Hello David.... If you look at the beginning of this thread, you will see that I wrote:
"...We paid slightly less than €4,000 for all the drawings, and for a successful passage through the planning application process - and for some ad hoc advice as the work progressed. Personally, I thought it money well spent..."
In my working life, I had many dealings with Architects - and in the main, I not only admired their professionalism, but also thought that most of them were "pretty cool" people. I was just being a little droll.
Agree with you Sean. Every moment spent in developing a relationship with a client, understanding them and then coming up with a solution to the well understood brief is well worth that extra push. Architecture is not just smacking up a common reproduction of what has been done before, or what happens to be on the market. The motto of my college was "Firmness, Commodity and Delight", and that seems to sum it up nicely. You certainly don't become an architect to get rich.
Because you love it doesn't mean you should not get paid for it!!!!!! Clients should acknowledge that architects have a great commitment but in reality they are one of the worst paid of all professions. In fact most architects get paid less than London tube drivers but maybe some of the latter love driving trains. Maybe some prostitutes love sex but their clients are usually grateful for the few minutes of pleasure. Politicians get paid without giving any pleasure at all. The built work of architects is often there for hundreds of years.
I would query your description of the architect marking up the price of the lift. This not legal. The architect organises obtaining prices by sending out specs to artisans/companies who then supply a devis. The client's subsequent contract for the actual work (in your case lift purchase and installation) is direct with the artisans, not the architect: no materials or services should be purchased through the architect. If your architect is doing this you should query it and contact the Ordre des Architectes or the RIBA.
Please also bearing mind that not all builders know the regulations, I have frequently had to ask artisans to redo work they have started because it does not meet the norms, and these are norms that I had laid out in my spec.
Final point : if you aren't' using an architect check your builders have decennial insurance if you want any comeback on defects. This may also be asked for by a buyer if you are selling your house within 10 years of the work being done.
Paying an architect a % fee is fairly standard both in UK and France. It relates because particularly with private projects the clients often (or should I say always !) add things in as the project progresses, and thus the % means the fee increases to cover the extra architectural work: drawings, specs, meetings with artisans etc. It does not however cover the extra work when clients modify things but the costs remains the same, so the clients wins out there! Bear in mind that if the costs go down the fees go down too, so the client is protected there too.
A flat fee can be agreed for a straight-foward one-off job with no changes: a simple planning permission, set of drawings etc. But even here the fee would be based (obviously) on the complexity and size of the project: it quicker to submit a planing dossier or do drawings for a simple small extension than a large total renovation.
Final point: we reckon we earn as net revenue before income tax about 40-45% of our fees. The rest goes in cotisation (very high in France), professional insurance, overheads and the general costs of running an architectural practice.
And as we always say - an architect can save you a lot of money. Financial management of the project is part of what we do and means that no artisans' invoices slip though without being thoroughly checked against fully itemised devis and work done. We have obtained tens of thousands of € of grants from the French state for historic buildings restorations. So it is not always cheaper to bypass the architect!
No architect should "build himself a monument at the client's expense!" Our contract, based on the French Ordre des Architectes and very close to the RIBA one, includes Outline Proposals, Sketch Design, Design Development etc, this is before you get to Tender or sign up a builder. As the client, you should be constantly involvd in this early stage, if you're not - ask to be! Of course a good architect can come up with designs and use of space and materials that you haven't thought of, but as you rightly say, a waste of everyone's time if it's a million miles from your budget or you dream.
My only criticism of architects, both from those I worked with commercially and privately, is that they do need to be managed. They can run away with themselves creatively and occasionally need to brought back into the real world. However it is a fine balance. You’ve got to give the architect a chance to show what he can do without being allowed to build a monument to himself at the client’s expense.
Wish I knew that architects "do it" because they love it before I paid €4000.
How can you charge zero for anything? I got planning permission for a company in the UK once. They went bust. I did not get paid. Somebody bought the site off the receiver and then built.....my design. I warned the new people but they persisted so I sued them and they had to pay three times my original fee!
James Fuller I don't know you but you more or less confirm what I said! An architect usually does not charge up front fees. Au contraire a builder in France insists you pay a large percentage up front and in the UK so called designers do the same. Architects "do it" because they love doing it and don't just rely on the process as a source of income. It may seem strange.
Sorry, but thanks, we are near Nyons in the Drome.
Or you can paint the ceiling of the Cistine yourself LOL
Not me! My neighbours are French and are telling me very bluntly not to throw my money around.
We bought our house 12 years ago and would not have touched it without being committed to running with and the cost of an architect. We negotiated fees around the RIBA guidelines but with no up front fees for the planning/creative work. We paid 14% of the total contract price for all creative, planning and project management and have the home of our dreams with many features we never dreamed of having. I also gave him a budget 30% below that which I was prepared to spend as with a complete renovation of an 18th century house there can be nasty surprises.
