The following is an outline
of general options for organizing, defining and valuing architectural
services, as they apply particularly to the custom residential
design process. What gives value
to the design process is a combination of two primary factors:
- (a) skill-knowledge-experience
- (b) time and effort
How to measure
that value in defining services and fees is one of the first tasks
of the design process. It’s important
that both the scope of service and fees are clearly communicated
and understood at the outset. The cost of services is directly
related to the scope of services and there are several ways to approach
both. The scope of service can be either comprehensive design,
or a limited consulting service:
- (a) ‘soup
to nuts’
- (b) ‘a
la carte’
The most appropriate way to determine
design fees will vary according to the nature of the project and
definition of scope of work. The
three primary forms of fee structure are:
- (1) time-billing
- (2) percentage of construction cost
- (3) fixed fee: lump sum or unit costs
A full scope of architectural services
consists of a comprehensive range of tasks that cohere holistically,
from preliminary design through final completion of construction. The
services are usually divided into distinct phases for organizational
purposes:
- A1. Programming (project definition)
- A2. Site analysis, predesign
- B1. Schematic Design
- B2. Design Development
- B3. Construction drawings
- C1. Construction monitoring
- C2. Supplemental (optional)
services
The most reliable way to define a full
scope of service is with one of the standard forms of agreements
published by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) for this
purpose. In this case
the services rely for their coherence on being comprehensive, and
the most accurate and fair way to define fees is in terms of a percentage
of the construction cost. Architectural fees for this mode
of project delivery will usually fall somewhere within a general
range of ten percent of construction cost for custom residential
projects, depending on size and complexity. This can be determined
more specifically once the nature and scope of a particular project
are established.
There are occasions when a fee for a
specific service can be structured as a lump sum or an equivalent
expression of some sort of unit cost, such as dollars per square
foot. This is more rare, and unwieldy,
especially in private residential projects, in that it requires a
very specific and quantifiable definition of the project objectives,
scope and deliverables prior to beginning. This is rarely consistent
with the nature of a custom home design project, and in any event
requires a very clear definition of the scope of both the project
and the services in order to apply. But it can sometimes be
a useful way to measure services.
A more flexible and economical way to
structure services is to define and delimit the scope of work to
the actual needs. This is
an ‘a la carte’ approach wherein some of what would be
included in a full scope of service is deferred, deleted or delegated
in a way that the ‘basic’ scope of the service, and concomitant
fee exposure, are limited accordingly without significant loss of
essential value. The goal here is, by defining services responsively
and intelligently, to offer the greatest portion of value for the
least portion of cost – to craft an individualized scope of
service that is sufficient to do the job justice, but one that is
lean and focused: ‘to shoot it with the smallest gun’.
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“Drive for show; putt for dough.” |
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~
Anonymous |
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Fees under this format are usually determined
on a time-billing basis. My normal hourly billing rate applying to services is
$100 per hour. This however only begins to mean anything once
we’ve been able to establish a scope of work that suits your
project needs and goals. This can usually be determined without
cost or obligation, after one or two meetings to discuss the project
particulars. Of course this is a customized approach which
requires a fair familiarity with the unique attributes of a particular
project, but in general and as a rough guideline, the fee exposure
for a sufficiently constituted limited scope of service, on a moderate
size custom project, will be somewhere in the range of half what
it would be for a corresponding full scope of service, and sometimes
considerably less.
After having discussed a particular project
in some detail, I’ll
be able to offer recommendations on a fitting approach to design services,
and a clear estimate of the likely fee exposure in simple understandable
form. Beyond this it’s impractical to say much more about
either services or fees without learning more about you, your project
goals and the design dynamics. If you’d like to discuss
this in detail I’m glad to have you to contact me in person,
which you can do through the CONTACT link
on this site. I’ll
be happy to learn more about your project and design objectives, and
to offer you initial response, input and recommendations. |
