Typical Design Fee

[Anonymous]

Just curious, what are your flat rates for designing residential work? I know it is a broad question but give a ex.

[Anonymous]

The talkers are really hitting the nail on the head! HA - great stuff.

Let's then move onto the.... "CONTRACT"

One list of things that should be in it.

\

One list of things that should be excluded.

[Anonymous]

When doing custom residential, I always bill hourly through SD, then based on the final design, I quote DD, CD and Construction Administration as a fixed fee...

ideal fee structure for custom design

We priced custom residential design as described above until last week. We were still suffering each job, then realized that the end of SD is not the critical threshold for determining when to stop hourly work.

Most residential work here is negotiated (too hot a market for GC's to bother with bids), and we have decided to go hourly until the Owner comes to terms with a GC on a preliminary construction cost. Until that time, and that moment can occur well into DD, one can't be certain the Owner is going to step up to the plate and pay for the scheme at hand. Additionally, their choice of GC can really affect our life (complexity of CA, amount of detail required), so we don't want to lock down a fixed fee until we really know what the GC/Scheme/Prelim Price is.

[Rick Thompson]

Using that logic, musical bands would only ever sell one album. Studios would only sell one DVD, and Apple would still be operating out of a suburban garage.

Architects should really latch on to the copyright bandwagon. Our work is exactly the type of effort it's intended to promote and protect. And, to be fair, a developer paying a licencing fee for homes 2,3 & 4 is still doing well on the basis that he's paying a reduced design fee on those homes.

Like it or not, the residential market is clearly divided into 2 sectors, custom and stock (including stock modified). It has been for awhile and with the internet has become an even faster evolving market. When I did custom work and charged design fee per hour, then $5-6 sqft (engineering and site extra $ as needed) I made $100/$150 hour, I never understood firms saying they could not make it work.

The pricing and packaging of the stock plan market was fueled by a few Magazines, but now there are many web site that resale plans and pay the designer 30-50%. I personally stay away from them, except coolhouseplans.com which pays 50% (and sells a lot of plans, which ends up bring in repeat business). The market is the way it is, and plans are not computers or software, however I use that analogy too. Stock plans are typically sold as prints, vellums, and CAD files. Prints are stamped in RED... do not copy, but then there's the local do it yourself copy shop. I have had plan reviewers call me saying they have a violator... but there is not much you can do realistically.

Vellums and CAD's are sold with permission to make copies. Some sell with unlimited builds, some one build, with more gravitating to the one build per plan purchase with additional fees for additional builds. Controlling this is an obvious nightmare. To sue for statutory damages means you much file copyright papers/fees for each plan. If you don't you can only sue for the cost of the plan fee, either way is quite an undertaking. I had someone last week actually order 2 plans they already had copies of, but wanted to do it properly, so there are those spec builders who have integrity. I prefer not to obsess over it and not try to play the Lord of Karma... I've got enough to do.

It is a hugh market place that most architects don't understand yet. The internet has made more of a difference that I ever imagined. I personally think it is a very good thing, and is evolving quickly. Many people can now buy good plans that could otherwise not afford them. Unfortunately (IMHO) what the American buyer wants is polluting the landscape with as many front firing gables as can be fit on the front of a house. O'well. BTW, there are plenty of niche markets out there and that's what key-wording is for.

[Vitruvius]

Accepting a faulty and inequitable status quo doesn't seem reasonable. I'm not suggesting that individual architects go rooting out 'piracy' as I view the formalization of architects rights within copyright laws to be the responsibility of professional organizations working on a federal level. After all, they're the guardians of the industry.

But with the example you quoted - your stock plans could (or should) be stamped "Exclusively for construction only of 123 Elm Avenue, copyright 2005" the association could lobby building departments to refuse copyright violations as permit submissions. And they could annually choose a select handful of egregious offenders everywhere and drag them through the courts in a high profile manner.

