 percent to 15 percent. Business has been good this year, reflected by the percentage of respondents owning their own home, up 6 percent from last year to 88 percent.

The size of firms practicing landscape architecture tend to be small and specialized. The average number of employees in firms less than 100 employees is 11. The average number of employees in firms larger than 100 employees but less than 1,000 is 205. Eighty-five percent of the respondents work for firms of less than 100 employees, with a significant number of respondents being sole proprietors with no employees.

 

Landscape Architects are principally design oriented and 71 percent of those responding are either owners or principals of their firm. The following chart indicates how respondents describe themselves. The majority of Landscape Architects indicated more than one job description.

Should Landscape Architects be licensed? While 95 percent thought the answer should be yes, 93 percent of these respondents come from states that require licensing. Of those who responded from non-licensed states, only 60 percent thought licensing should be required. Respondents were somewhat confused on the issue of whether or not they come from practice act states or title act states. Of those responding, approximately 40 percent knew what their correct status was; approximately 25 percent answered this section partially correct and the remainder either did not know or answered the section inaccurately. As to the question of whether or not irrigation consultants should be licensed, 54 percent responded affirmatively, 20 percent responded negatively and the remainder were neutral.

Other interesting results show that 48 percent of the respondents have control over which landscape contractor works on their projects, 7 percent had no control and the remaining 45 percent said they “sometimes” had control. Seventy-three percent of those who responded said they used the or equal clause, however many qualified their answer with “or approved equal,” thereby nullifying an accurate response measurement.

LASN received a much greater response than anticipated to the question, “In what areas do you employ a consultant?” Sixty-six percent of all respondents use lighting consultants, 7 percent use erosion control consultants, 12 percent use marketing and business consultants, 51 percent use irrigation consultants and 63 percent use soil analysis specialists. The one major category let out was engineering, which will be accommodated next year.

Landscape architecture is a spec market and there is a good reason for that title. When asked, “Which products do you specify by either brand name or individual product,” only three of the 15 categories we asked about ended up with less than 50 percent. Irrigation beat out site furnishings this year to become the most specified item on our list. Here is how they fared.

Computer-aided drafting design (CADD) is becoming an integral part of the landscape architectural profession. The number of responses from those using a CADD system was up from last year?EUR??,,????'???s 17 percent to 27 percent this year. This indicates the growing popularity of CADD and its importance in the profession. Of those using a CADD system 86 percent were pleased with the results and 38 percent of the CADD users were in their first year of operation with CADD. The following is a graph showing the percentages of those who did not have a CADD system but plan to switch to one. The numbers of those planning to incorporate a CADD system into their firm have increased dramatically. Last year only 22 percent of those who did not have a CADD system were thinking about adding this to their firm. This year 44 percent (twice the number of last year) are planning to add CADD to their operation.

The Landscape Architect and Specifier News would like to thank you for taking the time to respond to our survey. We have found it very interesting and beneficial. We also appreciate the comments found on the majority of our questionnaires. It’s great to see so many people in one profession concerned about what is happening in their business environment. If we left out some results that you were looking forward to reading about, give us a call at 714-953-6763 and we’ll look it up for you. We would like to thank all of you for your support this year and we are looking forward to serving you in the years to come.