Why not do a lump sum not to exceed with an hourly rate. If your comfortable with your skills and the client. It seems like the best way to get it done, and the best way to remain friends. I do this alot when I'm working in a comfort zone. It shortens up the whole process, cause people make decissions when they know the clock is
ticking. I find I also work better this way because I certainly don't want to be spending time on the project which exceeds the time the lump sum fee cause then I know I'm headed in the wrong direction on the project.

Might work if you know ahead of time how many sheets you'll need.

Otherwise, every added sheet might become a source of contention...?

Anyone ever heard the old rule of thumb that each sheet represents 40 hours to create?

so 40 times 10, 25, 50, 100 bucks an hour is... wow. that can't work!

Guess I'm way underpricing myself again. They're looking to pay around 2500 for a design set. Which is low, I know, but I'm trying to work with them. When I told them my hourly price, they balked a bit. That's when they spit out how much they were looking to pay. So I'm looking at this as more valuable in experience than monetary gain.

Dapper,

Will they have the money to build it?

If they don't, then they may sue you!

I'd be very careful.

DN Well it all depends upon what your designing. If this is an addition it is one thing if it is a 2,000 sf house another or if it is
a Mc Mansion...well your friends are well out of the league for their thoughts about a fee. Again I stress, take the $2,500.00 figure out what your going to need to draw (comic book sketches) plans, sections, elevations, details along with door window types, wall types....ect. and figure out how long it is going to do the basic construction documents. Then figure out if you have any money left over for schematic design. You can share with them the amount of time you can dedicate to design cause the other is pretty cut and dry.
Tell them you can produce the Construction Documents for a said amount and it will take you so many hours. Now you know how many hours you have for schematic design, so tell them you have so many hours for schematic design and that you believe you can complete the schematic design in that time frame, but ,,,,yes,,,,,but if you exceed that time then you want to be compensated at an hourly rate for that work. So if they really think your going somewere with the design and they like it they are not going to scream about five more hours of design or ten for that matter and you don't burn yourself before the project is done.

The other aspect of it which is a bit more involved is how much can they afford to spend for design services. If it is completely out of wack with what they can afford to build then take a pass.


The other thing to keep in mind is that your going to have opportunities to do work for alot of different economic layers of our society. If you see it a a project that is going to be a good one and the clients aren't flush but willing to listen to you then you might consider taking it for less of a fee.

If the people are of a financial means, that your fees are a minor portion of the project, including land purchase, site engineering design, landcape design. along with all the trades involved then you should be looking at full service contract with full service fees.

"Anyone ever heard the old rule of thumb that each sheet represents 40 hours to create?"

That's true! And when some of that can be reused it's where we start making money!

Here, this might be relevant.

It might not be, I haven't read this thread, just vaguely recalled a similar thread previously and luckily stumbled into it with a quick search.

I have an article that might help too, let me go find it...

kurt,

i worked @ a firm were we estimated 40 hours per sheet.

i did most of the drawings, X $60/hr (what i billed @) so a permit set of 5 drawings would have billed out @ 12k.

i am pretty sure this would have been partially written off however. or at least significantly under that. i never really spent close to 40 hours on a sheet.

Holz,

That's your intellectual property and it costs money. That's what we sell. If we don't reinvent the wheel every time, then we can make a profit!!!! Otherwise, we're better off working at Starbucks! ;-)

the eugene brown article comes across as a little self serving and whiny. but that may be just me.

there is a huge difference between intellectual property and busy work.

and some of us might be better off @ starbucks.

Not really. Have you been to a lawyer's office lately?

ha. avoid @ all costs.

Holz, are you going to name names? ;-)

myself, for starters

...rule of thumb... i learned this from a cute librarian. rule of thumb refers to an old phrase that referred to the diameter of a stick that a man could legally beat his wife with. if the stick was smaller than the diameter of a thumb the man was safe...there u go.

holz, it IS self-serving in that it's trying to explain to clients why architecture is worth the expense. Until I read that article I had never thought of the design fee being spread across the cost of the mortgage.

i get that, i'm just saying i would be off put by it if i were a client.

When I have clients that are put off by fees, I usually move on asap. If they want to me work for them, it costs money. Otherwise, they are not serious and I have better things to do. I love it when they'll purchase a house for $500k and give the realtors 6% of that without thinking twice and then thumb their nose at an Architect's fee.

No thanks. The profession deserves better!

Personally, I have been putting out contracts that have a "not to exceed" amount. Once underway I bill by the hour on 2 week intervals. If they don't reach the "not to exceed " figure than they only pay for the time spent. This way I can give them a figure for the job start to finish and I get paid hourly. It has worked really well. I estimate beyond number of hours I expect the job to take as a precaution. So I should be able to complete the work well below the estimated time . Unless, they are the type to have tough time making decisions then they'll blow thru it. Plus, I have a clause that allows me to charge for additional service after they obtain a building and they want to keep making changes. Which almost always happens. This way if the Arch services budget gets blown and they are still wanting me to work on their plans it's obviously on them and I feel good about billing for my time. Since I have been contracting this way I have been putting out much higher priced contracts. The clients always question the amount . But once I explain the billing, they go for it. 90 percent end up going into additional services phase.

i stopped doing low budget work for folks that want alot for nothing.


bill what your worth and if they dont like it...then move on. if you take it, make sure you get paid in sections BEFORE you move to the next phase.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. This is a 1400 sf retirement home that the couple have been "designing" for years. They've talked with and gotten sketches from a couple of other architects so I think they're trying to avoid paying full architectural fees which is annoying because they think the drawings should be a quick little job. I'll do the hourly with max not to exceed,so at least I'll get paid for what I've done if they decide I'm still too expensive even if I set a lower hourly price than my usual.

see if they want just design or actual development and cd's

Dapper,
If another architect has worked on the job, I'd pass.