That's exactly what the Software Protection Alliance does and it works - software is way harder to audit than statutory documents (plans) submitted to a building department. And futher, the SPA have criminalized it and can thus bring up the spectre of FBI / Federal prosecution and jail time.

Cheers, Cameron

[Anonymous]

"Cole_Construction" wrote:
Thank you. I have a buddy of mine that lives in Chicago and he is getting 17% of the total construction costs. That is a lot in my mind.

I do the same (% of total construction cost). The % though varies depending on the nature of the building. Note though that this fee is for design alternatives, final designs, planning permits, estimating quantities, getting qoutes from workers and suppliers, arranging and managing the construction. The fee is payable in stages following submission of work to the client.

For visualisation services we charge hourly and try to be very very cheap (a 5 hr job costs the day salary of any expertise worker, we assume that this is the double than the unexperience worker in our market).

[Anonymous]

Its been a while since the last post but i enjoyed reading other peoples view especially those of vitruvius.

Its quite amusing that clients will try to reduce architects fees and usually in this bun fight your talking around may be 1-3% of contruction cost that the client is trying to save.

And its not unusual to have prices from Tender come in at anywhere between 10-20% over budget.

And again we dont see Clients trying to haggle fees with Estate Agents.

I agree with an earlier post (sorry for not quoting) in regard to sending our significant others off to Realty school.

Im in my final semester of study in Australia, and having worked abroad and in Australia in firms ranging from published design firms charging up to 15% for one off residential, D&B Architects providing basically a drafting service to Contractors at 3.5% and directly for a construction company in London can see that fees are so damb important if some form of quality is to be achieved. Obviously at happyshopperarchitects dot com we were always using Monkey(Autocad) and the higher quality service architect Archicad.

I just thought I would add my perspective as Im almost a Graduate Architect and it probably differs from some of the opinions expressed here by people who have been practising.

Working for firms who work for bottom dollar IS NOT PLEASANT, everything is done for such a tight profit margin and things leave the office which when Im qualified could safely say would never have my name anywhere near it.

Whenever Ive tried to discuss issues with fees and the like with my past directors and colleages, the response I generally get is that you dont understand, we need to make money and we cant charge more than we are charging, and because basically we are crap architects and undercut everyone and hence dont have enough time allocation for this job youll only be paid for half the time you spent on it, really well I wont be in tomorrow.

I think this is terrible and I know Im probably going to get grilled by some of you for this (thatll be easy just attack my grammar) , but for those Architects out there who practise by undercutting fees and providing budget service I think you should all lose your registrations.

And rename your firms to Joe Blog's drafting service.

Situations are different around the world and i can appreciate this, I should really direct those coments to the Australian + UK markets.

Anyway fees have a much greater impact than profability of a firm, Fees directly impact time allocation and this will basically determine what form of employee satisfaction there is, particularly in budget Architect dot com where you will almost hang yourself with the ten year old computers power cable with the lose of your soul.

J

[Anonymous]

i have a related inquiry to this discussion.

ive been asked to submit a bid for construction documents only on a house that has largely been designed already.

it is a rather large home of 7200 sq.ft. with specialized mechanical, structural and electrical requirements due to the homeowners desire to 'go green'; including supplemental wind and solar power, and geothermal systems.

does anyone have a recommendation on how to bid on such a job?

thanks in advance

[Rakela Raul]

put in writing that you are reproducing an already designd residence, and that new changes or modifications to the design will be charged in an hourly basis !!!

[Anonymous]

i spoke with the client, and they are not comfortable with an hourly rate. i replied that i would only submit a fixed fee quote on the condition that the residence be re-drawn (currently it is an autocad file) in Archicad. so essentially i would be starting from scratch from a CD point of view, and forgoing any design work.

so in that case, any ideas on how i would define a scope of work for a fixed fee?

[Rakela Raul]

i have done it before..and i kept moving walls and redesigning for about a year on a fixed fee.....
design should be hourly rate and cons docs fixed......once they see it in 3D, the next question might be: can you try this to see how it looks ??? and from there on...just keep a good attitude if you can !!!