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Feel free to read all of the Frequently Asked Questions (in fact we recommend it), or click on any of the following links to jump to that topic. 1. What kind of services can an architect offer me?
2. How much do you charge for your services?
3. What about buying stock house plans from a catalog or online? 4. Do I really need an architect once the drawings are done? 5. Do I really need an architect? Can't I just hire a drafting service? |
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1. What kind of services can an architect offer me? Most everyone understands that architects design things, and they prepare drawings to convey their ideas to their clients and builders. But that's as far as the understanding goes. Also, people can have misconceptions about even these two basic concepts. The truth is, architects provide their clients provide far more than only preparing designs and drawings, and every one of these services will result in you getting a better project, and with better cost control. Following is a very brief summary of these services, how you could expect to work with an architect providing them, and how the service can benefit you. If you haven't selected an actual building site already, we can help. Most people don't realize that architects are trained to analyze site conditions, and can help you choose a site that is best for your needs. We can review the site to make sure that it is the right size, that the soils have the proper characteristics, that it doesn't have easements or other problems that would make construction difficult or impossible. Beyond the nuts-and-bolts issues, we can help you analyze a site to determine the best placement of your home on the land. Positioning your home properly can certainly optimize views, but can also permit the house to function more efficiently by making good use of prevailing breezes, solar orientation, shading from trees, and other environmental concerns that can make your home actually function smarter and more efficiently. We can help you by reviewing a site for its potential, or can explain the advatages and disadvantages of several sites that you may be considering, in order for you to make the smartest land purchase. Okay, everyone knows this one. But how does an architect do this? Regardless of whether we are going to design an entirely new home for you, or a simple renovation, the basic process is the same. First, we listen to your needs and goals for the project. We can quickly ask you questions about these goals, offering you additional issue to consider. The odds are that this is the first, or maybe the second time you've done this. We can raise additional options for you, and can quickly resolve problems that you may not have considered, based solely on our past experience. Once we have worked with you to flesh out your actual goals for the function and design of the project, we will prepare preliminary drawings for your review. The content of these drawings will vary based on the actual project, but they could include a conceptual site plan, floor plans, and exterior views of the building. Generally, we will provide you with a few different options to consider. If this is an addition or renovation project, we will have taken an additional step in the process - we will have taken initial measurements and analysis of your existing home, and drawn the existing conditions, so that we can effectively do the new design work. We will discuss these options with you in a "design workshop." Often, at the end of the meeting, we will have developed a plan that has evolved, and may incorporate bits of all of the options shown. We will take this input, and prepare a revised set of preliminary design drawings for your review. For relatively simple projects, this proces may happen only once. If we are designing a larger project, or a completely custom home, this process may be repeated several times. But eventually, we reach a set of preliminary design drawings that outlines your project. After the preliminary design is agreed upon, we will prepare more detailed drawings - sometimes called "working drawings" - and written specifications to more fully describe the work. Together, these drawings and specifications are often referred to as the Construction Documents. These are the documents that the building permit application will be made with, and that the project will be built from. Typically, they will include a dimensioned, scaled site plan; floor plans; exterior views (known as "elevations"); cross-sections showing the makeup of walls, floors, and roof; framing details, layouts of cabinetry, and other details. While still a very detailed set of drawings, the working drawings for a residential project are generally a bit less comprehensive than drawings prepared for a commercial design project. They usually leave a bit more of the final details open-ended, to be resolved between the homeowner and builder. Most sets of residential working drawings will include the "general" drawings, and electrical layouts, but the site utility work, HVAC and plumbing designs are generally provided by the installing subcontractors. One of the greatest values that an architect can offer to clients is cost estimating services. Based on past experience and knowledge of current trends in the construction industry, your architect can give you good estimates of the cost of your project long before construction quotes are actually received. Remember, he will have had the details of your project in his head long before it gets completely detailed on paper, and he isn't going to misinterpret his own design intentions while preparing a cost estimate. And this is not only important at the end of the design process. Probably even more importantly, your architect can keep you continually aware of the probable