Architects provide more than floor plan

By Architonic Design Group

Many people ask "How do I hire a builder for my home?" and some offer that "No question is more fundamental for the person planning a custom home. The general contractor is the person, after all, who turns your vision into a day to day reality."

We submit that there is an even more fundamental question that should be answered prior to selection of your builder, "Exactly what is "my vision for a new home," will it accomplish my housing goals at a cost that I can afford, and how can I best communicate that vision to a builder?

Interpreting living environment dreams, understanding your aspirations, and formulating them into harmonious and attractive total concepts, and then portraying those concepts onto two-dimensional media in such a way as to successfully communicate them to a builder is indeed the first step to a successful project.

Most people can explain what they want, but few can accurately relate these desires directly to hard usable facts; dimensions, sizes, colors, textures, and functions. Fewer feel comfortable conceptualizing pleasing appearance and efficient arrangement of spaces.

Still fewer are equipped then to effectively translate abstract concepts in to attractively proportioned exterior/ interior spaces with ideal traffic patterns, to optimize the relationship between interior and exterior spaces, and coordinate various modern life support systems into a homogeneous, attractive and properly functioning living environment, and then communicate these details practically to a building contractor. These tasks are the particularly valuable purview of architects and engineers.

We certainly agree "...there are many fine, honest, solvent, and competent builders out there, and relatively few who are (downright) unscrupulous."

Unfortunately, a plethora of practitioners fit into a third category that fits in between these two (and the number seems to inevitably increase during a booming economy), those who really do not intend to render poor service, who are perhaps highly ethical, immanently trustworthy and financially responsible, but who simply do not have the experience, technical expertise nor skills required to perform the services that they purport to offer.

They often don't realize how much about the process they don't know until it is too late, and a good project has been ruined for you and is an economic disaster for them. Potentially as devastating, are those who purport to offer both design and construction management services, but lack the technical foundation and/ or aesthetic taste to perform such a service attractively and responsibly.

Qualified building design professionals, general contractors and specialty contractors make it all look so easy... but don't you believe it!

County Building Code and Building Inspection Department

Generally speaking, county building codes (i.e. the Uniform Building Code or UBC) do not require that residential construction be performed from plans prepared by a professional licensed architect or engineer unless you plan to employ a new and unusual technology ("alternative technologies"), or if your site is in a flood plain, or some other technologically challenged site.

Historically, home building has been considered fairly routine and the builders have been given a free reign with design and construction of residences and associated buildings. The UBC establishes minimum criteria for utilization of structural building materials and the arrangement of the elements of the home has been considered to be non-technical and has been left up to the homeowner and their selected contractors.

More and more, as a direct result of the many abuses that occur and the subsequent complaints and outcry by local citizens, local building authorities are requiring a design professional to take responsibility for design decisions.

"Responsibility" is the key word. The public demands that someone be responsible for the finished product and too often in today's world practitioners in all fields only want the credit and the pay, not the responsibility. The State of Colorado licenses Professional Engineers (P.E.), Architects and Land Surveyors (L.S.), as does virtually all other states, in order to protect the public by insuring that individuals qualifying for their license meet minimum educational and experience background standards. This system also helps assure the public of accountability for the acts of the individual professional practitioner.

Contractor licensing is, in Colorado, a local option. Chaffee County has not, at this point, opted to require contractor licensing. Most qualified contractors and design professionals in the area would most surely agree that our county should consider some sort of enforceable qualifying criteria for general contractors.

Why use an Architect and/ or an Engineer?

You can buy a "canned" set of plans through any number of home building magazines, newspapers, the internet, etc., for a few hundred dollars. So why pay many times that amount to hire a licensed professional to create the same thing?

The answer is, "Don't!" ...If you can find a published set of plans that meet your every aesthetic, practical and budgetary need; that requires no adjustment to your tastes, to your specific location and building site, or to any number of special little details that personalize the home for you and your family; and if you know a contractor that you can rely on completely and whom you trust implicitly, and if that contractor is available to do the work in a time frame that fits your schedule, then you can do very nicely with readily available mass produced plans. Otherwise, you should consider hiring a licensed professional architect and/ or engineer.

Before opting for the purchase of a canned set of plans that "sorta looks like what you want, but...." You should understand and appreciate the limitations of these standardized plans. Among other things:

n You are not entitled to any service, consultation, explanation or help of any kind whatsoever with the purchase of the canned plan. Its like buying a picture (not the recipes, just the picture) of a seven-course dinner for 20, and expecting to serve it to important food/ etiquette critics by next weekend.

n You have no practical recourse whatsoever if there are flaws in the plans, or disputes ensue because things aren't clearly and thoroughly specified, even if such flaws result in large "extras" or "change orders" to be paid by you for what you may consider relatively minor changes. Neither the preparer nor the seller of the plan has any responsibility to you for errors, omissions, inconsistencies, incompatibilities, nor any other fault, in the plan.

n Plans may not comply with local code requirements because they were prepared for use in another entirely different locale. A plan prepared for use in southern Louisiana or Florida, for example, is not likely to properly and adequately address snow load, frost resistant foundations, or insulation requirements indigenous to Chaffee, Lake or Park County, Colorado.

As a result, you may end up being required to hire a Colorado licensed professional engineer (P.E.) or architect to review and approve your plan for local use; even before you can submit the plan with your application for a building permit. Already at that point, the savings you enjoyed when you purchased your plans has begun to erode.

Most mail-order plans contain extensive disclaimers and/ or warnings that the structure shown, especially the foundation and major supporting elements, are of a generic design and may or may not meet local code requirements. Usually following is instructions to have the plan reviewed by a local engineer or architect.

n No attempt or pretense is normally made to serve any purpose except to portray the basic elements of the building as a guideline to construction.

