Employers always start out wanting all kinds of great added (non-billable) things, recognizing that the spec writer’s vast experience adds value. The problem is that they eventually find themselves in a downturn and want everyone to be 100 percent billable. (Understand that partners are probably going without compensation at this point and are trying to hold on to as many employees as they can afford to carry.) Doing somebody else’s job doesn’t alter the situation that there are more payable hours than billable hours of work. The effort that helps the most is contributing, directly or indirectly, to winning more work.
Rick Howard’s comment is excellent. The people who tend to get ahead in a firm are those who bring work into the firm. Those making and maintaining the outside contacts who have work(doing direct marketing) and those who do PR and put responses to RFPs together will get ahead faster (and stay employed longer) if they are successful. Although we know that the best way to get new work is to get it from existing clients who are happy with the work, the credit tends to go to people who are client contacts (not even those in direct leadership positions).
This leads to an implicit understanding of architectural employees as interchangeable, even fungible, resources. So much for maintaining the corporate expertise. Bottom line is that if the cash isn’t coming in, someone has to go. Even though the next big thing might come in next week, it isn’t here now. There are many firms who go broke paying valuable employees while waiting for the next project that is just over the horizon.
You can demonstrate your firm’s commitment to “technical excellence” in architecture by writing and speaking to groups outside your firm. Good venues are AIA or CSI; much better venues are groups like BOMA or CEFPI. When a potential client asks, “Doesn’t work for your firm?” and your name is high on the next “hit list”, I would suspect that your name goes down a few notches, if not taken off altogether.
The most immediate tasks that come to mind are in-office CA tasks that are related to projects for which you wrote the specs: submittal and substitution review, review of cost-requests/ change order requests and RFI responses. These are tasks that are schedule sensitive and the assistance of an experienced professional can help the firm avoid costly delay claims. However, as Richard points out, “billable hours” only have value if there is available fee to bill.