costs of various options during the actual design process - so you can decide early on whether you can have that built in gold plated shrimp bowl put in the kitchen counter, or if you should start collecting scraps of Romex wiring from dumpsters at other jobsites for use in your home (relax, it's just a joke, everything will be fine). Your architect's estimate is also a good way to gauge competitive bids prepared by builders, to see if the bids look unreasonably high or low. While almost always requested on commercial projects, many residential clients prefer to not retain the architect for this service. To be honest, this is not a very smart decision, as the information that you can find out upfront, before drawings are complete and bids are received, can save the clients far more than the additional archtiectural fees. Construction Bid Phase Architectural Services There are hundreds of builders in the Yellow Pages. Some of them are very good, others not so good. How do you tell one from the other, and who is a good match for your project? Lots of factors come into play, ranging from basic questions of business stability and experience, to more intangible aspects. Your architect has worked with many different builders, and can offer you a wealth of assistance in selecting one. Not only can we offer referrals to contractors that we know, we also have the experience and tools to check on builders that aren't familiar. We can help cut through the industry jargon and qualifications of several builders' proposals, and set up a real "apples to apples" comparison for your review. We can give you additional pointers in making the final selection of a builder, that can save you hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars over the course of your project. Construction Phase Architectural Services Here is a simple truth that most people don't understand: it is simply not possible to completely and perfectly detail a three-dimensional object like a building, by using two dimensional drawings. There will always be parts of an architect's design that stays in his or her mind, and can never be translated to paper. Some people may not like this, but it's true. For this reason (and a few others), it's very important to meeting your design goals that your architect be involved in the project during construction phase. By the time your project begins construction, your architect will have spent many hours designing your project, and will be more knowledgable about its many overlapping requirements than even you will be yourself - and will certainly know more about the project than the builder, who has to pick up "cold" where the architect left off, if not hired to provide construction phase services. In addition to interpreting the drawings, an architect is experienced in reviewing the acceptability of construction work. During construction, your architect is on the jobsite to be an additional, professional set of "eyes and ears" to make sure that the intentions of your project are actually being carried out, and in a proper manner. Your architect is trained to review contractor's pay requests for correctness and accuracy, as well as making sure that you get appropriate lien waivers to help protect your property from future mechanics' liens. Construction Management - being responsible for, and supervising the actual construction - is the final step in the process that Dwain Lee Architects can offer their clients. This is not normally considered a "Basic Architectural Service." Not all architects offer this service, and there are many excellent ones that don't. We do. We think that the best possible way of assuring that our projects are actually built the way that we and our clients have intended, is to do it ourselves. Again, by the time the project is designed, we know more about your project than anyone else, so who better to build it? But more on this topic later. If all of these services sound time-consuming, you're right. Doing a proper job of designing your project, and providing construction-phase architectural services takes a fair amount of time, and of course, time translates into money. This leads us to Frequently Asked Question #2:
2. "How Much Do You Charge for Your Services?" We're lying, of course. This is actually Frequently Asked Question #1. But we couldn't answer this question until you understood the concepts we just explained above. First: it's important to understand that, unlike consumer goods mass produced on an assembly line, virtually every single residential design project is a custom, "one-off" proposal (with one exception that we'll discuss later). Your architect will have worked on many residential projects before that will have had similar concerns, and possibly even similar detailing. But even the most basic of reusable details will require analysis and customization for your project - and that isn't where the majority of time and expense lie, anyway.This is especially true of an addition, and even more so, a renovation of an existing home. These projects require first going in and documenting all of the critical existing conditions of the original structure, which would not be required on projects for completely new homes. Plus, the architect's fee will vary based on which services you wish to retain, and at what level you wish the services provided. Does all that sound like I'm softpedaling before telling you that good architectural services aren't cheap? Well, I am. Depending on what you want your architect to do for you, it may not be cheap in upfront costs. This is the part of the conversation where your architect will always tell you that while the architect's fee looks like a lot up front, that a.) very few architects are wealthy, and of all of the professions, we are the lowest paid in accordance with the amount of risk in practicing; and b.) in the long