In March 2025, the Professional Practical Experience (PPE) Commission submitted a report to the ARB. The PPE Commission was established by the ARB in February 2024 to review and improve the quality and accessibility of practical experience for trainee architects across the UK. The document recommends a series of changes to better support future architects in gaining quality work experience and training in their journey to becoming experienced and skilled practitioners.
What Was The Purpose Of The PPE Commission Report?
The PPE Commission report was written to look at how architects can have the work experience they need in the context of considerable challenges in the sector, not least:
- The rapid acceleration of technology, particularly generative artificial intelligence (AI) which is heavily influencing design and building processes.
- The climate crisis, which has become urgent and unavoidable, bringing with it the need to transition the built environment to comply with net-zero requirements.
- The extensive regulatory changes for those working in building design and construction following the Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s Phase 2 Report.
To better understand the problem, the Commission spoke to architecture trainees, learning providers and architectural practices across the UK.
What Did The PPE Commission Find?
The PPE Commission found that trainees, employers, and learning providers raised concerns about the significant difference between what academic programmes teach and what employers require in practice. This is creating frustration across the board. On this matter, the report states, “We found perceptions of significant gaps between what trainees had been taught prior to beginning employment, and employer requirements. This varied between individuals and employers but created frustrations for all three stakeholders – learning providers, employers, and trainees – though they expressed and experienced these gaps and frustrations in various ways”.
Architectural practices also reported spending extensive time onboarding trainees to bridge training gaps. As the report explains, “employers had to expend significant time and resources on training and induction for their employed trainees. One practitioner estimated this to be almost a hundred hours per trainee”.
What Did The PPE Commission Recommend To The ARB?
The Commission makes 3 key recommendations following its survey and subsequent analysis. The PPE is calling on the regulator, learning providers, and architectural employers to take the following action:
1) ARB should remove constraints to flexibility and innovation to lead sustainable change across the profession
2) Learning providers should take a coordinating role in facilitating trainees’ acquisition of all the Competency Outcomes
3) Significant improvements in workplace culture should be secured to strengthen how competence is gained
The PPE Commission has provided a series of detailed actions and proposals for each proposal. Some examples of the more detailed actions and proposals set out in the report include:
- Use the term ‘trainee architect’ in a consistent way to refer to individuals currently undertaking their initial education and training.
- Establish minimum standards for a new, simplified and standardised Record of Competency (ROC) that all learning providers must adopt.
- Introduce a continuing professional development (CPD) requirement on mentoring for all registered architects.
- Collaborate with other organisations, including professional bodies, to strengthen and expand relationships between education providers and employers.
Looking to the future of the sector, the PPE Commission report recommends that the ARB leverage its regulatory role to encourage innovation and drive change, and learning providers should play a stronger coordinating role in supporting trainees’ progress through the complex training process and mapping out routes to success. In addition, they believe that employers and individual practitioners need to place much greater emphasis on building healthy workplace cultures that give higher priority to professional learning and mentoring.
What Has Been The Response Of The ARB?
In May 2025, the ARB published a comprehensive action plan outlining the steps the ARB intends to take to realise the Commission’s vision. The ARB’s actions will focus on transparency, emphasising outcomes, and strengthening access to relevant and quality practical experience.
Key actions include creating a co-ordinating role for learning providers and introducing a standardised Record of Competency (ROC).
Alan Kershaw, ARB Chair, said, “Professional practical experience is central to a trainee’s journey to becoming an architect and achieving professional registration. The plan that we have set out today recognises the vital role learning providers play in shaping how aspiring architects gain the experience they need. The new co-ordinating role will need to work for all learning providers, so we’re going to design it with them to ensure it is flexible but also, crucially, effective for trainees.”
The ARB’s plan for professional practical experience adopts all but one of the Commissions’s recommendations.
Whilst the ARB does not plan to mandate Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in mentoring, it acknowledges the importance of mentoring in driving the cultural change needed across the profession. The ARB is actively exploring ways to support architects in developing mentoring skills.
Final Words
The recommendations made by the PPE Commission will help shape the sector for the next generation of architects.
As the report summarises, change, such as that being recommended, will not happen at once; it will take time. However, with the right backing and a coordinated approach between all stakeholders, there is nothing to stop key changes being realised quickly.
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