Many architecture firms in the Greater Boston area are faring better than they did just two years ago, after several slashed rates in order to win the miniscule design work available after the market crashed and caused a virtual moratorium on commercial construction.

Profit percentages in 2011 averaged 11 percent compared with 8.7 percent in 2010 and .4 percent in 2009, according to Watertown-based industry tracking firm DiCicco, Gulman & Co. Profits for the average firm increased to $11.40 per direct hour from an average of $9.27, a 23 percent increase.

But while business was better overall in 2011, improvements were not across the board, according to the tracking firm. Hourly firm profits ranged from a loss of approximately $8 an hour to a profit of $40 an hour. And the utilization rate, or percentage of time worked on billable projects, varied from 48.9 percent to 74.6 percent. Such broad ranges indicate that some firms are fully recovered and growing, while others continue to struggle.

Listening to architects tell it, there remains an undercurrent of caution, despite the gains.

“We are experiencing some optimistic changes in the economy and at Arrowstreet and I think that is true about a number of firms in the city,” said James Batchelor, president of Somerville-based Arrowstreet architects. “It feels good that numbers are improving but it seems premature to celebrate much. It’s better, but it’s better from times that were not so great.”

Time Is Now

But there has “definitely” been a marked uptick in business, Batchelor told Banker & Tradesman. One place where his company is experiencing growth in demand is from charter schools, a relatively new phenomenon, that are receiving increased public funding.

Arrowstreet has also noticed business growth from the hospitality industry. The firm has recently done work at UMass Lowell and Harvard-owned properties that have a hospitality component. Work included renovations and some early stage new construction of hotels. Batchelor declined to provide further details.

And of course there is sustained demand, whether large or small, from the life science industry, where firms continue to spin off from Harvard and MIT, Batchelor added.

And while smaller renovation work and some new construction design jobs are available, the days of large corporate users expanding or building new headquarters left and right in the Boston area are, to a degree, a thing of the past, said Marc Margulies, principal at Boston’s Margulies Perruzzi Architects.

“There is no question for our firm and most others that I talk to that two years ago was really bad and last year was a little better and this year is very encouraging,” Margulies opined. “For us, clients that were on the fence of what to do are now inclined to make real estate decisions they might have been hesitant to do in the past because they hear from brokers and other real estate experts that, certainly in Boston, there is decreasing vacancy and increasing pressure on construction costs to go up. So the time to do something is definitely now before construction costs go up.”

Passion, Not Profits

Much of Margulies’ work these days is coming from the smaller, high-tech, innovation sector that has become such a prominent driver of the region’s economy. And those firms are more often than not seeking “high performance” offices that take into account shared work spaces and a mobile workforce.

“Almost all the companies that we’re working with are investigating how they can accommodate a mobile workforce, and that’s one of the things that is keeping us busy,” Margulies added. “If you have a flexible work program to allow employees to work from home, it is universally considered a great employee benefit.”

But none of that has allowed firms to meaningfully increase their rates, which have been essentially immobile for the last 15 years.

“Architects for the most part are very poor businesspeople and there are too many of them,” Margulies offered. “We do it because we love what we do. That does not translate into a normal kind of business relationship. Even the best of us can’t compete with the folks that do it for less than it costs them. I have 40 people. I do now with 40 people what 10 or 15 years ago it would have taken 200 people to do because the technology is now so unbelievably efficient. There are just too many architects. It is a supply and demand thing to a certain extent.”

And even if there is an uptick in business and rates, there are costs for new software and other technology that can nullify those gains, said Kevin Nice, principal with SN Consulting Group in Medford.

“There is an uptick in business, but I don’t know that that always results in an increase in profits,” Nice said.