run, a good architect can provide a "value-added" service that will result in a better, smarter, more efficient (read "cheaper to operate") home (not to mention a more attractive one) and that ultimately, the architect's services will pay for themselves. Both of these claims are true, but it doesn't take away from the impact of seeing the architect's invoice. As part of the answer to this question, we will discuss fee ranges for various types of residential projects. None of them are iron-clad guarantees - as we've said, every project is custom, and brings its own set of requirements - but if your are planning a residential project, you need this kind of information early in your planning process. Also, most architects will quote you fees for residential services based on a fixed professional fee, or hourly rates (or a "hybrid" of the two). In the past, architects often quoted fees, and wrote their contracts, as a percentage of construction cost. Some still do this. While our firm does not quote fees as a percentage, the ranges that we use below will be described as a percentage, in order to help you estimate fees for the particular project that you have in mind. So, if you've got your seat belts fastened, and you're ready to go, let's proceed with answering the question. We'll do this by using a few hypothetical clients with various projects. At times our commentary may sound blunt, but we want to cut through the nonsense and give you meaningful, honest advice. "We want you to design a complete luxury home for us. We've looked at a lot of magazines, and took lots of notes at the recent Parade of Homes. We want the home to look sort of like the one in this magazine article, and we put together a couple floor plans on graph paper, but otherwise, we need your help and really want you to excercise your creative talents. We have found a building site to die for, and have placed it in contract. We are quality-oriented, and we want you to stay involved until construction is complete. We expect this house to be about 4,500 to 5,000 square feet, and cost around 115 dollars per square foot, exclusive of land costs." If this is you, let me congratulate you on being in the top 2% of residential design and construction projects. Not only we, but all other architects in the country, dream of doing your project. As a quality-minded person, you understand that quality comes at a price, and architectural services are certainly no exception. Our firm would provide preliminary site and building design on a time and expenses basis - we have no idea how long it will take to reach that perfect design for you, and to work in this manner is the fairest for both of us. We will, of course, give you an estimate of the hours that we anticipate this phase would normally take for a project of your type.Once the preliminary design is set, we will provide your construction documents for a fixed fee based on the complexity of the design. Your home is a bit more complex than most. We expect that we will need to retain a structural engineer for a few more complicated details that your project will probably entail. We also anticipate that you will have a higher than usual requirement for telecommunications/electrical systems, and our services will include higher than usual design services to meet those needs. Your house will require a higher level of detailing, material research, and specification than most homes. Our services include assistance, research, and selection of interior floor, wall, and ceiling treatments. Once the drawings are done, we will offer you recommendations regarding selection of a builder - we offer sonstruction management services to our clients, but if you want someone else to build your project, that's just fine, too - and we can help you do an "apples-to-apples" comparison of builders' proposals. We can help you do background research regarding the builders, and we can work with your attorney to make sure that the contract that you sign with the builder is a good one. During construction, we will invoice for our services on a time-and-expenses basis. We will observe the work taking place in the field, and will provide you with written reviews and analysis of the appropriateness of the work and schedule analysis. We will interpret and clarify the documents during construction, and we will review and process change order requests. We will analyze and certify the appropriateness of the contractor's pay requests, and will monitor receipt of lien waivers from the general contractor and its major subcontractors. Again, while this portion of the work is being done on an hourly basis, we will give you a good faith estimate of roughly how many hours to anticipate. For your planning purposes, the architectural fees from a good architect for these various phases will range between a minimum of 8%, and a maximum of 17% of the total construction cost; fees for most of these projects will average approximately 12%. "Twelve Percent? Really? Wow. Well, um, we're not building as luxuriously as those folks. We found a nice piece of property also, and we'd like a custom home - you know, something nice, but not outrageous. We took notes at the Parade of Homes too, and we found a few magazine photos to show you also. We looked at all those house plan catalogs, but we couldn't find anything that was really what we're looking for. We started working out some floor plans using a home design program on our computer. See, it's got four bedrooms, two and a half baths, a formal living and dining room, a country-style kitchen/greatroom, a nice brick fireplace, a three-car garage with a bonus room above, a nice master suite, four bedrooms, two and a half baths, a nice big front porch, and a full basement that we can finish out later. We want your design input, but we're pretty sure that this is the layout and look that we want. We