grindr?

No, of course not. But I'm not the one asking random wankers online for business advice. The vast majority of our new clients come from referrals from other clients or contractors we currently work with.

It's not. The AOR takes on ALL the liability for the design. As such they get the majority of the fee (DD-CA typically). You need to have a legal agreement that protects both parties. Typically this is done via a limited partnership or contract. You have to trust the AOR that they will follow your design. The AOR has to trust that you will design something that can be built on schedule and within budget.

On a related not I would NEVER sign anything designed by someone who isn't licensed regardless of the legal agreement.  As the licensed architect I am now responsible for EVERYTHING the unlicensed designer did.  

rAmen Chad. AoR contracts are not allowed under my association but we've had many clients over the years, some large US retail chains, come to us with in-house produced docs looking for just the stamp. Same answer to everyone, a big fat no unless they pay full fees for a redesign-redraw. 

 I've had plenty of similar experience with clients who first go to int-des or other non-licensed designer then ask us to slide those drawings under our title block (and liability). Same answer for them too.

In MN, they don't even recognize the term, AoR; you either are, or not, The Architect. I've turned down a very lucrative opportunity for just that reason.

x-jla, what type of work do you seek? If you could be GUARANTEED leads from a service, how much would pay a month?

Nothing, Leads from lead services suck. Bad leads are a waste of my time.

as architects, we are all a little jaded...early in my career I tried those services for a few months...no luck...definitely a waste of my time...The question is being posed for a business class I'm taking...it would not be a lead... if someone could provide you with a steady steam of vetted, serious clients, guaranteed income, what would that be worth?

You know what makes a good design good? Constraints because it forces you to find clever design answers. You're proposing an ideal business model with only upside. This is unrealistic. It's the same as saying that if I paid you $99, I would be guaranteed $100 tomorrow. In that case, guess who's remortgaging their house and retiring next week on a private island. This guy.

if this is a business class hypothetical it's a more reasonable question, since it feels grossly unrealistic. what's the value provided to the potential clients, and what sort of vetting can possibly be done that makes this believable?

also in my sector the biggest risk to payment is financing shortfalls on projects leading to cancellation. how do you evaluate that?

Non Sequitur - please don't comment if you can't give a serious answer, its a hypothetical business question: projects being vetted by a third part so you don't have to figure out who's serious and who's not....that has to be worth something.

The fish you catch depend on the bait that you use and the lake that you cast it in.

My answer was serious.

midlander in my experience, many people reach out to architects and squeeze them for as much info as possible, educated them selves as much as they can, then go to other architects and have them bid against each other (or themselves) and beat the architect down what if there was a platform where only people serious in hiring an architect were welcome and they were paired up with an architect based on their requirements. Again...If there was a guarantee that the projects every month were real and you weren't bidding it, what would that be worth?

Unless your plan involves pliers and chloroform I don’t see how you can guarantee good paying clients who won’t price shop.

x-jla-x, you don't understand, what if it could be GUARANTEED that the clients would not price shop, how much would this service be worth? What if we supply the chloroform?

Ok, but only because you used all caps.

Seriously...If that's what it takes, I'll supply the pliers and the chloroform. You all have done a very good job a proving my point...you are part of the problem..thank you and have a great day.

have a good day sir.

EDS, and what point is that?

i work in commercial + institutional projects. our clients have a design fees budget and usually look for the best team within that budget. it's not usually the case that the clients aren't serious or that we are constantly competing down on price. is your proposal targeted only for residential clients?

zero. I feel that clients that resort to any sort of agency to find professionals are not the type of clients I want. I would see them as customers looking for the cheapest drafting/stamping services.

Clients with repeat-business potential and who have previous experience. One-time-pony residential renovation are at the very bottom of the list.

I don't know of any architects that prefer One-time-pony residential renovation, what do you prefer? (at least I think so) What if it guaranteed repeat clients? Would it be worth paying for then?

how can you guarantee anything? That sounds ridiculous and impossible. Like I mentioned above, I doubt the quality of clients that would use such a service.

Agreed with NS; those that use sites don't have network and usually haven't built before. The only exception is some behemoth corporations who assign some random middle manager in procurement to find a architect near some location where they plan on building. They'll google and make a short list like they are selecting a cleaning service. That short list hopefully gets to that guy who actually knows construction processes.

MIghty, this times 50. One thing I learned early from my office's equity partners is that we are in the construction business, not in the education of client business. We don't have the time to complete projects and teach the client.  Some training is fine tho, but we have a bottom line.

mightyaa I'm simply throwing out a hypothetical here, If you could have your ideal clients, and you get paid on time what monthly? $500.00, $1000.00? Design professionals should focus on design not marketing and client acquisition and worry about getting paid.

