60k for two storey extension creating 4th bedroom

teneighty

I realise I am wasting my time and you always defend architects and their high fees and poor service. I would not expect it to be any other way.

The purpose of my post is to give a balanced view to those who read these forums or find them through Google searches and let people make up their own mind. Hopefully I can get the message across that for most domestic projects a registered architect is complete overkill. There are qualified architectural design professionals out their with membership of professional organisations that are fully regulated and controlled and have full professional indemnity insurance who provide a far superior service at a fraction of the cost. There are even competent professionals who can provide perfectly adequate drawings for a domestic extension but without the insurance and professional institution protection that are cheaper still.

My message is if you employ a "registered architect" for residential schemes then expect to need very deep pockets to pay their outrageous fees and even deeper pockets to build their personal vanity project. Oh, and expect poor standards of service as highlighted by the numerous posts by disgruntled clients on here. Lets be honest, your average architect wants to be designing office blocks, glamorous hotels and art galleries not poxy little domestic extensions. I think that is why they have lost touch with domestic building construction techniques and building costs and the new homes you see on Grand Designs look like public libraries or car showrooms.

System

teneighty wrote: »

I realise I am wasting my time and you always defend architects and their high fees and poor service. I would not expect it to be any other way.

The purpose of my post is to give a balanced view to those who read these forums or find them through Google searches and let people make up their own mind. Hopefully I can get the message across that for most domestic projects a registered architect is complete overkill. There are qualified architectural design professionals out their with membership of professional organisations that are fully regulated and controlled and have full professional indemnity insurance who provide a far superior service at a fraction of the cost. There are even competent professionals who can provide perfectly adequate drawings for a domestic extension but without the insurance and professional institution protection that are cheaper still.

My message is if you employ a "registered architect" for residential schemes then expect to need very deep pockets to pay their outrageous fees and even deeper pockets to build their personal vanity project. Oh, and expect poor standards of service as highlighted by the numerous posts by disgruntled clients on here. Lets be honest, your average architect wants to be designing office blocks, glamorous hotels and art galleries not poxy little domestic extensions. I think that is why they have lost touch with domestic building construction techniques and building costs and the new homes you see on Grand Designs look like public libraries or car showrooms.

It was a fairly simple question to ask you to back up your view that the fee should have been 1500 quid.
Have you ever had experience of building procurement in the Scottish system?
It's easy to find complaints about any product/profession/trade on the internet, just as easy to find misinformed opinions that are not backed up by anything - I was trying to ask the op pertinent questions to try and understand what has happened in their project before making any baseless sweeping generalisations, but on you go, knock yourself out.
Plucking a figure out of the air and saying all registered architects are hipsters, egomaniacs and only interested in commercial projects who charge huge fees isn't really helpful to helpful, it's like listening to a ukip politician!