figure our house is going to be somewhere around 3,500 square feet, and cost us about 95 to 100 dollars a square foot." Sounds like you're going to have a fine home. You've done your homework, and have settled in on a basic design. We'll use our expertise to offer alternatives or required modifications here and there, but otherwise, your floor plan is done. You'll need our help on the exterior appearance, to get the proportions and the feel that you are looking for. That will take some time on our part, but not as much as with Client #1. Your working drawings will still be fairly detailed, but they won't require quite as much detailing, or engineering of complex systems. As far as selecting finish materials inside, we can offer you assistance and offer suggestions, but mostly you'll do these on your own and save on our fees. As far as construction phase is concerned, we will require at least minimal construction-phase input, offering telephone clarifications to the drawings when asked, and observing if the structural work is generally in keeping with the design we've put on paper. While we strongly recommend more detailed involvement during construction phase (see "Do I Really Need an Architect Once the Drawings Are Done?"), many clients with project types like yours opt to live dangerously (sorry, we told you we'd occasionally be blunt) and not keep the architect around during this phase. Realize that some architects do not require any involvement during construction phase for projects of your type, and they will therefore charge you a lower fee than we would. For reasons that we detail later, we don't believe this is a proper way for us to conduct the profesional services that we're licensed to perform, and it leaves both you and us open to potential problems later on. As with Client #1, the preliminary services would be provided based on hourly rates, with an initial estimate provided. The construction documents would be provided for a fixed fee. If hired for full-service construction phase services, they would be provided at hourly rates, with an initial estimate, just as with Client #1. If we are only doing the minimal required construction phase services, we would charge a fixed amount, based on a "per trip" cost (it's usually four trips). For your project, a good architect will charge between 6% and 13% of the construction cost for all of these services combined, with most projects averaging fees of about 10% if the architect is retained through construction phase. Fees at the bottom of this range generally would assume no construction-phase input. Does that number sound high? Well, sometimes it helps - only a little, but it does help - to put it into perspective. You're going to hire an architect to hold your hand through the design of your project, to be responsible for the correctness of its design, to draw it in a manner that you get what you want from your builder, and that your builder understands (ask a builder how fun it is to build a house from a bad set of plans). You're also - at least if you use us - getting the architect's review of the builder's structural correctness. In short, your architect has to understand how all the pieces of your home are going to go together, and to explain it to you, the building department, and the builder - all for just about the same cost as you're going to pay the mechanical contractor on the job. "Well, that's all well and good, but that's not what I'm looking for. No offense intended, but I can't justify spending that much on the design. I've got a fair budget, but less than Client #2, and I've got to get maximum space in the house to accommodate my growing family. I want a nice house, but it just can't be totally custom. We found a set of stock house plans that cost us around $1,200, and it's almost exactly what we want. It's got three bedrooms, two and a half baths, a nice master suite, a generous greatroom with a fireplace, and an attached two-car garage. It even includes some nice detailing for built-in shelving and cabinetry around the fireplace that we might include if we can get it within the budget. We just need a few small changes - first, we want a full basement, and the plans are designed on a concrete slab. We also want to push the end wall of the living room out another two or three feet, and we want to rework the master bed and bath. This house will be about 2,500 square feet, and I expect it will cost us around $90 per square foot, not counting land and sitework. I've already checked with our zoning inspector, and the lot will easily accommodate the size of this house, even with the extension. I understand I've got to pay a fair fee for these revisions, but I'm not made out of money." Trust me, I'm not made out of money either, and I understand your concerns. It sounds like this will definitely be a home to be very proud of, and our firm would be proud to help you reach your dream. Architects are sometimes perceived to be "primadonnas," who are only interested in big-budget, or high-publicity projects. Sadly, this stereotype is true in the case of some members of the profession. The truth though, is that most archtitects are not at all this way. The philosophy of our firm - and of many other good ones, as well - is to listen to our clients' real needs, and to provide them with a good, sound level of professional expertise, regardless of the project size. I will talk more about stock house plans in another section ("What About Buying Stock House Plans From a Catalog, or Online?"). But I will make the following recommendation: unless you are a rare individual, committed to making a unique architectural statement with your home (and if you are, you are a very small percentage of the population), if you plan on spending less than $400,000 on your home, you should definitely try to find a stock set of plans, and simply have