Is a design project needed in this situation?
When is author’s supervision necessary?
How to choose “your” designer?
What to commission and how much to pay?
How to build relations with him?
People come to the Bureau for advice, a consultation or specific help — those only planning or already “living through” the renovation of an apartment or the construction of a country house. “Smart construction” helps them avoid technical mistakes and unnecessary expenses. With this article we begin the publication of materials on the pressing “design” topic of today.
To the question “what is a design project?”, everyone will answer that it is a document containing graphic and calculation materials. It is clear that when building a country house, a design project is needed. In what composition and volume — that is another question. In practice, most clients limit themselves to purchasing only the passport part of the project, required for carrying out the necessary approvals and the state “registration” of the finished building.
At my seminars devoted to design issues, the author of these lines — your humble servant — responsibly declares from every platform that the Design is the main instrument of Construction. No one will argue with this postulate. However, the slogan is invariably followed by an obligatory addition that, as applied to specific construction projects, the volume and composition of design materials can (and should!) change. For example, according to the formula “necessary (for the client) — sufficient (for the contractor)”. Or, slightly paraphrasing: when building private houses, a design project is needed in a reasonable composition and minimum volume.
In any case, I hasten to reassure the most scrupulous builders: the “thickness” (and, accordingly, the cost) of the project is by no means proportional either to its quality or, the more so, to the quality of the finished building. Moreover, such a thing as an “ideal project” (in composition, volume and quality of solutions) simply does not exist in nature. It is a purely theoretical category.
And what is a design project, as applied, for example, to an apartment renovation? And is it needed at all when renovating an apartment? One can safely assert that it is not needed only when individual elementary linear or surface types of work are to be performed. Although, for example, even when replacing the flooring in the kitchen, wallpaper in a room or sanitary equipment, one cannot do without a pencil, paper and a tape measure, as well as measurements, an elementary sketch and a calculation of material requirements.
A scribbled scrap of paper, with which one then goes to the shop for materials, is also a primitive project done by oneself. How, then, to determine the line beyond which such a homemade project will “not be enough”?
If you doubt the need to engage a designer, I suggest you think about what, exactly, you need from the project? To make the task easier, here is a short test. Please answer the questions:
- Have you planned a replanning of your apartment and, in connection with this, need to collect documents for obtaining МВК permission?
- Is a major renovation of the apartment with technical re-equipment coming up?
- Would you like to know in advance how the elements of the apartment’s interior design will combine, see the colour scheme of the future finishes, and understand the timing and budget of the upcoming renovation?
- Do you want the builders you hire to strictly observe the technologies and complete all planned work with high quality?
- Must you avoid rework, conflicts, work stoppages and missed deadlines?
- Do you need to avoid unnecessary financial costs?
This list could be continued, but if at least one of the answers is already affirmative, then, without a doubt, you need a design project. It is better not to be hypocritical with oneself. After all, you agree with the statement that before starting to shoot a film, one needs to write a script?
Carrying out work without a project often serves as a convenient aid for unscrupulous contractors to “legitimately justify” repeated attempts to increase the agreed estimated cost “as you go along”.
Since a project is needed, a designer is needed too. The designer is a concept as capacious as it is vague. Artists, draughtsmen, constructors, designers and so on, of all stripes and directions, from various fields of activity, ply their trade today in the market of design services, preceding construction and renovation work with their miscellaneous skills. The hierarchy given above is headed, of course, by architects — from “almost architects”, senior students of architecture schools, to elite maestros.
However, far from all of the listed personages are capable of competently performing the task set by the client — of delivering quality design products in the right form and optimal volume. Even fewer among them are those who have sufficient grounds for this — an alloy of knowledge and experience, as well as the lawful right to apply this alloy in practice.
In what follows, to denote “apartment” designers, as opposed to their colleagues specializing in “houses”, we will use the fashionable word “designer”. It is good if the designer has a relevant education and experience, and is also in an active and mature creative age. Taste, talent, diligence and a licence would not hurt either. The designer’s gender is of little importance, although, other things being equal, women are more “artists” and less “technicians”, while men, rather, the other way round.
