Linda Corkery
Head of Program, Landscape Architecture
Faculty of the Built Environment
University of New South Wales
l.corkery@unsw.edu.au

Who is practicing landscape architecture in Australia? What is their educational background, the nature of their work, their professional situation? What do they regard as the important questions facing our profession in the 21st century?

In 2001, the AILA conducted a comprehensive mail-out survey of its membership with the intent of documenting the state of the profession at the beginning of the new millennium. The survey results give us a snapshot of who is practicing landscape architecture in Australia and where, the issues and concerns they express about their work, their aspirations for continuing professional development and the role of the Institute in supporting that.

This paper will present some of the key findings of the survey analysis and provide background for discussing the future of the profession in Australia.

Early in 2001, the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA), mailed out an eight-page survey to its membership, which at that time comprised some 1000 members. James Hayter, then national president, initiated the survey and noted in his covering letter that it had been three years since a comparable survey had been conducted. As with past member surveys, this one was conducted to provide a ‘profile of the Institute and allow us (AILA) to identify priorities for action’ (AILA 2001). However, the 2001 survey was designed to be ‘…a more comprehensive survey and seeks to gain information on the status and practice of landscape architecture in Australia, and the success, or otherwise, of AILA in representing the profession and the needs of AILA members’ (AILA 2001).

Member surveys of various professional organizations are frequently undertaken. As a comparison, the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) runs two biannual surveys. The membership survey is sent to a random selection of full and associate members and is designed specifically to capture information for the ASLA executive and program staff. The feedback provides a reading on members’ levels of satisfaction with specific ASLA programs, services, strategic planning initiatives and chapter activities.

In 1997, ASLA also begin to track professional practice activities and business indicators. One thing in particular that they were interested in tracking was how well the profession was ‘maturing in terms of impact and prosperity.’ (www.asla.org/members) With this survey, for example, they have been able to flag declines in the market for city parks, golf courses and resort developments balanced with increases in school, retail and government projects. Practice management issues such as moving away from using the AIA standard contract documents, concentrating marketing efforts on maintaining current clients, and an increase in billing rates by 5%, etc. can all be tracked through this periodic questionnaire. They also discovered a potential topic for their practice management seminars in the grossly inconsistent responses to the question about firm overheads.

The first section requested information on basic personal statistics, eg where they are located, number of years in practice, age, sex, educational qualifications. The following section asked for specific assessment of AILA services eg relative importance of the service and then how well it was delivered. The majority of the remaining sections of the survey deal with specific issues and asked respondents to tick a box that indicates their answers. Some of these items offered open-ended responses in which respondents wrote in their comments.

The following sections of this paper will present the findings for several of the major survey categories. Not included are responses to the categories specific to the AILA’s services and performance. These have been reported separately to the Executive Council prior to their meeting.

It is important to remember the timing of this survey, ie April 2001. It pre-dates the reorganization of the national office and the employment of a new executive director, Paul Costigan, following the death of John Phillips. Any initiatives that were in the planning stages at the time of John’s death, and many new ones, were later implemented when Paul was appointed, so comments related to service delivery and performance are likely now out of date.

Of the respondents, 63% were male and 37% female. This correlates almost identically with the current proportion of females/males that are AILA members, ie 64% males and 36% females.

(This also compares closely with the ASLA membership profile where 68% of respondents were male and 24% female; 8% did not respond to the question.)

A majority of the respondents (80%) are Associate members of the Institute, with 12% student or graduate members, and 8% Fellows.

Just over half of the respondents (52%) have been members of the Institute for 10 years or less, with another 34% being members for 10-20 years.

In the ASLA survey 43% have been a member for 10 years or more (which means they have practiced for at least 3 years prior to becoming a member) and the average age is 42.

(Because of the way in which the age data was collated, it is not possible to arrive at an average age of respondents using SPSS.)

There is a diversity of memberships in other institutes or professional and special interest organisations indicated through the survey. Some of the most mentioned memberships in other organisations are listed in table 4.

Educational qualifications of practicing landscape architects in Australia vary widely, which is not surprising considering that the oldest university programs have only been in existence for the past 30 years or so.

Consequently, landscape architects come from a variety of backgrounds. Forty-four percent (44%) of the respondents have Bachelors of Landscape Architecture. Other qualifications are indicated in the table below:

Note: percentages add up to more than 100% because some people have more than one qualification.

There were a full 56 other different qualifications reported in addition to the eight qualifications listed in the table above. This included a diverse list of certificates, diplomas, masters and doctorates; many in related fields such as architecture, civil engineering, town planning, agriculture, environmental studies, and heritage conservation. But the list also includes studies in visual arts, music, interior design, marketing and business management.