them modified by a good local architect. This is generally the best, most cost effective solution. But make sure that your sales contract stipulates that the original designer grants permission for a local architect to modify the plans to meet your specific needs. Architectural designs and drawings are protected under copyright law, and without written permission from the original designer, we cannot and will not make any changes to them. For your project, we don't have to worry at all about preliminary design. But we will have to recreate the plans that you bought that need adjusted, making CAD-based drawings of what you purchased hardcopy prints of. We will also have to do a "top-to-bottom" review of the structural loads and their locations throughout the house, in order to properly design the foundation walls and footings for your home, as well as to engineer and prepare a first floor framing plan (see, there's a reason why most of those stock plans don't include basements; it cuts out a lot of work). The living room extension may be simple, or a little less simple, based on how bearing walls are configured, and if you're extending the whole wall or just a portion of it. We will probably have to prepare a couple new exterior elevations, in addition to the floor plans, and we may have to draw a section through the extension to explain how it's to be built. As long as the master suite revisions are minor, that shouldn't be too much trouble, but again, we'll have to CAD-input the floor plan in order to make the changes. We'll also have to carefully look at how the new layout will work in terms of plumbing and HVAC; we may have to make a few more adjustments in order to make that work. Finally, most of the stock plans will have a few beams required in the design that require verification by a local design professional; we'll specify those for you as well. We will not seal the original designer's plans, but we will seal, and take responsibility for, the revisions that we prepared for you. We will also make probably two trips to your project under construction, to observe that the structural requirements that we've specified, are being installed. The fee range for this will be anywhere from 1% to 3% of the total construction cost, depending on how many revisions are required. Most of these projects in our office have ranged between $2,500 and $4,000, or between 1 and 1 3/4%. I know, I know, you didn't pay that much for the whole house design. But remember, your work is custom - I can only offer this design to you, where the original designer of your plans has sold them in mass-production style to hundreds of other clients besides you. Plus, in addition to making design revisions, we're filling in the blanks left in the original designer's set that would otherwise have made those stock plans more expensive to begin with. "I'm not building a new house at all. I love my house - it's in a good, established neighborhood, I like my neighbors, and I don't want to move. Our kids are grown, and have started families of their own. We love their visits, but when we're all here together, it gets a little cramped. We would like to create an additional room to accommodate these get-togethers - nothing terribly fancy, but big enough for kids to play in, watch a football game on TV, that kind of thing. We'd like it to be a "sunroom," full of light, and maybe even have a few skylights, and maybe have it open out onto a deck. We have enough room to add a room like this off the back of our place, but we want it to look like the rest of the house - we don't want someting that just looks tacked on. We figure a room of 275 to 350 square feet will do, and we expect to spend around 150 dollars or so per square foot. " More and more people are doing exactly this. In an era households constantly being uprooted and moving to different locations, many people are choosing to stay put, for these and other reasons. Of course, situations vary from location to location, but often homeowners will compare the value that they have in their current home with the cost of a new one, and they discover that they will have to take on a much larger mortgage to get the same features in a new home that they already have with their current house, even factoring in the cost of the addition. Often, the best choice is to simply stay put and add onto your home. You've worked all these years to finally get the house and landscaping just the way you want it - why start from scratch just because you want a little more elbow room? For your project, we will work with you on an hourly basis to reach a preliminary design that meets your functional goals, looks like it was meant to be part of your house, and meets your budget. Once we have settled on the preliminary design, we will quote you a fixed fee to finish the construction documents. The construction documents will include a foundation plan; floor plan; roof plan; cross section showing floor, wall, and roof construction; exterior views ("elevations"); framing plans and details; specification of doors and windows; cabinetry and other miscellaneous required details; and an electrical plan. We can offer you suggestions regarding finishes, but you will generally shop for and select these on your own. We will also require, at a minimum, observation of the work in progress to document the installation of the major structural components of the addition. For your planning purposes, the architect's fee for these services will range between 10% and 12% of the construction cost of the addition, depending on the complexity of detail found in the design. In addition, your type of project is an ideal candidate to have our firm act as your construction manager, and just keep the company most familiar with you and your needs continue the work through its completion. This can help avoid miscommunications and