Architects fees - is this normal?

[cheesetoastie]

We asked an architect to advise on how we could add an en-suite to a main bedroom in our house. When we showed him round the house we also told him of our plans for other areas eg. knocking through the kitchen in case any of the plans for the upstairs depended on walls being in the same place downstairs. After some discussion he came to the conclusion that the most appropriate thing to do would be a loft conversion and also recommended a change to the first floor to give us some more space there. We were happy with that and he drew up plans of the first floor and loft conversion for us to submit for planning permission which was subsequently approved.
For this we paid about £1800 and were given one set of A3 plans for the top floor layout and the first floor.
The next part of the process according to the architect, is for him to draw up plans including all the joints between walls/roof etc. For this he will charge 9% of the build cost. He gave us an 'estimate' of the build cost which he had had drawn up by a local ?structural engineers firm. The breakdown of the costs included the cost of the ground floor alterations and also some work which we have already completed that was co-incidental to the first floor/loft conversion. Therefore his 9% would be of an amount that is quite a few thousand higher than the work that we feel he has had any involvement in.
Is this normal for architects?

Thinking about it the costings people are probably quantity surveyors not engineers! He chose them so we just took the costings list at face value.

Bump

Why not go back to him and explain why you aren't happy with the suggestion?

We've negotiated with our architects - they originally suggested a percentage, but we felt that wasn't appropriate in the circs, as we felt it might turn out that their work couldn't be implemented because it's a listed building. We agreed a fixed fee instead that everyone was happy with.

Yes, 9% is normal, though it should be 9% minus what you've already paid him.

Presumably this would be him acting as the contract administrator for the whole project, producing tender documents, managing the tender process, then managing the contract and signing off builders fees, then continuing to be responsible for the project for the defects period (12 months after Practical Completion).

I've used architects for lots of projects and generally found them good value, but it does depend what you're getting. 9% is slightly below average but you can get 7.5%. Maybe just use that figure as a guide to settle on a fixed fee you're happy with.

9% of the build cost sounds very high tbh - although pricing structures may be different for alterations to existing buildings

for comparison - we agreed an overall fee of 6% of the build cost, but that was spread out as 40% for planning permission (came in at around £2k for a whole house and several months of planning and redrawing); 20% for building warrant stage; 20% for tenders and 20% for supervision during the build. The structural engineers fee is separate from this and for a whole new house would come in at around £1000, which would include an assessment of ground condition

So our equivalent for the buidling warrant stage would be 20% x 6% x [build cost] + SRE fee; trying to add a % on work that was done by you sounds just plain wrong

Don't know if this will help but can give you our figures (London)

£1300 to planning permission approval
£1500 structural engineer
£1100 building regs drawings

Our builder is project managing and doing that stuff, architect not involved in build. We got the quotes etc too. We have spoked to him a few times about stuff that has come up and he hasn't charged us for that (yet!!!)

Total build cost - quote was £115,000 plus vat.

So what's that 2% for the architect plus some more for the structural engineer? Is much more if you want them to project manage etc obv.

If you are in London / Herts I can recommend our guy - he was very good and very efficient and very easy to work with

Thanks for replying. The 9% does not include project management of the build - that would be a further fee but as LemonDifficult says it includes a further set of drawings and him 'putting the job out to tender' - which tbh is something that we would rather do ourselves as we have some tradespeople that we trust having already used them. And the 9% does not include the money that we have already paid. We have already paid a couple of hundred for a structural engineer to talk to the architect after visiting our house and have been told to budget for a few hundred more for the structural engineer to do the calculations for a steel that will need to be put in.

We are likely to go back to him and say that we are not happy with his percentage being based on work that is nothing to do with the loft/first floor and also (having spent some time looking at it today) there are some discrepancies even with the costings for the loft - ie. there is a £750 cost for a 'sun pipe' when we don't have a sun pipe in our design so we would like those to be accurate before we move on. I don't know how feasible it would be to take the plans that we have and use them without having him draw up the next set (ie. use another architect or just go direct to a building firm). It's a shame because we do like the plans and 9% of the build cost of the first floor/loft would be ok, it just feels like we are being taken for mugs to pay out 9% of our ground floor work to him.

Sardine Queen - thanks for the figures - we aren't London/Herts unfortunately.

I think that sounds v expensive. Mind you when we got quotes from architects they varied wildly. We chose one in the middle - they ranged from a few hundred from a bloke who seemed very bored with it all to £15K from one of my parents friends That was the first quote we had and we nearly threw in the towel at that point.

Our next door neighbours got different people to draw up the planning drawings and building regs drawings so it can be done.

Why not ring around for some quotes/rough ideas of costs and tell your architect you are going to do that. His price might tumble

For small jobs fixed price is what suits. Its called a sliding scale but really this is used for larger jobs and new builds.

You are paying for a professional, with imdemnity insurance, not just for the drawings. However, for simple jobs again a one man band will suffice, ie working from home not a office with overheads this will make a differnce.

With the structural engineer find a one man band (loads out there) and offer cash. This is a simple quick job and huge fees are ridiculous. He'll knock up the calcs in an hour or so.