For every architect who believes design can change the world
The commercial education
the profession was never given
The projects that matter. The clients who trust you enough to let you do your best work. A team you can genuinely lift up. Work that aligns with the reason you entered this profession — not whatever came through the door because you needed to keep the lights on.
Fees that align with what your expertise is genuinely worth. Margins that let you grow, invest in your team, and build something durable. The commercial discipline to stop undercharging, stop absorbing scope creep, and stop leaving value on the table in every negotiation.
Home for dinner. Time for what matters outside the studio. A practice that is a vehicle for a good life, not a machine that consumes it. The freedom to choose your clients, your projects, and your direction — a business built around your values, not the other way around.
The most commercially successful projects are almost always the ones where design was taken seriously from the beginning — where the brief was refined through genuine engagement with all stakeholders, where the quality of the space was protected through the development process by someone with the conviction and the commercial language to make the case for it.
Business Secrets For Architects exists to produce more of those people — architects with the commercial confidence to put design thinking where it matters most.
Business Secrets For Architects is for practice leaders, project architects, and commercially minded designers who want the real knowledge — not generic business advice, but the specific, hard-won lessons that come from inside the room where the decisions happen.
Hosted by Andy Bigwood — Project Director at Gensler, Founding Director of Bigwood Partnership, twenty years in the commercial core of signature architecture.
Architecture school trains extraordinary designers. It teaches you to think spatially, solve complex technical problems, and bring buildings into the world that have never existed before. It does not teach you how to attract clients, negotiate a fee, read a contract, build a pipeline, or make the financial case for design quality to a client who speaks only in returns.
It does not prepare you for partnership. It does not prepare you to run a practice. It does not prepare you to sit in a developer's boardroom and hold the line on design quality when the financial controller is sharpening the cost plan.
That is not a personal failing. It is a structural gap in the education of every architect who has ever graduated. And it is one that Business Secrets For Architects exists to close.
The practices and careers that thrive — that do the work they want, charge what they are worth, and give the people inside them a life worth having — have found a way to close that gap. Business Secrets For Architects accelerates that transition.
The moment most architects feel it is when the practice starts to grow. The fees, the contracts, the pipeline discipline, the negotiations — the complexity arrives fast, and the training to handle it never came.
You did not go to architecture school to become a commercial director. But without someone thinking commercially, the practice suffers — not because the design is not good enough, but because the business around it is not strong enough to protect it.
You do not need to figure it out alone. You need a partner who has been inside the world's best practices — who has seen how the decisions were actually made — and who can walk beside you through the transition.
Fee proposals become evidence-based, not apologetic. You hold a number because you understand what it represents — and what it is worth to the client.
BD becomes a relationship practice, not a sales activity. The clients who find you are the ones worth having — the ones who let you do your best work.
The language to make the case for design quality — in a boardroom, in a negotiation, in a fee proposal — becomes natural, not uncomfortable.
From where you are to where you want to be — faster, with fewer expensive mistakes, and with someone alongside who has done it before at the highest level.
For more than twenty years I have been the commercial brain behind some of the world's most ambitious architecture — at Foster + Partners, Heatherwick Studio, and Gensler. I have led business development, fee proposals, contract negotiation, and project direction across practices at every scale.
I have negotiated the contracts behind Changi Terminal 5, Google's headquarters in London and Mountain View, Tora Asa in Tokyo, the Ferring Headquarters in Copenhagen, London Olympia Redevelopment, the Imperial War Museum Redevelopment, Haramain High Speed Rail in Saudi Arabia, Norton Museum of Modern Art, the Reichstag Parliament Building in Berlin, and the University of St Mary's Twickenham Medical School — alongside various other high-profile confidential commissions. I sit on Gensler's large and complex projects committee. A colleague at Gensler once compared me to Yoda — because I stay calm under pressure, essential when the stakes are highest.
Today I work in-house at Gensler as Project Director on its most complex commissions — and simultaneously as commercial partner. Helping to build team integration, focus and ensure commercial discipline is established on projects to stay out of trouble. I am passionate about sharing the commercial awareness and knowledge I have gained to lift teams up and provide a Commercial Partnership to unlock the power of design.
Talented, ambitious, frustrated. The work is not yours to direct, the clients are not yours to build relationships with. Business skills are the path from feeling trapped to having the control and credibility to drive the direction of your career.
The gap between being a great designer and becoming a credible partner or principal is almost entirely commercial. Fee proposals, client relationships, pipeline awareness — these are the skills that make the case for promotion.
Revenue growing, margins not keeping pace. No commercial director on the team page. Fees being squeezed, the right people hard to retain. The Triad is the destination. The commercial infrastructure is how you get there.
You have built something over twenty or thirty years. The commercial instincts, the client relationships, the fee discipline — they live in your head. The goal is to equip the next generation with everything it took you decades to learn, so what you created survives and grows beyond you.
You are often the only person in the room who genuinely understands what great design produces — higher rents, more visitors, places people love. Business skills and financial literacy are how you champion design at board level, translate conviction into the language of returns, and hold that position when the cost plan is challenged.
Long-form conversations with practice leaders, commercial directors, and specialists who have built something worth talking about. The real decisions, the real numbers, the hard-won lessons — from inside the room, not a textbook.
Listen to episodes →Every Tuesday. Eight hundred words, one focused idea, one call to action. Commercial insight written from inside Gensler, Foster + Partners, and Heatherwick — and addressed directly to the architect who wants more control over their career and creative direction.
Subscribe free →Twelve chapters. The complete commercial education the profession was never given — from fee proposals and contract negotiation to pipeline discipline and handing over. Forthcoming from RIBA Publications.
About the book →Commercial Advisory and Mentorship, Project-based Commercial Director, and Commercial PM Mentoring — including succession programmes for founders who want to equip the next generation with the commercial skills the practice was built on.
Work with Andy →One-to-one commercial mentorship for practice leaders, senior architects, and project directors who want to develop the skills the profession rarely teaches — business development, fee proposals, contract negotiation, and the commercial judgment that protects projects and careers.
The starting point is always a conversation. What you need, where you are, and what the right level of support looks like. Everything else follows from there.
For high-stakes negotiations, complex commissions, or specific moments of commercial pressure. Independent, objective, credible to both sides of the table.
Often the entry point before a deeper working relationship begins.
For practice leaders who want to build commercial capability inside their own team — developing the next generation of project directors and partners from within.
Includes succession programmes for founders who want to pass on the commercial knowledge the practice was built on.
Ready to close the gap?
Change the world — one project at a time.
A thirty-minute discovery call. No obligation. An honest conversation about where your practice is, where you want it to go, and whether this is the right partnership to help you get there faster.
Book a discovery call