We can help you wherever you are

Working with a non local architect

The idea of offering a service to people who need architectural services for small projects but are not in our local area occurred to me some time ago. We were helping my partner’s brother with a room addition and remodel for a home he just purchased. The home is on the East coast of Canada and we were in Southern California at the time. The project worked out so well that decided it must be a good service to offer to others.

Here’s how it worked. The client, in this case a family member, took pictures of his house. He made a rough sketch with dimensions that he took himself. Then he told us what he wanted to add to the house, the problems with the house as it existed and some ideas he had for changes. Now, my partner and I have a combined experience working with clients in all areas of housing of close to 50 years, so it’s very easy for us to understand the needs of a client. It’s also easy to determine how to solve problems, revise the plan of a home and make additions. So in this case we quickly made two or three sketches of possible plans and a list of ideas. These were emailed to the client. He then sent back to us his own ideas and some preliminary decisions about which of our ideas he liked the best. From this we were able to make a semi final plan sketch. This again was emailed to the client, then sent back his final comments. From these revised sketches we prepared a simple set of construction drawings. The drawings were sent back to the client who toke the to a few local contractors to get preliminary bids. At the same time he was able to find a local structural engineer to finalize the drawings for local codes and get a building permit.

You might be asking yourself what is the advantages in doing a project this way. There are many. In this case of course working with a close relative lent a large amount of confidence to the client in knowing that the project would be done well. But for all clients, the ability to hire an architect with a large amount of experience and a good reputation can be very costly and time consuming. By working over the internet and minimizing the time we have to spend on a project our fees can be minimized while the client at the same time has the advantage of the services of a highly qualified professional. Once the design is finalized the client can use the services of less qualified and therefore less expensive locals to finish the job and get the required permits. In fact many times one can go directly to the contractor/builder with a finalized design and he can take it from there.

There are other alternatives as well. For example one may have some ideas or a sketch of what one wants to add to ones home. An experienced architect can take that sketch and in a short time revise it and or point out the problems with it. This could be a tremendous time savings and a potential prevention of future problems. Using the internet we can also provide that service in an economical way. For a fixed fee or hourly charges we can take the plan ideas of the client improve them, or determine that they are fine as is giving the client confidence to proceed and take the sketches to a local drafting service for final drawings.

The truth of the matter is the legally in most areas plans for room additions and even whole houses do not have to be prepared by a licensed architect. There are many drafting services offering this service and much lower fees than the architect can charge. But going directly to these services is dangerous as far as the final result of the design is concerned. There is much that goes into the design of a home that can only be done properly by a true professional. So in most cases the design of a complete new home should be done by an experienced and licensed architect. But what about the room addition or remodel? In many if not most cases the architects with the proper amount of experience are too busy for such little projects or too expensive. That’s were we think this service of helping the client with their small projects over the internet and getting their ideas into a format that can then be taken on by a local drafting service or engineer comes in.