The main thing is to deal with a true professional — a thinking, creative specialist and not a craftsman who has picked up special terms at two-week courses. Fortunately, such courses training “designers” operate without interruption. Available monitoring data for this segment of the contracting market assert that for every one “construction” designer with a relevant education there are a dozen “hat-and-suit” or even “airplane” ones. Telling them apart and correctly choosing “your own” is the client’s art, a matter of his intuition and responsibility.
So, the choice of a designer. Where to begin? Here is a simple scheme of a design tender. Immediately discard the options of choosing “by cheapness” and “by acquaintance”. In the end, of course, the chosen candidate may turn out to be inexpensive or may be known to your friends. But in the general case, one must not begin communication with potential performers with a discussion of “the money question” or with an attempt to gain some illusory preferences from acquaintance with a previous client.
If we are talking not about the simplest situations but about a claim to a certain exclusivity, you need to call three to five candidates, and then meet two or three of them who seem suitable at first impression. This alone gives invaluable experience. Every new meeting enriches the client’s artistic-technical potential, so every subsequent conversation is always more thorough.
Looking at the candidates’ previous creations, assessing their “artistic-graphic” manner, professionalism and financial demands, also pay attention to the style of communication of each designer with the client. This is not an unimportant aspect. After seeing the third designer, taking into account the accumulated information, you can return to the first one or continue the search.
Besides professionalism (knowledge, experience, positive construction practice, a clear head, a quick hand, reliability-punctuality and so on), “your” designer must meet two more conditions. First, full mutual understanding with him is quickly achieved, and second, he is not an obvious “businessman at the drawing board” — for example, he does not make his financial demands depend on the make of the client’s car.
One of the main tests for a private client is the question: can the respected candidate turn his high thoughts and beautiful sketches into working drawings? Here it is only important to get an answer; the drawings themselves need not be done at all, unless the situation requires it. Another test question — can he “work with his hands”? — would not hurt either. The fact is that with the modern level of applied graphic computer programs, any schoolchild can produce a dozen beautiful pictures. True, for a serious renovation-and-construction complex there will be precious little practical use in them.
Using the detailed initial data, together with each potential performer draw up a preliminary design brief. Wait for their commercial proposals. This peculiar tender will pay back the 2–3 days spent on it many times over.
To the question addressed to designers about the cost of their services, you will most often hear a figure implying payment for a certain “package” — a complete set of the design products issued (sold). There are numerous variants of what can be included in this package. On the other hand, the list of design products necessary for a given object for a particular client is purely individual and depends on the goal pursued by the client.
In current practice, the design brief is prepared by the designer himself, taking into account the initial data submitted by the client. At times he tries to foist on the client some of his own ready-made developments or a very tempting bonus — author’s supervision. Meanwhile, the decision on the need for author’s supervision (not to be confused with the client’s technical supervision and the contractor’s own control) over the construction or renovation is made only by the client himself, after the project is completed and agreed with the performer of the upcoming work. This will be mentioned below.
In any case, when negotiating with designers about the cost of services, one should push them from the “integral” pricing method to the “differential” one, which is more flexible. That is, ask them to “announce the entire list, please”, line by line, with rates for each position, and then apply the method of cutting off those that are not relevant to your situation.
After you are provided with a detailed brief in the form of the entire list of design products and services (like a menu in a restaurant, for example: floor plan — 3 roubles, ceiling plan — 2 roubles, wall developments — 4 roubles, and so on), you need to discuss the price for this “everything”. And only then can you proceed to “trimming”, discarding everything you do not need. By building the negotiation tactics this way, you will gain up to 20% off the initially quoted price for the very same thing. The whole point is that pricing in the design sphere is inversely proportional to construction, where the price for a complex is always less than the sum of the costs of its components.
One should immediately abandon bulk in favour of quality: the drawings must carry maximum information at minimum volume. For example, in most cases plans of partitions, floors, ceilings, furniture arrangement and so on can be combined on a single sheet. And wall developments of auxiliary rooms (for example, the hallway, the utility room, the toilet and so on) can be abandoned altogether. After all, extra sheets and drawings are needed mostly by the designer himself (to sell to you). In this sense, no dependence of the final quality on the sum laid out by the clients, beyond the reasonable price for the project, has been discovered.