There's a reason why they are no longer working on the job. 9 out of 10 times it's the client.

i would drop contact with these people as soon as possible...you are heading for a train wreck.

Far to many times we are willing to adjust our fees to get a job. I say go into the project with a fee you feel you will be aptly compensated. Otherwise, don't waste your time.

I agree if a client has been designing with other architects and then ask you to work on their project. That should signal they aren't easily pleased or even impossible to please. Many times it's the fact they cannot communicate their ideas. Most of the time their designing way beyond their budget

i agree with make here, and i think Dapper if you want to remain friends, then you should take them out for coffee or a drink and explain why you'd prefer not to design their home for them. they'll thank you for having done so. you could perhaps consult for them on an hourly basis. do some sketches and let them find a builder that will document the project on the cheap.

i have moved on when the client i had balked on my fee. it's tough to do, but i kept thinking if i have to convince them that my fee is appropriate, they'll have buyers remorse and inevitably hate me and make my life a living hell.

nd....sometimes the other "Architects" are Wack Jobs! Test the Waters, what you got to loose.

interesting, too, that houses really do take a LOT of experience to pull off... they're a sea of variables... often times they make schools and commercial projects, etc., seem sooo straightforward by comparison.

that is an interesting observation kurt. i used to do tower apts, hospitals and schools. did a lot of em, and now i do housing...housing is different, for sure, but not comparable to school exactly. not the ones i did anyway. they were seriously complicated.

but anyway, 2500 for a house seems like far too low fee to me. is that remotely normal-ish fee in USA?

$2500 is not remotely enough. We typically charge 10% of construction cost - are they building a $25,000 house? Industry standard says a custom house should be closer to 15%.

I agree that these "clients" seem like a nightmare. I would choose not to work with them OR have an airtight contract if I did, including a fee typical to my practice.

As Stourley says, you could consult with them on an hourly basis to review their drawings that are prepared by someone else. If you think YOU will learn a lot by doing this project, you may be willing to take a slightly lower fee - but I'd argue that you WILL learn a lot, and it will be a painful education!

jump -- housING, I'd agree with what (I think) you're saying. But at least in my experience, housES -- as in single family, seem to require far more attention and effort than a lot of typical office projects... and I've worked on quite a bit of medical, schools, commercial, office, etc.

And maybe it's just me. in designing a house and going through the const. phase, everything seems to exist under a microscope.

But yeah, 2500 won't do it. i'm with LB's 15%.

The other thing that seems hard for many of us to realize, is that many "house clients" simply do not need an architect.

for me, step one is always finding out what the end product is that a potential client is really looking for. The more mainstream/conventional their wishes, the less they need a creative architect.

See, I know all of the comments are true, but I have trouble explaining the difficulties of the design/building process to them, how long just the drafting takes and why my fee is a resonable one. Perhaps that is my bigger issue here.

tell them to sketch something out and give it to the builder... then see where that gets them..

As a comparison toward your favor, let them know that Holz would only do slightl more than ONE SHEET for 2500 bucks...

dn...how much do they expect to pay for their dream house when it is all said and done....and how much will the bank loan them?

What happens during a not-to-exceed when the client goes way over on hours due to "tweaking" the design?

ah ok, thank goodness. we charge 15% for houses too. in my last office we charged 4-6% for projects with typical budgets of 30 Mil or so (usually we did not take on work if the budget was under a million). plus another 3% for construction oversite.

yes kurt. houses, not housing.

i do understand you, but i can design and do full drawing set for a house by myself, usually with say 40-50 pages. for a school i need 2 more people, even if there are still only 50 pages again (not likely). for me level of resolution of details is about the same but that is probably just me. the regulatory oversight ramps up multiple times however, so things become very complicated before even starting. houses by comparison are a breeze.


anyway, LB seems to have it covered. for the sake of friendship just walk away. explain why, but walk away. no one is going to be happy if you pursue this...

and why do you have to explain the fees? what the hell is that about? do they live on unemployment? is that why they dont understand basic economics?

tnarchi, in our NTE contracts we have a clause that if the clients make changes to scope (or take excessively long times to make decisions) that cause us to come close to hitting the NTE figure we will give them fair warning that there will probably need to be a bump in fees. They can either pull the plug then and pay us for work done to date, or agree to give us more to cover their excessive demands. We've never had a problem with it. Possibly because our projects are pretty small, and most of our clients can tell when they are being difficult - we have very honest relationships with them!

Thank you for your response. It sounds like a very fair way to handle small projects. It gives the client a guide as to how much time it typically takes for the design of a house.

Let's see, jump does 40 - 50 sheets for a house... if at the fee base of 40 hours per sheet... 50 sheets? times 40 hours per is 2000 hours (which is a work YEAR, right?) times, say, holz's 60 bucks an hour...

which equals a mere

$120,000 fee.

Dapper Napper, your piddly $2500 should sound to any client like the bargain of a lifetime.

Does anyone else have that sinking feeling reading this thread? Something along the lines of doubt over the sustainability of the traditional architectural practice business model....

i doubt jump bills out @ 60 per hour, and that was when i was a noob fresh outta school

it does not take 40 hours to do one sheet.

some probably take longer, but most take much less.

40 sheets is typical for us though, and includes HVAC, and landscape design, etc. engineering drawing set adds another 15-20 sheets, but we don't do those.