misunderstandings in the intent of your project, and keep surprises during constructin phase to a minimum. Many fine architectural firms do not offer construction management as an option to their clients. We do. We think it just makes good sense - for us, and most importantly, for our clients. "I like my house, and I don't want to move, either. But it was built 30 years ago, in keeping with the way most homes were built then. We'd like to update it, to include a master bed/bath suite, with a nice walk-in closet - you know, something that's more in line with today's preferences. We've taken some measurements and have sketched something out. We think we can get what we need by just adding space over our attached two-car garage, and extending our upstairs hallway to the new master suite. If possible, we want to add the space making it look like it's always been there. We expect to add around 550 to 600 square feet, and like the people adding the sunroom, we expect to spend around 125 or 150 dollars per square foot. " Well, you may be right on target - and you may need to increase your budget. The truth is, this addition is often not as simple as it appears. Care will have to be taken to get the load (or weight) of the new construction, plus code-required assumptions for the weight of what will go in the rooms, carried down through the existing first floor structure and down to the foundation. This can sometimes be troublesome, if the roof and floor loads will bear on the beam that spans across a garage door that was not sized to carry that big of a load. Installing a more substantial beam over the door is a possibility, but the sides of the opening that the beam bears on, and the foundation under it, are probably similarly undersized and may have to be strengthened, and possibly even the footings enlarged (trust me, this will blow your budget). If the new space can be designed such that it can bear on the endwall of your garage (in other words, not over your garage door), your architect will save a lot of time, and you'll save a lot of money. Remember that this will have an impact on the direction of that cathedral ceiling that you wanted, and the look of your new roofline. Also remember that there will undoubtedly be ductwork, plumbing, and electrical wiring stuffed through those walls and spaces that you want to take out to extend the upstairs hallway (Murphy's Law will guarantee it). Your overall construction cost will vary significantly depending on the amount of this stuff that needs to be relocated. Much like the earlier examples, we will provide preliminary design services based on our hourly rates, and we will convert to a fixed fee after a preliminary design is finalized. The construction documents will include a foundation plan; floor plan; roof plan; cross section showing floor, wall, and roof construction; exterior views ("elevations"); framing plans and details; specification of doors and windows; cabinetry and other miscellaneous required details; and an electrical plan. We may offer suggestions regarding finishes, but largely, you will select your flooring materials, plumbing fixtures, etc. We require, at a minimum, construction phase observation of any structural portions of the work. Once all this is totalled, expect a total architectural fee of approximately 8% or 9% of the total construction cost if we can avoid the structural concerns mentioned earlier, and anywhere from 10% to 12% if we have more demanding structural hurdles to jump. 3. What about buying stock house plans from a catalog or online? Whether waiting to check out at the grocery store, picking up a few things at Home Depot, or looking for bargains on eBay - people everywhere have sets of stock home plans that they want to sell you. I think I saw a street vendor the other day selling bratwurst, coney dogs, and house plans. Some of them are of poor quality, and don't even have enough information in them to get a building permit with. Some of them are prepared by inexperienced drafters and have significant problems built into them. Others are just plain butt-ugly. And some of them are actually quite decent. The good ones are prepared by either registered architects or experienced home designers, and they include accurate and thorough information to build from. Since they are sold to hundreds of customers, the plans can be obtained for a fraction of what an architect would charge for a similarly detailed set of custom plans. Many of them are structurally efficient and aethetically pleasing, and countless examples can be found in virtually any style desired by most American homeowners. These homes will probably not win any avant garde design awards, or end up on the cover of Progressive Architecture magazine, but that's not a big deal to most people. Even as an architect, I wouldn't be all that thrilled with the thought of architecture students and similar groupies roaming through my yard day and night, taking pictures of my "famous" house and undoubtedly catching me sneaking out to grab the paper in my boxer shorts. Put bluntly, most of them are just fine, and the mass production nature of them enables relatively good design to reach the most people at a reasonable price. This is the American Way. Some architects may bemoan this, but frankly, I think it's great. I think it actually enables more people to be able to afford their own home - and have a generally better quality home - than under the alternative. And professional loyalty aside, I'll take that any day over all homes being custom-designed by architects, but only the elite being able to afford their own home. In summary, I will repeat something I said in response to an earlier question: unless you are a rare individual, committed to making a unique architectural statement with your home (and if you are, you are a very small percentage of the population), if you