Moreover, the experience of visiting countless private construction sites has shown that very often many drawings from the composition of very expensive projects, in the course of the works, were not even opened once by the builders, remaining virginally — ideally white and untattered. It is always a pity to waste money. So one must remember that the cost of a dummy project is usually justified precisely by its thickness (number of sheets) and excessively colourful design.
Conducting negotiations with designers of different styles and material demands, bearing in mind the well-known “whetstone” of price-quality, reducing to a reasonable minimum the volume of design products you need, as a result you will get a very real price. Then, together with the chosen designer, on the basis of the available initial data, a design brief is drawn up, the composition and volume of design products are agreed, the cost of works is determined, and a design contract is concluded.
Important points: do not emasculate your brief (and, accordingly, the future design solutions and the very “nature”) and do not get involved with a dilettante. This is caused by the client’s striving to save on everything at any cost. This is how it often turns out with so-called “home” design, when only the layout and the finish surfaces of floors, walls and ceilings are meant.
And therefore they do not provide for structural features, regulatory requirements, all the underlying, non-obvious but necessary technological layers, the accompanying types and volumes of work. Savings in materials, labour and money, it would seem, are there. However, the implementation of such “projects” will quickly disprove their authors’ ideas about quality and savings.
So, the project is a document in which all key parameters of the upcoming home construction are coordinated and optimized. The more fully and thoroughly the project takes into account the decisions made, the better, naturally. But, alas — the more expensive.
What, then, goes into the optimal composition of a project? Unfortunately, a universal composition of the project for all possible situations does not exist. For example, the notorious design project, besides the layout, may contain only a sketch solution of the interiors. For carrying out an apartment renovation this is sometimes sufficient. To “weigh it down” with working drawings and engineering sections, turning it into a full-fledged project, is in most cases inexpedient.
Although as sources of additional information it may also include those positions that are more characteristic of a house construction project. Such as, for example, plans of rooms with furniture arrangement, wall developments, all kinds of sections and views, lighting and colour solutions, plans of partitions, floors and ceilings, diagrams of electrical and plumbing wiring, working drawings of individual nodes and technological “layer cakes”, a schedule of finishes, room explications, specifications for materials, products and equipment, and so on.
So, the project can vary in composition, volume, quality and, accordingly, price. It is important that the “artist’s” fancies should not subsequently lead the contractor into technical wilderness, while also emptying your pocket. A “raw” project, expressed in weak solutions, shortcomings and inconsistencies, lays the groundwork for future cost escalation, so the choice of a “personal” designer (and, for house design, an architect) must be approached quite seriously.
We have found out that the project gives us an understanding of what and how is to be done, in what sequence, what and how much to buy. What else is the project needed for?
So that the client can estimate the budget of his construction (consisting of the main items: costs for the upcoming works and services connected with their provision, as well as for consumables and finishing materials, products and equipment) and, while it is not too late, make certain corrections, fitting the upcoming expenses into his financial possibilities.
Today a pernicious phenomenon is very widespread, when the designer offers the client a comprehensive service: design and subsequent management of the work of “his” (his “own”?!) brigade. A “package” also foists author’s supervision on the client. At first glance, in terms of the sum of upcoming costs for the client this looks attractive. However, practice asserts the opposite: this union is unnatural. Such a surrogate of an illegitimate construction company, operating in conditions of absence of technical pressure and objective control, does great harm to the cause.
Do not give in to the illusion of seemingly affordable cheapness. Do not allow yourself to be driven into the “shadow” when it concerns the arrangement of your own dwelling. It always ends up costing more. After all, we are talking not only about obtaining a product of full quality (maximally delaying the need for repeat renovations), but also about the efficiency of capitalizing the funds spent in the form of multiplying the market price of one’s real estate. Unfortunately, with the approach mentioned above, clients pay for one and a half apartment renovations (or house constructions) instead of one.
