Reiach and Hall have found a solution that keeps them organised and structured, without their architects realising! About Reiach and Hall Reiach and Hall Architects was formed by two architects in the 1960s.
Alan Reiach, a design led individual with grand ideas and architectural vision, formed the practice with Eric Hall, a disciplined and organised architect with an eye on the bottom line. The amalgamation of these two personalities was the foundation of the organisation that is Reiach and Hall today – a practice focussed on architectural quality and well considered buildings whilst at the same time driving efficiency and keeping control over costs. This focus has led Reiach and Hall to receive many awards for their work including a National RIBA Award in 2008 and achieving more nominations for Civic Trust Awards than any other practice in the UK in the same year. They employ 48 people from their head office in Edinburgh. the need for change: Director Tom Bostock identified the need for a new system; the main motive was a desire to increase efficiency within the office. Tom explains: “A lot of an architect’s time is spent searching for information. I realised that to enable our architects to work efficiently I had to find a solution to present them with the information they needed in a way that was quick and simple to access.” Beyond the efficiency drive was a need to improve transparency; “95% of an architects work is through CAD and email, as this is all run on an individual’s PC the Directors had difficulty in knowing day to day what was going on in the business, we needed a solution that would give us complete visibility.” Another key driver was an awareness of the increasingly litigatious environment in which architects are working. “We needed to be 100% confident that in the event of litigation we could produce all the evidence necessary to make our case bullet proof. Having no effective way to deal with our emails was a major let down in this area. We had opted to print out and file emails in the short term, but quickly realised that without the meta data they were next to useless.” Reiach and Hall had developed a comprehensive financial management database using Microsoft Access. The system was giving the management team a good overview of how the practice was performing each month, but the vulnerability in this system lay in its reliance on one person. Tom comments: “Whilst the system was giving us the information we needed, it was heavily dependent upon me as the author of the system. I realised we needed a longer term solution that would enable this data to live on in a robust form long after I had left the practice.” Click here to read more | 