plan on spending less than $400,000 on your home, you should definitely try to find a stock set of plans that meets most of your wishes, and simply have them modified by a good local architect. This is generally the best, most cost effective solution. But make sure that your sales contract stipulates that the original designer grants permission for a local architect to modify the plans to meet your specific needs. Architectural designs and drawings are protected under copyright law, and without written permission from the original designer, we cannot and will not make any changes to them. 4. Do I really need an architect once the drawings are done? It's important to you, and to your architect as well. Your architect can offer you years of professional experience around construction projects that, unless you're an unusually construction-savvy client, you don't have. Even a small project will involve payment of significant sums of money for the work in place. If you aren't knowledgable about reading and understanding the blueprints, and don't know how to judge the correctness or completeness of the work, how can you know if the amount that the contractor has requested is correct? Do you know enough about local lien laws to effectively protect yourself from future mechanics' liens - liens which could result in you paying for major portions of the work twice? Do you know how to guard against costly change orders, and how to analyze them and minimize their cost when they are necessary? Your architect know all this, and more, to protect you from your "Dream Home" becoming a nightmare. And don't be confused. Don't think that the building inspectors, or even the inspector from the bank, is providing this same type of protection; they're not.While both of them are providing an important service, they're only concerned with their particular pieces of the larger puzzle. Only your independent architect, providing construction phase architectural services, offers you the level of review, analysis, reporting, and protection, that your project should have. And in most cases, having this level of protection is actually cheaper than the alternative - it's entirely possible that your architect can save you more than his fee in just one or two actions during construction. Realize that states license the practice of architecture for one primary reason: to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public as it relates to buildings. We're the people that society looks to for this protection, and we're the people that society looks to when things go wrong. This is why our firm requires participation in our clients' projects during construction phase. We feel that it's not enough to just put a design on paper that meets codes and good practice. We have no way of knowing that what we designed will actually be built, and if things go wrong later on, you, and your architect as well, will have to go through great expense and trouble to determine if the design was actually implemented correctly. In other words, until we all develop X-Ray vision, it's very difficult to see the reinforcing inside footings or walls, or structural details behind finished surfaces, once their done. It's far easier - and cheaper - to merely have the right person looking at the work while it's being installed, and documenting the process in case of future problems. A very common scenario: your builder is your dear old Uncle Charlie, or a friend of the family, and he tells you "I don't know why the architect said to do it this way. I've never done it this way in the past, let's just change it a little, and I can save you some money." Since you only hired the architect to prepare your drawings, this conversation takes place with the architect not being present to explain to you, "Yes, in the past we'd normally have done it that way too, but in this case there's an unusual structural load that we have to deal with, and besides, the bulding code just changed and we can't do it the old way anymore." Unfortunately, your architect wasn't there to protect you and defend his design. Problems arise on your project, and you end up being stuck with correcting expensive problems or redoing work that doesn't meet building codes. And guess who is usually blamed? The architect, of course, because surely Uncle Charlie wouldn't have steered you wrong, would he? Hmm. With all due respect to Uncle Charlie, it's your architect's name, seal, and reputation on the line, not his. And it isn't his place (or, sad to say, yours) to make a change like this in the architect's work without his input. These kinds of changes are the cause of much unnecessary expense, and even wrongful lawsuits, that the architect has to spend large sums of money to defend against. In fact, many states require the architect's project participation during construction phase, for exactly this reason.In Ohio, where the majority of our work is performed, it's legal for an architect to offer services for "drawings only." But that doesn't mean that it's good practice, either for the architect or the client. Do most residential projects have an architect involved during construction? Certainly most tract houses don't. Most custom homes, have some level of architectural input during construction. A lot of room addition or expansion projects do also, and a lot don't. So do you need your architect around during construction? We think that at least to some extent, you do. We feel so strongly about it that if you don't want your architect around during construction phase at all, we won't be your architect. Do lots of people try to go it alone, without an architect? Sure. The choice is yours. But if you do it, and you have problems, don't say that we didn't warn you. 5. Do I really need an architect? Can't I just hire a drafting service? Many home plans, and residential additions, are drawn up