Don’t understand the question. If I have an ideal client, I market them specifically. I don’t do that out-of-house because basically that means YOU develop that lead and relationship, not ME. Additionally, YOU aren’t loyal to ME; you are loyal to whomever pays you and gets the same lead and it goes away when I stop paying monthly.

Ideal client is one that pays on time

It’s a bad question, but hypothetically, I would pay about 6-8% of the projects overall value for a Design and Build project, and about 2% for a Design only project.

one MILLION dollars!

no, one hundred billion dollars.

one thousand trillion dollars

this on time payment guarantee is a retainer and i guess maybe i'd consider 10% of a solid retainer on a generous fee to be fair. i'm just speculating on a number that seems workable. they still need to be good clients to work with with reasonable expectations and goals. i wouldn't trust anyone willing to make such an extraordinary guarantee on behalf of a third party - it's automatically incredible (in the literal sense of that word).

and of course i'd only pay for the contracts i get from such a service. paying for access to a list all my competitors pay to see too isn't worth much.

midlander if the jobs were yours, no competition, how much a month would that be worth?

HIGH FIVE!

there isn't a flat rate answer for that mostly because it's so different from the real world business model that depends primarily on reputation and relationships. to start i'd look at pricing as a fraction of either retainer or contract with maybe some profit sharing. typically i'd expect to pay a lower rate on bigger contracts, but it depends on a lot of factors including the desirability of the project, the complexity of the work, and the market and its influence on my need for business. again for this hypothetical something in the range of 1-2% of the services contract seems plausible if it would mean not needing to put any firm resources on business development and marketing.
which is unrealistic.

Duh, try harder.

Fucking Sherlock Holmes over here^

You didn't figure it out so go change your account name again in shame.

It would have been helpful to know that up front - your profile makes it look like you're a sole practitioner trying to find work.

Warning, serious answer ahead: What would be a benefit to our profession is further distancing it from a off-the-shelf commodity and not treating it like something that can be browsed casually like amazon shopping. 

As noted above by everyone, leads are generated by good work and good working relationships, not search engines. What you could consider is a query-based website where architects/offices list their client wishlist like an employment site. Add filters for location, budget, seriousness-level, etc. That way leads (if any) are based on each firm's input and wanted client criteria. I'm sure Houzz has something similar and they charge a few hundred bones per year for membership. You need a model where YOU do the least amount of work and let firms and potential clients build the connections.

Have owners that consider qualifications over cost. Firms aren't undercutting just for shits and giggles. They're undercutting because lousy clients value cost more than qualification. There is a balance to be had. Good clients see it.

Sure you can. My state does all procurement as qualifications-based, for their work. They can ask for hourly rates. They can't ask for fees. Value-added services is a bullshit marketing term in our industry. You either have experience or qualifications to do a type of work, or you don't. That doesn't stop clients from hiring non-qualified people because they're cheaper.

3: Hourly rate just gives someone an idea of how you value each position. It has no bearing on the total fee because it doesn't take into account how the work is distributed across people with varying hourly rates. 2: It doesn't mean that. I just means people should hire firms qualified to do the work. They should then concern themselves with value of the qualifications. 1. Private sector is no different. It could be done, but it requires clients to value qualifications. 0: you seem to blur the lines of value and cost.

People actually do shop around for medical care here in America.

Yes, people shop but I am unaware of any direct negotiations... they don't knock on a doctors door and say "hey the guy on the other site of town can fix my hernia for $20,000.00 can you do it for $15,000.00"...or am I mistaken?

Some try I'm sure. For architecture I think this is because people do not understand what we do. Also we perpetuate the myth that we are in a service industry. We are not. We provide the client with a physical product.

We are not comparable to doctors. Also, a hernia is free up here.

But the waiting lists of doom! ::snicker::

in america insurers set the price for medical services and they absolutely do shop around for cost. this is why sometimes you can't see the doctor you prefer unless you pay out of pocket yourself. ask a doctor with a partnership how they feel about insurance
companies...

i always dislike comparisons to doctors and lawyers though because their businesses are fundamentally different in being urgent and incomprehensible to the untrained. our work is more comparable to accounting or engineering or business consulting and the business models and payscales somewhat similar.

I don't think you understand architectural contracts or delivery methods. In design build we work for the contractor, not the client. Unless the the architect owns a design build firm we don't have much say in things in a design build delivery method. We don't just provide drawings. If the contract includes Construction Administration then we provide services to ensure that the building is constructed to the intent of the drawings.

Without those drawings there is no building.  Very few if any clients hire an architect to provide them only drawings.  Clients expect the architect to provide them with a physical building.  

