Understanding the stages, the drawings, the approvals and the fees before having to make a decision about any of them.
You are about to spend more on this than on anything except possibly the house itself, and you have never done it before. That is not an unusual position. It is the normal one — almost nobody renovates twice.
What makes it uncomfortable is not the money. It is being asked to approve things in a vocabulary you were never given. Prime cost, provisional sum, setback, site cover, DA, BA, RFI. The people using those words are not showing off. They have simply forgotten that it is not ordinary English. The effect is the same either way: you nod, the decision gets made, and you find out what it meant later.
So this is the shape of the thing. Five stages and one before them, what happens in each, what you have at the end of it, roughly what it costs and roughly how long it takes. Use it with me or with someone else. A well-aimed question to another architect is worth more to you than a vague one to me.
The stages are separable. Every one you understand properly is a stage you could choose to buy less of.
Building is one of the largest purchases most people ever make and one of the very few they make without prior experience. The vocabulary alone — DA, BA, RFI, prime cost, provisional sum — excludes people from decisions they are paying for. An informed client makes faster and better decisions, which measurably reduces the cost of the project.
The end of feeling stupid. Not being the only person in the room who doesn't know what a setback is. Confidence here converts directly into decisiveness later, and decisiveness is what keeps a project on programme.
You learn the vocabulary by being caught out by it — usually at the moment a decision with real money attached is already on the table. Every question feels like an admission, so the questions don't get asked and the assumptions go unchecked.
This guide is the answer to that, and it is yours to keep. Use it with me or with someone else — I would rather you asked a good question of another architect than a vague one of me. I am not holding the vocabulary back to keep you dependent on me. DA, BA, RFI, prime cost, provisional sum: none of it is difficult once somebody says it in plain language, and you make faster, better decisions once you have it.
Less drawing than you would expect. The drawings are the visible output — most of the work is the thinking that produces them and the coordination that keeps them true. In practice it is five things. Working out what you are actually asking for. Designing to the site rather than to a catalogue. Documenting it so a builder can price and build it without inventing anything. Coordinating the engineer, surveyor, planner, energy assessor and certifier so their work still agrees with itself. And staying involved on site while several hundred small decisions get made. The Institute's standard agreement lists those as separate services, which means you can buy some and not others.
Broadly the same everywhere, with slightly different names. Pre-design, where the existing house is measured and the planning rules checked. Concept design, where the shape of the thing is decided. Design development, where it is resolved and, if a Development Application is needed, lodged. Construction documentation, the full drawing set and specification a builder prices from. Then contractor selection, and contract administration during the build. The Institute's Client and Architect Agreement uses those headings with a tick box beside each line, which is the useful part to know — the scope is explicitly negotiable rather than a fixed package.
Longer than the drawing time suggests, every time. On my projects: first conversation to a design you are happy with, three to four months. Design to approvals lodged, one to two more. If a Development Application is required, council assessment is commonly two to four months. Construction drawings and builder pricing, three to four. Signing a builder and starting, one to three. Then six to twelve months of building. That is roughly twelve to eighteen months from the first phone call to the first day on site, and two years or more to moving back in. If you have a fixed date, say so at the first meeting.
Stage by stage is the arrangement I would argue for, and it is common. Each stage is quoted before it begins and invoiced when it is done, and you are not committed to the next one until you have seen its price. The Institute notes that an architect engaged for a whole project typically invoices about a third of the fee across design, a third around tender, and the balance during and after construction. The proportion that surprises people is where the fee actually sits — not in the interesting design stages but in construction documentation, which on my projects is about a third of the total on its own.
Usually not, and this catches people. Under the Institute's standard agreement the architect retains copyright and you are granted a licence to use the design for that project on that site. It is a licence, not a transfer, and in the standard wording it can be suspended while an invoice is overdue. That is not a trap, but it is worth reading the clause before you sign rather than meeting it during a disagreement. If you want broader rights — to reuse the design elsewhere, or to take the documents to another practice — ask for that in writing at the start, while it is still an easy conversation.
If you would rather start small, the First Sketch Session is two hours at your place. You keep the sketches, and there is no obligation afterwards.