by drafters, either hired directly by the homeowner or, more commonly, working as a subcontractor to the builder. Generally speaking, the drafters provide their services for less than would be charged by an architect. So, should you use a drafter instead of an architect? We'll examine a few issues here. First, depending on where you live, you may not be allowed to. Some jurisdictions require residential projects to be designed by design professionals licensed by the state. Many locales don't. In the locations where a design professional is not mandatory, the decision is based on at least two beliefs: 1.) the design of a private house is small enough that a drafter or builder can handle it without professional expertise; and 2.) that if a private homeowner doesn't want to use an architect, that should be his prerogative - after all, it's his house, and his money; if anything goes wrong, the homeowner hasn't hurt anyone but himself. . Let's look at these issues. First, it's probably true that a good builder or drafter can competently handle the issues involved with an average house of modest size. In fact, the residential building codes help make this easier, by not being as strict as commercial codes, and by offering tables and pre-approved solutions to structural, mechanical, and electrical issues commonly encountered in typical homes. But each year, the average house gets larger, with more complex structural and mechanical concerns. Once practically unheard of in average homes, tall open spaces, window walls, large clearspans, complex rooflines, and other features that don't easily fit in the standard design charts and tables, are becoming fairly common in homes. So the average home is quickly outpacing the average builder's or drafter's expertise to design and engineer many homes. In fact, many drafters' sets of plans will not include some of the structural calculations, beam and column sizing, etc. that is required for construction. Just as with many sets of stock building plans, notes such as "Wood Beam - to be sized by local Structural Engineer" and similar comments are common in drafter's sets of drawings. So you'll often have to pay additional design fees to a structural engineer to fill in the gaps in the drafter's plans. Regarding the second issue: I'm a staunch advocate of personal property rights, and I think that individuals should have as much leeway as possible to do what they want with their own property. But I also realize that this right is not absolute, and that since my actions can affect the well being of others, some limitations are a good thing. It's one thing to design and build my sunroom in a way that it may fall in on me some day; I would only be paying for my own stupidity. But my sunroom may collapse on my wife and children, who would be innocent victims of my actions. Likewise, I may sell my house some day. Maybe my poorly designed and built sunroom will collapse on the innocent new homeowners. In addition to the remorse I would feel over something like this, how long do you think it will be before a lawsuit - appropriately - lands on my doorstep? Do you know the competence of that drafter you're thinking about hiring? Does he have the expertise to protect you from problems like this - and does he carry design liability insurance (as architects are required to do by law in more and more states, and most carry as a matter of good sense, mandatory or not) to make things right if anything goes wrong? Isn't hiring an architect cheap insurance against something like this? So before anything else, check with your local building department to see if using a drafter for your residential project is even legal, let alone advisable. Now, having said that, I will tell you that there are many very good drafters out there, who can do a decent job of drawing up plans for a modest house or room addition. Some of them are very talented indeed. Many are mediocre. Some are just plain awful. Similarly, architects also come in different levels of quality. Some are excellent. Most are decent. Some I wouldn't hire to design my next dog house. The problem is finding out who is good, and who is more cut out for that dog house project. If you're comparing architects, an easy way to find out is to call the chapter of the American Institute of Architects that is nearest you, and ask them for names of good local architects that do residential projects. (If you're in central Ohio, I'd humbly suggest that you short-circuit that process and just call us!) Unfortunately, I don't know of any comparable "American Institute of House Drafters" that you could turn to, and even if one existed, I certainly don't know what criteria they would use in their referrals. Let's be blunt: the only real reason someone would consider hiring a drafter over an architect is to save a few bucks. Here are some rough numbers for you. A good, unlicensed home designer/drafter will generally charge between 55 an 75% of what a good architect would charge. And you can find drafters (can you say dog house?) that will give you drawings, if you can call them that, for even half of that amount. So services from an architect will cost you more. What will you get for your added expense? How about the following:
Is that worth the additional cost? First, calculate the rough cost difference between using an architect and using a drafter, based on the fee approximations for your project type that you found on this site. You'll have to decide for yourself whether that amount of money is worth it to you. But I can tell you that I'd consider it very cheap insurance for the added peace of mind, the added service, and the knowledge that your project is being handled by someone who really knows what they're doing. After all, this is your home that we're talking about. Isn't it worth it?
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