I don't think you understand there is something called architect led design/build...we don't have to work for the contractor, we can be the Master Builder. Yes, Architects can more than capable of providing additional services, but in my world most private clients only want to pay for drawings, nothing more, and for some reason the public clients will pay third part for CA or CM services more then they'd pay the architect.

Respectfully, did you not read my comment? I stated that unless the architect owns the design build firm . . .

I don't know what types of projects you've worked on but in my 15 years doing commercial architecture I've never seen a client only purchase drawings for a project of decent size. I've also never seen a client hire a third party to do CA. The role of owners rep / CM is commonly done via a third party, especially in government and/or state projects.

Buying just drawings is not something we allow here. The OG arch must follow through with CA and inspections to close out the building permit.

Chad define "decent size"? In both public and private work I have clients hire 3rd party CA/CM on a regular basis, but yes it is much more common on the public projects.

Well I'd say around $10 million in construction costs. Where are your projects? I ask because hiring a 3rd party for CA simply isn't done where I'm at in MN and CO simply because it costs more money and the quality of work is much, much lower. Not to mention that any time the person running the CA needs a design decision the they have to hire the architect that signed to drawings to make adjustments.

Decent size would be around $10 million. I don't know what types of projects you work on and where but I've never seen a client hire a 3rd party to do CA work. It costs more and opens up all types of liability issues for the client as the design architect is no longer part of the construction process. The party doing the CA work has to make decisions on a project that very well could alter the design intent of the CD's leaving the owner with no recourse to enforce adherence to the CD's. The only way to alleviate this liability issue is for the 3rd party doing the CA to hire back the design architect that did the CD's to make those decisions.  That or the original design architect has to give up their ownership of the CD's - something no smart architect would do.  

@chad on 3rd party CA, it depends on both the region and project type. Where I work does a ton of 3rd party owner's rep in CO. Primarily it is residential/multifamily. Usually as a requirement of the lender because when it comes down to it, it is their asset and they need some control over the project. That essentially gives us a very heavy lever; we can tell your client to make changes or risk getting the loan called and kill the project funding. Sometimes we're part of the builder QAQC assurance program. Sometimes it's a developer who wants us to watch out for their interest.

Good point mightyaa. Owners rep and Construction Administration are two different services though. Or has this just been my experience over the years? I think it's rather common to have a 3rd party do the owners rep services. I know In a lot of government projects a 3rd party owners rep is required.

Yes, most my projects over the last decade have owner's reps. I was being specific to CA services. We also are doing field reports, peer reviewing drawings/rfi's/etc. Sometimes the architect is there, but usually their CA services are limited to the paper (shops, RFI, and questions). We've even issued RFI's and CCD's. Part of that is location; a lot of out-of-state architects. No one wants to fly their architect up to Aspen every other week. And we're also normally doing more CA; one I'm starting this summer is daily onsite representation...

As for need; Architects in general lost the public perception of our expertise. It is pretty simple; If you want a building design, call an architect. If you want to do anything else besides design, you call someone else. So yes, you will continue to see a lot more limited CA in your contracts and a ton more firms stepping in to take over CA. Keep in mind I am on the tail end as the expert during litigation after buildings fail; architects generally don’t get raked that hard simply because the perception is you wouldn’t have been able to identify a defect unless it is grossly apparent or missing. It is easier to get everyone to believe you are stupid about how things go together than it is to get them to believe you should know. That is the state of our profession; we make it pretty. And that perception cascades to clients; they are the ones telling me not to name the architect because they do not think you have a clue about how a component is to be installed. It also cascades into what I do; it has become much harder for me to be taken seriously as an expert simply because I’m a architect and not a engineer. It is to the point where I simply write the report and a engineer testifies because of how judges and juries perceive architects.

Interesting. All the firms I've worked for have done local projects so the CA work was done by us. I think it makes sense in your situation with out of state architects designing buildings in more remote areas like Aspen where the zoning ordinances and permitting process are super complicated and the client has a lot of money.

How has your firm dealt with the liability and legal ramifications of doing CA on another firms project?  How do you tackle design changes during construction?

There aren't abnormal legal ramifications. We are liable for the work we perform just like you. You are still liable for the design, the GC for the construction and we are for anything we design. Like a standard CA, there just isn’t much liability for pointing out non-conforming work, reviewing pay applications, and responding to RFI’s using manufacturer requirements and industry standards. We aren’t doing owner upgrades. We aren’t picking colors. We aren’t changing the design really; flashing corrections, etc. are typical. That said, we have worked with terribly coordinated and detailed drawings. We’ve worked on projects where the GC/developer went cowboy and ignored drawings red flagging the whole project. We’ve come into projects where the GC bellied up or project was abandoned and restarted. We’ve also been brought in for specific things and/or third party like HOA’s to monitor. Even buildings that are failing before substantial completion to sort it out. And there’s the replacement architect jobs or helping a replacement GC determine what to salvage. Those are all wildcards and have their own risks.

