Talk to me about architects & structural engineers please....Advice needed

[Twistandshoutmyway]

Architect asked for photos of my ideas which I sent which seemed to blow her mind completely (its a bungalow & we are adding one wall!!) so I hand-drew the plans and layout. She provided no ideas of her own. She charged £800 for ‘formalising’ them for submitting which she did. PP granted.

DH changed his mind Architect couldn’t understand my new written idea (adding one partition wall to the new wall) so again, I drew the plans. Apparently this second application was cheaper because it was within a specified timeframe of the first application. PP granted.

She is now requesting another £800 for me to provide her with the internal measurements (which I have calculated & provided to the nearest millimetre) in order to formalise the drawings to spec for a structured engineer to then step in.

Is this normal?? Never used one before.

It feels like I have had to do pretty much all of this planning on my own. I thought I was paying for her to come up with ideas & take measurements?!

Can I now leave her & instruct a replacement architect??

What is the role of the structural engineer? He/she doesn’t have to be linked to the architect? What questions should I ask or what should I look for when hiring one please?

Anyone?

We converted outbuildings and incorporated them into the main house, including a small extension a few years ago. The architect was useless. They seem more to do with the artistic side of design. Ours designed a glass corridor to join the 2 parts of the house, which looked out onto the road and would have meant I was would have been seen by all and sundry walking down the corridor in my pjs to wake the kids each morning. He had no grasp whatsoever of our, admittedly, complex higgledy piggledy house. He did not listen to our ideas, he had the grand design stuck in his head.

In the end, we got a structural engineer in. He was much cheaper, he took the time to understand the structure of the house, and he drew up plans to our specification. So I would say, if you have an idea of what you want, a structural engineer is a much better choice. If you have lots of money to spend and no real idea of what you want, or you want to make a grand design statement, use an architect.

Sorry, I'm not sure about what questions you should ask. But I forgot to make the point that ours was completely separate from the architect. Despite all you hear, an architect is not needed for submitting planning permission. The structural engineer covers all the requirements. But you do need to know what you want built.

We just used a structural engineer. I knew what I wanted (although, in hindsight, I should have posted my ideas on here to be critiqued). He did all the liaising with building control and we could call him back easily to recalculate stuff when we slightly changed the layout mid-build.

Ok, thanks both. I will leave the architect where she belongs.

How on earth do I go about finding a good S.E? What should I look for? Any specific questions I should ask?

Ours was recommended by the builder. We had builders round to get general estimates and they often know SEs.

An engineer wouldn't normally do building regs drawings.

Have you looked at the architect's terms? Ours charged an hourly rate, billed monthly. So, it would have been cheaper for me to send him measurements than for him to bill us for his travel and measuring time. I wouldn't have done that though, as I wanted him to be responsible for his own measurements. There's no come back if you've made a mistake.

Your job sound simpler though.

I found our architect didn't really do 'vision' but did do practicality - all the 'how is it actually going to work' issues I wouldn't have thought of. Again, a more complicated project.

We needed a SE for some steel beams where walls were coming out. The architect recommended him and confirmed that his quote was normal and reasonable - which I did believe, just based on the price per hours worked.

If our job had been simpler, just one wall coming out, I might well have gone direct to a builder and engaged a SE separately if necessary.

I saw a few architects and one seemed much more interested in 'vision' but he was very high-end. On the whole, I think you have the vision and explain what you want, they draw it very precisely and advise on load-bearing, utilities linking up etc.