In this fifth part of our feature article on our 2002 AEC CAD IT Survey we move onto the type of IT support a firm has and how long they spend on IT.

What We Looked At

We asked two related questions. The first question involved asked what type of IT support do they have? a) Full Time IT b) Part-Time IT c) Multipurpose IT and d) Outsourced IT. Then we asked, if they have Multipurpose IT -- which means staff which do billable project design, engineering or drafting in addition to IT -- then how much of their time do they spend on IT?

In hindsight we should have posed these questions differently but they will serve their purpose this year. What we did not ask was how many hours do Part-time IT people spend per week and we also did not ask for total IT hours spent per week for all IT staff. We'll add this next year.

Type of IT Staff

Much to our surprise we found that the overwhelming majority of firms in this study use Multipurpose IT staff. These are people that mix IT duties with their professional duties in architecture, engineering and other CAD related industries. Multipurpose IT means that this type of staff person generates billable income for the firm when they are not doing IT. Thus there is usually pressure on these individuals to complete their IT responsibilities quickly in order to not fall behind on other billable duties or so they can assist with other billable work.

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Related Results

We have detailed analyses of IT cost per type of IT staff configuration firms employee in our detailed report. However we want to point out a few items before we summarize general data below.

Firms that employee Outsourced IT have been generalized to spend $100US per hour for that support on average. If you are spending less or more it probably will not be a major factor for you because it will also reflect general regional economics and the salaries you afford your staff.

Also for the purposes of this report's detailed IT cost summaries, $75 per hour average has been used for in-house IT support. This would be a Multipurpose IT staff's multiple (normally around 2 - 2.5 times their salaried hourly rate).

Findings

We asked firms what type of IT staff they employee. Below are the summary data.

Percentage of Firms that Employee: (Full Time IT)

• Mac Firms - 4 percent
• Windows Firms - 16 percent
• Mac/Win Firms - 5 percent

Percentage of Firms that Employee: (Part Time IT)

• Mac Firms - 9 percent
• Windows Firms - 0 percent
• Mac/Win Firms - 0 percent

Percentage of Firms that Employee: (Multi Purpose IT)

• Mac Firms - 84 percent
• Windows Firms - 84 percent
• Mac/Win Firms - 77 percent

Percentage of Firms that Employee: (Outsourced IT)

• Mac Firms - 3 percent
• Windows Firms - 0 percent
• Mac/Win Firms - 19 percent

Aside from the overwhelming use of Multipurpose IT staff in firms of all sizes, the results also suggest that Windows firms utilize Full Time IT much more often than Mac firms and that Mac firms use Outsourced and Part Time IT more than PC firms. If we had more than 71 firms to study (say twice as much) these generalizations might break down...but we would be willing to wager now that this is not the case.

What's more valuable to look at is the richness of IT resources various firms are providing their staff and how this relates to other variables of the study (firm type, size, platform group, etc.). IT support cost can mean many things. It could mean PC and Mac troubleshooting, server setup add maintenance, or database administration and design. It could also mean in-house calendaring applications, Intranets, Web sites and CAD and application training. Last but not least, the types of database systems and the degree of automation all help shape up the available IT resources the firm provides its staff.

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