Design - Planning application - Architecture fee - help to calculate correct value

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Jonny Vee

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Hi Everyone, This question may seem stupid or tricky but could not find an answer anywhere and maybe some colleague architect could point me on the right direction.

I have always been working for large practice but due of this covid mess and lack of work I`m trying to set up something on my own.

I have been requested to provide fee for Design and planning application of new bungalow ( they have already one but this would need to be demolished and building a new one larger and in a different location inside the plot)

Could anyone point to some guideline on how to correctly calculate the fee for every single stage as I won`t make mistake of being super cheap or super expensive.

Thanks
 
Work out how many hours each stage will cost, break each stage down into it's component parts ie are you surveying the site or will you be employing someone, if surveying yourself how long will it take, how long will the site take to travel to or will you appoint a surveyor, how long will that take you, will you be getting quotes from 3 surveyors or just one, will you ring each one beforehand or just write an email or both, how long will that email take to write, it all adds up, determine which documents/drawings you will need for each stage and how long each one will take etc etc. Be thorough in trying to work out everything you need to do at each stage and then you can literally assign time to each item. It's a right ball-ache to begin and could easily take a day or so for the job you're describing to begin with but once you've written everything down things get clearer and the next one will take less time and so on as you'll be able to cherry pick the relevant bits. Then you'll need to consider your hourly rate .... and don't forget your PI if you're an actual architect.

When I first started doing private work (I don't do much anymore) I used one of my company's fee quotation letters as a basis and added/deleted my own stuff and have honed my quote format over the years, seeing the way that firm treated their clients and how they communicated with them it was easy to see how things could be improved, that said I was possibly too thorough in that I would be 100% upfront with respect to every other fee they would likely encounter, bat survey, asbestos survey if relevant, planning fees, build over fees etc etc I know that put some people off but then I can sleep at night and as it was 'private work' outside of my day job it wasn't such a problem if I didn't get the job - not so easy when it is your day job. Plenty of fee proposals leave all that stuff out and then they spring it on the client as and when they need to. Other fee proposals I've seen are perhaps only a sentence or two in an email.

Oh and you will make some mistakes on some fees, some avoidable some not, some will be too cheap and some expensive, that's both the advantage and disadvantage of fixed fee quotes, some jobs just keep on giving!
 
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The problem with working out how many hours it might take to draw up, means that you could very well price yourself out of the job.

One consideration is how much are you prepared to do the job for? How much do you want or need the job? Could the job be a springboard for further work, so perhaps a low(er) price is better?

Other considerations is what added value can you give the client? Say for the same price as others, can you provide colour 3d renderings, a more detailed specification, more site visits, free amendments, dealings with others at no cost?
 
Ask yourself what you personally buy that isn't the cheapest. Work out why you decide to pay more sometimes. Work on that basis. It's not just about price: Reliability, accessibility, enthusiasm all count.
 
Its the age old story of knowing what to charge.

The starting point is usually a guesstimate between what you think the going rate is and what you labour cost and overheads may add up to.


It's prob not that easy to find architects pricing - it's not exactly well publicised.

I would suggest doing loads of googling of architects around your region as some of the websites will give some indication prices.


I'm not an architect somI don't know what the likely stages could be - but I'm sure you must have a good idea:

1 measured survey
2 drawing existing
3 client liaison time
4 drawing proposed
5 re designs included in original price
Etc etc

I imagine it's difficult to know how much you need to include for all the correspondence time....emails, phone calls etc.

And I guess you need to have a clear contract to enable you to charge clients that faff about making endless changes or can't make decisions.
 
^woody^ said:
The problem with working out how many hours it might take to draw up, means that you could very well price yourself out of the job.

One consideration is how much are you prepared to do the job for? How much do you want or need the job? Could the job be a springboard for further work, so perhaps a low(er) price is better?

Other considerations is what added value can you give the client? Say for the same price as others, can you provide colour 3d renderings, a more detailed specification, more site visits, free amendments, dealings with others at no cost?
Click to expand...

I agree as working on how many hours would be very tricky.

as we are running in a circle and still haven`t get any close to my answer. Lets put thing on this way

This would be a 4 bedroom bungalow to be designed from sketch around 120m2

work included, survey of the existing bungalow, design with some back and forth with the client to agree final design, planning drawings and submission of planning drawings and relative correspondence to get it approved.

I will be producing a 3 model in Revit as base for future works and construction if required and also to use it as future base in case 3d visual rendering are require ( this will be charged separately if required)

I know it is tough but how much would you roughly charge for this? Also if i would need to break by hours. What the roughly hourly rate would be for this?

I`m interested to get the job as this client is a builder and more job could land out if this is proven successful.

Many thanks
 
This can be such an exhaustive subject, I daresay we could all write reams of advice on it.

The hours thing is not to be shied away and is one of the reasons many practices get their fees wrong and always run out of money at the end, that and they faff around too much at the planning stage, but once you start out on the how many hours does each task take you get to understand what hours you need to be putting in to make a living in conjunction with your hourly rate of course - which all depends on your overheads. If you're using hooky software on a home laptop whilst living with your parents your overheads will be tiny compared to paying for software, a decent PC, renting an office insurance etc etc. But of course you also need to consider how much you want the job and charge what you think will be a competitive fee, a good quotation can help here if you can explain precisely what they'll be getting for their money. As an architect you must have had to say how long various tasks will take you, draw up the existing model of that, do the planning drawings, do those roof details or whatever?
 
Working it out from the other end (the client-contractor's point of view); you could say the build cost is (m² x local £/m² rates for this kind of project), and your fee to see the project through from inception to completion is x% of that figure, split roughly 40-60 between Phase A - Concept design (including planning and Tender) and Phase B - execution. Your Client-Contractor has in their mind a figure of 'x' of between 1% and 5% while you have in your mind a figure of 10% - 15%. Hopefully you can meet somewhere in the middle. Phase A represents 2 - 3 months of fairly solid work for you (well, it would for me, but maybe I'm slow) so it's important that that 'middle' at least covers you for time spent.
 
Nakajo said:
Phase A represents 2 - 3 months of fairly solid work for you (well, it would for me, but maybe I'm slow) so it's important that that 'middle' at least covers you for time spent.
Click to expand...
So if your practice was charging you out at say £90/hour that fee (3 months work) would equate to £40K?
 
The most important thing to consider, is that this is not just about drawing plans. Actual draft design of the layout and site layout are things that can take some considerable time to finalise

Then there is the amount of liaison that will come with the role of being the designer - dealing with others, the service providers, the council, other professionals, CDM plan, specification and quantities take off.

The Design Statement and other ancillary planning requirements, and just acting as the Agent at planning stage can take up a lot of time, but that can be difficult to price and account for.

An Architect may be charging 10-12% of the build value in his fees. You could be looking at halfing that and still be making a profit. But some plan monkey may well be quoting £3k for "the plans" and the client does not know that literally will be what he gets - a few sheets of paper. So I would suggest you convey why the client should use you and not the others and that will mean stating why being cheaper than an Architect does not mean less quality, and why being more than a bloke with a dodgy copy of AutoCad is worth paying for.
 
Yeah 35% of built cost on design. I may have been asking the question on the wrong place
 
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