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INTRODUCTION
Who I am?
I grew up in a small town. LA. To me LA means Lower Alabama. Or UCLA to be more specific. Upper Corner Lower Alabama. I knew from an early age that I wanted to study architecture and become an architect. I had been building tiny structures with scrap pieces of plywood and boards all around my childhood home for years.
As a child I built fort after fort revising and perfecting with each evolution. The one that stands out the most I can still visualize today.
We had a creek in our backyard that all the houses water would shed into. More of a dry ditch, but more often than not there was a good amount of water trickling through it.
Grabbing all the scrap wood I could carry, my brother and I headed down to the creek, with sister in tow. Towards the east end of the property the creek began to widen out and form a mini delta.
We cleared the privet from the area and opened a pretty good clearing right on the creek.
We started to build, no plans, just a bag of nails and ideas as we went. It took us several days, but we ended up with a simple shed building with a door, window, deck on stilts overlooking the creek. A sink run by garden hose pulling from the water. The fort was only 4’x6’ but it was fancy and will forever standout in my memories.
Needless to say I am designing much larger structures today, but I am still fascinated with the tiny structures such as tiny houses.
WHAT VALUE CAN AN ARCHITECT BRING TO YOUR PROJECT
Enoch Sears is a podcaster/architect/blogger who talks about the business or architecture and the other day he was telling this story. He was at an event and someone in his group said the following. Actually a developer in the group started to discuss his latest project.
Anonymous Developer: We’ve had a lot of delays. We’ve run over schedule by almost a year.
Enoch Sears: Oh yeah? What’s the problem? Permits?
Developer: Yeah, permits, plancheck…well, and the architect.
(My ears perk up – he doesn’t know I’m an architect)
Enoch Sears: Huh. What happened? Did the architect mess something up?
Developer: Well, I like him. He gives me a good price. I use him because he is cheap. But since he’s a one-man shop the less urgent tasks get pushed aside by the urgent tasks. So it takes longer to get the plans done.
Enoch Sears: Wow. That stinks.
Developer: Yeah.
Enoch Sears: So what have the delays cost you?
Developer: About $20k a month.
So, cheap architect or an expensive architect? You tell me.
Sounds like he should have invested in an architect and paid him properly to get the service his project desired.
I am going to give you the top 7 values an architect can bring to your project.
Ask Questions – Architects are problem solvers. We are able to ask the right questions to pull your requirements or goals into focus.
Collect and Organize – Gather all the information and begin to prioritize and organize into a cohesive way
Analyze – Study the information and begin to formulate solutions
Visualize – Project the goals into the built environment
Communicate – communicate the solutions to the owner/contractor
Involve – allow the owner to get involved with the solution and enhance the design
Follow through – with all the design in order follow through and reviews the construction to ensure that the project remains on track and is a success.
So now that you better understand the value that an architect brings to your project, the question is how much do architectural services cost?
Like most things in life it depends.
I am going to discuss how we develop fees for a project and that will give you a better understanding of how much it might cost for you to engage an architect for your project.
Like i believe i have mentioned before. We always include CA construction administration in our proposals.
We have found that the more involvement we have in CA the more successful the project.
Contractors like it because they have a resource to help bounce ideas off of and we can help assist in solving any issues that might arise during construction.
HOW ARCHITECTS ESTABLISH FEES
Architects use 4 main ways to calculate fees.
Percentage of construction
Number of pages to efficiently represent the project, per sheet price $1000
Hourly – Total estimated hours
Market Conditions, Size of the project, Jurisdiction, Unique Circumstances
I like to use a hybrid approach. I like to work hourly from predesign to Schematic design to establish the project scope and construction budget. Once the construction budget is determined a flat fee is formulated based on the percentage of the cost of construction. The hourly fee previously paid toward schematic design is applied to the final payment of the flat fee.
So lets break this down into real numbers.
You have a building that in your head. We would set up a meeting with you to discuss the project and based on that initial meeting we would formulate an action plan. From that point forward we would apply our hourly fee lets say $150 towards the design.
The design after going back and forth with you on the look and feel of the building we have worked 50 hours lets say. 50×150= $7,500.
You sign off on the design and we begin to get necessary engineers involved and begin the construction drawings and details. We have determined base on the schematic design phase that the building is going to cost $550,000 to build. We would apply a percentage lets say 10% of the construction cost to equal $55,000.
We would bill in stages along the way each time we reached a milestone in design. The last payment would come from the $7,500 paid during the beginning phase of the project. So the total fee including schematic design would be $55,000.
Percentage can vary from project to project but typically ranges from 5-15% for new construction and 15-20% for renovations.
I wanted to end this episode with a quote from someone unknown. It goes:
“The bitterness of poor quality lingers long after the sweetness of a cheap price is forgotten.
– anonymous”
As often times is the case, you get what you pay for. If you pay for great design and a well managed project you will be glad you did after the project is complete.