Last year we bought our neighbours house and joined the two together. Same architect, now retired and a great friend, did the drawings for planning and for the builder. He did that as a favour. I project managed all the work because I could be on site and used the same contractors as before.
We now have an even bigger house of our dreams. Total architect fees cost about £14K and worth every penny.
With respect Jennifer Bourdeau I have to disagree with you. Apart from designing and supervising the erection of many hundreds of building I also used to work as an expert witness on construction disputes. If a contractor is left to his own device the opportunity for problems is often hard to resist. If an architect is used for a proper service, rather than just the drawings, you get the guarantee that the architect has complied with the professional requirements and that has to be backed up by professional indemnity insurance. If the work is done by a builder and that builder goes bust, or disappears (goes back to Poland, Romania etc) then the customer will be left high and dry. Insolvency levels in construction are very high indeed.
David,
There has got to be middle ground: The architect I've worked with, designated by the community as trustworthy, charged ZERO for the plans, then charged 6% of the cost of the work...amounting to four major pieces of work. This tells me, based on your quotation, that you may be being overcharged. Or I am being undercharged! My suggestion, shop around. You could do the work yourself, but what a pain in the ass!
Ciao.
I'm a retired architect so I am not looking for work and in fact I have never practiced in France. I did most of my work in the UK and in particular London and the South East of England. Firstly it needs to be appreciated that doing alterations on private houses is enormously time consuming. Clients often have no experience of the process and have to be guided through it. They often demand evening or weekend meetings. They often change their minds. Over decades in London we normally charged about 14% plus Vat on alterations of private houses and we got that because we provided a very intensive service. Everything was confirmed in writing. Plenty of drawings. Rigorous paperwork, properly priced specifications, at least weekly site visits, always noted, and with formal minuted site meetings every two weeks. The system worked as we had literally hundreds of jobs and clients and many of the clients were repeat clients. Some clients wanted to do jobs on the cheap and believe me it usually looked that way at the end. Fees went down over the year when the so called cost engineers and project managers came in. Very often materials and details were cheapened. When I started my career there was a skilled workforce with many time served tradesmen who understood materials and detailing. Many so called builders now have scant knowledge. Maybe I was lucky to be around at a relatively good time- we had many famous clients who kept recommending us to their friends. Talking to a former colleague in the UK very recently he told me that fee levels are going up gain to an extent because there are enough discerning clients who do want that better service, but I appreciate that it's not for everyone. I certainly would not go below about 10% for any residential refurbishment or extension. On occasions we were asked to work on a time basis and we did that but it often cost the client more. ten years ago in London my personal hourly rate was £125 per hour- I would not have worked for less as I was the principal and very experienced. Other members of staff were cheaper. People pay lawyers four or five times as much. Our work is supposed to be good for decades. I don't believe that an architect can make much of a living doing such work outside the circle of wealthy clients and major cities. Incidentally in France very soon any planning application involving any house more that 150 sq metres when completed will have to be done by an architect; there is no such protection of the profession in the UK. As with most things in life if you will only pay peanuts then you will get a monkey. Incidentally many other so called professions have sprung up "Interior Designers", "Interior Architects", "Cost Engineers", "Concept Designers", "Urban Designers", "Surface Engineeers", "Historic Buildings Consultants" etc etc the list is endless. They all want fees but none of them have the overall experience, responsibility or talent of a good architect. Period. Incidentally many additional building elements need to be considered these days, such as sustainability, ecology, life cycle engineering and of course all of the technical requirements have to be complied with. End of Rant. If anybody is interested I have a very long list of projects completed and clients (over 2000 projects done by the firms of which I was the principal).
Yes, I may be able to recommend one also (at Chabanais). We used their services for drawing up and submitting plans although the property with the extension was less than 170 sq mtrs). We are delighted with the results especially as the guy (young and trendy) had some better ideas for the layout than we had had, and more importantly did battle with Batiment de France to get the plans passed (we're in an area classified monument historique so everything has to go to ABdeF). We didn't need his help project managing as we're doing that ourselves (we have building experience)..
If you're having an extension build don't forget to budget for taxes d'aménagement which can add a tidy sum.
Dear David,
As an architect I can assure you that the quote you have had is entirely reasonable. The amount of hours spent by the architect for doing this amount of work will be considerable. By using the skills of an architect you are saving yourself a huge amount of trouble and almost certainly your architect will actually save you money by avoiding unnecessary spend and making sure that things are done in the correct order, to the correct standard and within a clear time frame.