Happily, of the 213 respondents, 74% were in full-time employment and another 18% working part-time.

The breakdown of employment description presents an interesting picture of the various employment situations in which Australian landscape architects work. The table below illustrates this:

Over half of those responding to the survey are partners or directors of practices or are working as sole practitioners. About 15% of the respondents are practicing in the public sector.

Those responding “other” to this question described their positions as heritage officers, urban planner/designers, property developers or ecologists.

(The ASLA survey generated a similar split: 81% in the private sector; 33% are sole practitioners; 14% in the public sector; 4% in an academic setting.)

Landscape architects typically work in offices with relatively small numbers of people.

Fifty-nine percent (59%) of the offices represented in the survey responses are comprised of 10 or fewer employees. One-person offices comprise 23% which correlates to the sole practitioner result; 22% are in offices of 2-5 people; and 14% in offices of 6-10.

However, at the other end of the scale, 15% of the respondents are part of organisations of over 100 people.

(In the U.S. only 9% of the respondents are in offices of 50 or more people, with 75% of American landscape architects working in offices of fewer than 10 people.)

Most of the respondents answered the question about gross annual income. This question is important to ask because it gives the Institute a gauge of where the profession sits in relation to other similar professions on the income scale. For example, where there are calls for the fee scale of the AILA to be comparable to other professional institutes, this cannot be sensibly considered without baseline data such as this.

Only11% of the respondents report earning less than $20,000 per annum,
with another 15% in the $20-40,000/year range;
$40-60,000/year represents 30%;
$60-80,000/year represents 21%;
$80-100,000/year represented by 6% of the respondents; but 15% are earning over $100,000 per annum.

It is interesting to note the gap between $80K/year and $100K+/year. It would appear that once a practitioner reaches the senior levels, there is an appreciative increase in annual income.

The salary figure of $80,000 per annum is a significant point on the scale for female landscape architects with only four female respondents indicating annual incomes over this amount, and those were in the $100K+ /year range.

For landscape architects working in the public sector $80K also appears to be a top level salary, with only one respondent in this employment category registering an annual income over $100K. Most of the public sector landscape architects were earning in the $40-60K bracket.

Clearly, the membership sees the primary role of the Institute to be that of promoting the profession to the general public and to other professional bodies. There is a message in the second most offered comment, that the means to do this is perceived to be through the mainstream media.

While there is a plethora of popular ‘gardening’ shows and gardening personalities enjoying extensive media coverage on TV, radio and magazines, there needs to be a clear distinction of how the training and background of landscape architects includes, but is different from, say, horticulture and ‘landscaping’.

Helps build continuing understanding of the development of the profession, can begin to track trends, monitor new directions, respond more effectively to member requirements, support professional development, provide an accurate and dynamic picture of the profession to prospective students and to clients.

We can also be prepared to benchmark AILA with other landscape architectural societies and institutes, eg ASLA, CASLA, the Landscape Institute and provide accurate professional statistics to IFLA on request.

The ASLA’s Business Indicators Survey was specifically interested in looking at the longevity of landscape practices and the need to be planning for the coming generations of landscape architects.

What information is valuable to collect?

Subsequent surveys should collect information on the types of projects that Australian landscape architects undertake and the clients for whom they are working. It seems an obvious category of information to gather, but this survey didn’t ask much about the specific kinds of projects that landscape architects are undertaking in their practices. This is potentially an important body of information for benchmarking, and it is also critical to assisting the establishment of landscape architecture as a central discipline in built environment endeavors in, for example, Asia, where the scope of the profession is less well understood. (This understanding of markets is of particular interest in the ASLA survey, which interestingly, indicated that by far the most common project type [28%] is single-family residential design work.)

Survey design: The length of the survey, with its 64 questions, may discourage some individuals from taking the time to fill it in. Perhaps the questions dealing specifically with the service delivery of the Institute could form a distinct survey instrument, as the ASLA does. Then other professional indicators and issues could be canvassed in a separate survey – to a different group of members.

Web-based questionnaire/electronic submissions:

This would make it much easier to respond, send reminders, and feed data directly into the SPSS database to facilitate quicker analysis and feedback, and can be set up to ensure confidentiality, as mentioned previously.

Regular surveys of the AILA represent an important reflective activity that the profession needs to continue to undertake. With the ever-increasing assistance of electronic technology, it is will be even easier to gather and analyse this information.

With the findings of the 2001 survey, a number of significant initiatives and new directions can be charted for the Institute, ensuring that it is on course to continue to effectively serve the membership. Landscape architects should see the survey process as adding to our on-going understanding of the development of this most important and dynamic profession.