Everhour turns tracked architecture hours into reports, while utilization still depends on your firm's capacity and billing definitions.
Measure billable utilization against total capacity and see exactly how many hours you're leaving on the table each period.
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An architecture firm uses utilization to answer a practical operating question: how much available capacity produced client-billable project work during a week, month, quarter, or year. The core formula is billable hours divided by available hours. Billable hours are hours charged to a client, so internal practice management, marketing, hiring, training, and general administration need separate time tags before the percentage means anything.
The result matters for staffing, project pricing, and role-level targets. Project staff usually carry a different utilization expectation than principals, practice leaders, or managers because their time mix differs. NCARB's AXP structure separates Practice Management from Project Management, Project Planning & Design, Project Development & Documentation, and Construction & Evaluation, which gives firms a useful tagging model for project and non-project work.
A fixed-capacity denominator divides billable hours by a standard schedule, such as 40 hours per week. That baseline is common in the United States because federal overtime rules require covered nonexempt employees to receive overtime pay for hours worked over 40 in a fixed 168-hour workweek. A 40-hour weekly baseline equals 2,080 annual gross hours before company PTO, holidays, unpaid leave, or other absences.
A net-working-hours denominator removes absent hours such as leave or illness from scheduled capacity. That choice reduces seasonal distortion when vacations or holidays fall unevenly across teams. The FLSA does not require payment for time not worked, including vacations, sick leave, or federal or other holidays, so private-sector paid leave belongs to firm policy unless another law or contract applies.
Use one formula consistently: billable hours divided by available hours, multiplied by 100. If an architect records 28 hours on client design documentation, 6 hours on client project coordination, 4 hours on internal practice management, and 2 hours on training during a 40-hour week, billable hours equal 34. Fixed-capacity utilization equals 34 divided by 40, or 85%.
The common mistake is using total logged hours as the denominator when non-billable time is missing. A logged-hours denominator divides billable hours by all recorded hours, so under-recorded administration or practice management inflates the rate. Architecture firms should require time categories for project delivery, project management, and practice management before comparing teams or using Deltek Clarity A&E benchmark data.
A one-off calculation is enough when you need a quick weekly read on one person, one project team, or one staffing scenario. It also works for testing a denominator choice before changing reports. The calculation stops being enough once partners need utilization by role, project phase, office, client, or service line across repeated reporting periods.
A managed workflow gives the firm a durable record: time capture, billable flags, approvals, and reporting that separate production work from overhead. Everhour Reporting can group logged time by project, member, client, billable status, and other metadata, then export or schedule reports for principals who track utilization against firm-defined A&E targets.
This content is for general information only, may not be fully up to date, and is provided without any warranty or liability.
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Architecture firms set utilization targets by role, service line, and denominator choice. Project production staff usually need higher targets than principals or practice leaders because principals spend more time on business development, contracts, finances, and resource allocation. Use A&E peer benchmarks, such as the Deltek Clarity Architecture & Engineering Industry Study, as comparison data after your firm defines capacity consistently.
Client-chargeable project management time belongs in billable hours when the firm bills that work to the client. Internal staff coordination, resource planning, and firm administration need separate non-billable tags. NCARB separates Project Management from Practice Management, which helps firms avoid mixing client project coordination with operating the architecture practice.
Utilization can exceed 100% when the firm uses a fixed-capacity denominator and billable hours exceed scheduled capacity. For example, 44 billable hours against a 40-hour weekly denominator equals 110%. That result signals overtime, overbooking, or deadline pressure. It does not create a statutory target for architecture firms.
PTO and holidays should be removed only when the firm uses a net-working-hours denominator. They stay inside the denominator when the firm uses gross fixed capacity. In the United States, OPM lists 11 federal holidays in 2026 for federal employees, while private-sector paid holidays are a policy, contract, or other-law matter.
Role tagging prevents a production target from being applied to people with different responsibilities. NCARB describes Practice Management as firm operations, marketing, securing projects, client work, financial health, and resource allocation. Those hours should not be evaluated the same way as Project Planning & Design or Project Development & Documentation hours.
Everhour Reporting turns logged time, budgets, costs, and project data into customizable reports with 45+ columns. Architecture firms can group by member, project, client, billable time, labor costs, or integration fields, then export CSV, Excel/XLSX, or PDF files for utilization reviews.
Everhour Resource Planning shows team capacity and workload on a visual timeline by member or project. Managers can set weekly capacity per person, account for scheduled time off, and compare planned capacity with actual tracked time before assigning more project work.
Track billable architecture hours, group them by role and project, and schedule utilization reports in Everhour so principals can compare capacity against firm targets.
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