The overriding presumption being that the plan will be executed by skilled, experienced, honest, and responsible tradesmen under the careful direction of a construction savvy owner. If you don't fit that category, be very careful.

n Since the plans are standardized for use by anybody and everybody, no attempt is generally made to select or specify finish materials, brand names nor minimum qualities of building products such as windows, doors, hardware, cupboards, floor coverings, wall surfaces, ceiling textures, etc. etc. The difference between executing exactly the same plan with cheap materials vs. top quality materials can easily be 20 percent or more.

Material quality selections made in deference to lower price generally translate directly into shorter product life, higher maintenance costs, increased installation trouble and cost, or other similar trade-offs. If you pass along all of those decisions to your builder, you must be prepared accept his ability and integrity to select for you the best possible value in materials considering all factors. For the most part, "you get what you pay for," and you should opt for the best quality product you can afford, at a price determined through experienced and ethical comparative shopping, price solicitation and competition.

n Little attempt is normally made in canned plans to coordinate material selections nor subcontract trades work scope, specify construction performance criteria, nor to address a myriad of other practical concerns of effectively managing the construction and assuring quality control and honorable, skillful and timely execution of the work.

None of the 15 contract issues listed in the Chisholm article about selecting a contractor are typically addressed (except regarding ownership of the plans).

When you embark on your project with a mail-order plan, all these things are left entirely to you, the owner, to work out with your contractor, a task that even the most experienced construction manager does with difficulty, and never without a very carefully drawn "road map" (plans and specifications) to guide the way. When you ask for and rely on someone to simply "draw my plans'' whether hand - drafted or computer - generated, your result and the associated pitfalls will generally fall into the same category as the mail order plan.

Professional Architectural/ Engineering services are available at reasonable costs, to address all of these issues and more; and more importantly, to tailor the individual answers specifically to yours and your family's particular tastes and needs.

"Preventative Medicine" makes economic sense: in all fields. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," "Close the gate before the horse gets out," Pay us now or pay us later," etc., etc. ad infinitum. Design professionals are trained and experienced at preventative care of your building dollars. Aside from the obvious (technical training and expertise) licensed professionals in the building field are charged with the responsibility of making sure you receive what you bargain and pay for, that you will be safe and secure in your new home, that you avoid as many known building contract pitfalls as possible, and that your project is completed as expeditiously, economically, and skillfully as practical. That is what a professional engineer or architect should bring to your project and is why engaging such a person or firm as early in your project as possible is advisable.

Usually you get what you pay for. There are cheaper ways of building than employing qualified design professionals, or qualified contractors for that matter. But is it really cheaper in the long haul? When materials used fail too soon because of improper or nonexistent selection criteria or quality control, were they really enough cheaper to justify the outcome? In the case, for instance, of manufactured housing, while the actual house may be quite cheap, is it really cheaper by the time you pay for an engineered foundation, pay for special add-one and amenities, pay for special handling and setting, and then adjust the value for the realistic life expectancy of the unit? In the end aren't you more interested in the maximum possible VALUE for the dollars you spend than in the lowest possible cost? We should all know there's a big difference between "prudent frugality," economical, and "false economy," - just plain cheap! In a recent article in Architecture magazine, Witold Rybczynski put it this way, "...the real difficulty lies not in price but in value. Price dictates what we can, or cannot, afford; value determines whether or not we think we are getting our money's worth."

Generally speaking, (though it is very difficult, if not impossible to prove), money spent on a design professional to carefully plan your project prior to hiring a contractor and starting construction will be more than recovered in the savings realized by avoiding the all too numerous and painful pitfalls encountered during permitting and construction. Talk to anyone who has had a bad building experience (and there are an alarming number of them around town these days) and you will soon find that if they had it to do over, they would gladly spend an additional five or 10 percent up front to avoid the stress and misery of resolving insufferable problems throughout construction of their project, and/ or worse, living with a bad result for the rest of their lives.

That is what professional help will generally cost, between five and 10 percent of your construction costs. A small price to pay for peace of mind and savings in the final total cost of construction that far outweighs the initial cost. Realtors will usually tout the extra value and attractiveness of an "architect designed" house, and recommend adding significantly to the asking price for the home accordingly. Isn't it bewildering to note that people will routinely pay a seven to 10 percent fee to a realtor for their service and think nothing of it, but balk at the same fee to create and protect the same once in a lifetime investment from scratch; an investment which, these days, will usually exceed $100,000. Apparently one thing we, as design professionals don't do well at all is marketing!

In the above referenced magazine article by Professor Rybczynski, he reflects that since the 1930's, architects have virtually abandoned the single-family homebuyer/ builder. This being the case, is it any wonder that people have gotten out of the habit of seeking help from architects for their custom home design needs? He further states that "In hindsight, it is obvious that the architectural profession made a big mistake..." when "the housing industry was left to care for itself... More was lost than architectural fees. Three quarters of Americans live in single family houses. The architect might have been as familiar and trustworthy a figure as the family doctor. Yet the average family does not equate the home with architecture, nor with architects."

At Architonic Design Group, Inc., in Buena Vista, we are determined to correct this "mistake," at least as far as our own community is concerned. We recognize the truth of it and believe we understand how to change both the perception and the reality of proper and affordable application of architectural and engineering services to the single-family custom homeowner. We are working on ways of packaging our services into affordable units that can be custom selected, smorgasbord style, designed to suit the individual needs for all sizes of residential investors.

Whether you choose our firm or another licensed, experienced, qualified and insured professional architectural and engineering firm, do yourself and your family a favor. Take the time to find and spend the money to hire the best designer and builder available, a team of professionals who will become your most important allies during the project, designing and detailing the home to suit your particular personalities, lifestyle and budget, and building the home thus conceived at a cost you can comfortably afford.

Good luck with your building project.