How did you deal with those 'wildcard' issues? In my current office we do a lot of fast track projects (mostly schools due to the Best Grants and local mil levies).  There are more RFI's, ASI's, and PR's in such projects with this delivery method (at least in this office).  I'd think there would be a lot of issues using a 3rd party CA service in such a project delivery method. What's been your experience in such a situation with fast track?

By the way, thanks for all the great info!  This discussion has been very interesting and I appreciate you sharing your experience. 

It is messy; different beast for wildcards. Like a building falling apart or terminated GC... Hourly contract. Think more in terms of a inspector process. Usually we work out a deal with the building department; often replacing their inspector and submitting directly to them non-conforming rejection and the corrections once done. (goes back to that networking thing and trust levels) So, in some cases, it is being in the field, peeling back the onion, finding the problem and sketching up a repair. I’ll stamp the sketch in the field, it is scanned, and distributed to the permit officials, attached to the drawing set in the trailer, and to the normal players. Then just move to the next issue. My ‘corrective’ CD set is essentially a ton of letters and sketches on our logo’d grid pad. It also means I need to truly understand sequencing of the GC so we stay ahead of the subs.

So in a fast track project it seems like you take over the design from the original architect correct?

No. In the vast majority of residential or multifamily, the architect is not engaged to perform CA services. The AOR provided a “builder set of drawings”. There are a variety of reasons we might be brought in. A common scenario is the HOA; in larger developments, there are multiple buildings. The HOA must exist before they can start selling units. Understand; The HOA is responsible for the building shell, common walls, etc. So, seeing how their units are garbage, and the cheap arse way the GC is continuing to build the other buildings, they’ll engage us to provide oversight. Isn’t much different than when we’re working for the investors. I’m sure you or the GC could say you don’t have to do what we say. Best look at the AIA201; you can’t knowingly violate codes and standards. Hence our report stating the code and standard violation. Do it or don’t; if you don’t, then we’re just documenting for my team; litigation support. We’re not dicks about it; we’re often a resource for that architect or GC to help them understand the requirements and work with them on the solution. Afterall, we mostly look at building failures which means we know what doesn’t work and what does as well as where you can find a ton of information to educate your teams and subcontractors. Some developers hire us at the front end because we can keep them out of a lawsuit and can also help them leverage their subs. Ditto for architects who use us as part of a QAQC and code consultant.

Oh should also point out that by the time we’re engaged in CA, you’ve most likely already lost the confidence and trust of your client to protect them.

Yes, they do. This is a good thing because I don’t have to carry thousands per month in insurance costs or shell out 5 digits worth for surgeries.

The types of business situations you're referring to are rather rare. Typically the owner of a firm / company is also it's leader. As for design build project delivery methods they are typically comprised of three parties, the architect, the contractor, and the tenant. The contractor hires the architect to perform the design. The tenant has a contract with the contractor to provide a finished building for a fixed fee. The contractor is paying for both the design fee and the construction costs. The architects client is the contractor, not the tenant.

nearly all of my experience has been on projects which include a separate design architect and AOR. In the broad scale this makes sense because specialists might be the best designers of high-rise office buildings, airport terminals, etc - the design architect provides value to the client through the knowledge of extensive experience and the organizational structure of teams who work efficiently on that type. but in any individual city this type of project only gets built once every ten to twenty years, there is just not enough market to keep experienced architects familiar with every jurisdiction on staff. so having an AOR who is very familiar with local codes and informal requirements is essential. the best AOR's can work collaboratively and add value providing an additional layer of quality control. in some ways separating the design work from the execution can improve the process by letting each party focus on sometimes competing demands for a design. but this only works when the relationship is sincere and collaborative - otherwise it just adds a layer of management and complicates the process.

the clients would ideally prefer a single entity providing full design services but the smarter ones usually recognize that isn't realistic for some projects and plan accordingly.

We've done a few collaborations but these are on multi-year and 300 million + projects where the joint-venture is so large and complex that it benefits both parties. No AoR in this case as it is not permitted in my area but legal, project, design, client, construction responsibilities are split 50/50 as are the fees. Value to the client was the ability to bring the best possible team (manpower + experience) for a project and made our team extra competitive compared to others.

yes, sometimes the terms used are executive architect vs design architect which probably describes better the roles. these are never merely exercises in stamping another office's work. the local partner is fully involved in the process and does meaningful work from early on.