Hi all, bit of a long story here, will try to keep it snappy.
I started a dream-home journey 2 years ago, took a while to get planning permission -18months - when this was finally approved my Architect told me 5 days before she was due on maternity leave that she was pregnant, absolutely no qualms about this, but the short space of time meant I had no real options to get a plan B in place or arrange any knowledge transfer to another architect. I have been waiting for her return, and have just had costs through for the technical design stage. Split as below and attached screenshot:
4B - technical design drawings
4C - Building regs
Due to her not returning to work full time until June I asked her to revise her proposal as I would be looking to decouple the activities with a view to giving part C to a building regs specialist to expedite the process from this stage onwards i.e so I am no longer dependent on the architect only working 1 day a week until June. Upon doing this the proposal came back as below, this seems totally unreasonable, I expected an increase due to splitting it and that creating inefficiencies, but feel like I’m being shafted with a front loaded deal here – the outputs are no different. My questions are as follows and have added a screenshot of the original and revised proposal side by side.
-Has anyone got any experience with removing an architect after planning permission and a new architect coming on board just for technical drawings? How did that go?
-What’s the general consensus on costs for this stage? its a 2 storey side extension. Only adding a kitchen, stairwell and widening the upstairs mezzanine hall, no extra bedrooms or bathrooms.
-thoughts on her amended pricing? Her justification was switching to a time based model from fixed fee
Original proposal:
Fixed Fee: £6,000 total for Stage 4 (66 hours).
-
Split into: 4b technical design (£2,400) and 4c building regs (£3,600), described as separate line items.
Revised proposal:
- Removing 4c reduces hours to 60, yet the total remains £6,000 (£5,400 for 4b + £600 for 4c).
- Deliverables are still isted as the same for the original proposal