This is expressed in the fact that when such variants are implemented, poor-quality projects are “plastered over” with equally poor-quality work, leading to unfinished items and hidden defects, and subsequently — to rework, repeat renovations and a sharp increase in costs. A sinister chain is formed, woven from ignorance, dilettantism and outright deceit.
Not interested in saving the client’s money, not possessing the nuances of practical construction, having built into the project a mass of inaccuracies and inconsistencies, such “designers” try to fix them already in the process of the works themselves. This often happens within the framework of author’s supervision. With the silent consent of the ignorant client and for his own money, the “pro” experiments, raising his qualification. The height of cynicism.
The fact is that any trifle missed, for example, in the design brief, not accounted for in the project, skipped in the execution of the works, grows into a snowball of problems (read: increases the initial estimated cost) arising from the necessity of rework, violation of technologies and changes in the overall organization of the works.
Particularly absurd looks the very widespread situation when author’s supervision is used to replace regulatory technical supervision. The client should be alerted by the fact that the designer wants to do someone else’s job for his, the client’s, money. In a matter requiring obligatory extensive special engineering knowledge and experience, the participation of dilettantes leads to sad consequences: great losses of time, health and, naturally, money.
After the design, coordination and approval of the project, at the construction site already under way, the “number” of the designer (by functional status) is only the fourth — after the client, the contractor and the technical supervision engineer (a specialist helping the client in conducting the construction, in accordance with the right of ст. 749 ГК РФ; more on this in another article).
By the way, an experienced designer will never tie himself either to an uncharacteristic professional function or to an unproven contractor. A professional values his name and his brainchild — the object. He does not wish to allow any claims against it.
Transferring the decision-making process to the construction site (introducing a subjective factor) is categorically inadmissible! Decisions “as you go along” are provoked in performers by the layman playing the role of the client, who “saved” on the quality of the project and engineering or ignored them altogether out of ignorance.
As a matter of fact, author’s supervision, so hotly loved by the design brotherhood, is a delicate thing. Its conduct must be justified, not imposed. In certain difficult situations, for the successful implementation and optimal combination of the adopted design solutions, the supervision of the project author is necessary. Competent curating of the construction by the designer and a light preemptive correction of the work being done prevent possible deviations from the idea and stop the increase of the client’s costs “as you go along”.
Unfortunately, quite often author’s supervision is imposed on consumers as a paid package service in completely ordinary, simple situations. The so-called “junior designers” are especially guilty of this. In these cases supervision turns into an instrument of “financial milking” of the client. Having issued a “lightened” (not in cost but in quality of solutions) project, its author inspects (far from free of charge) the object and fixes his own lapses, “profoundly dragging” ever new volumes of work to the surface.
Author’s supervision is useful if a civilized atmosphere on the site contributes to it. It is an instrument one must know how to use. A good architect (or designer) is interested in the precise realization of his creative ideas (previously authorized by the client). Unfortunately, in practice it also happens otherwise: because of ill-considered decisions, the designer runs into so-called “mismatches”. In this case he either “closes his eyes” to them each time, or stops the construction that has gained momentum and fixes the flaws made in the design, forcing the contractors (also not for free) to perform additional works.
Be on your guard if your designer insists on author’s supervision at the very first meeting. In the general case, properly speaking, he can only offer this service as a possible one. First, including author’s supervision in the list of the designer’s (or architect’s) services is the prerogative of the client. And besides, at the negotiation stage this question is not relevant at all. One can return to it after choosing the contractor, agreeing the project with him and discussing the estimated cost. It is precisely at that moment that one can understand how deeply the performer has “gotten into” the ideology of the project and whether there is a need for the works to be accompanied by its “artistic director”.
Let us conclude that clients who choose knowingly cheap designers (who are inexpensive also because they recognize the absence of purely construction knowledge and practical experience, so that not all solutions and their consequences are foreseen in their drawings and calculations) doom themselves to overpayment.
Speaking of the prices established in the market of design services, I will note the following. With rare exceptions, design support for the construction and renovation of private (low-rise) houses and the major renovation of most apartments is not such a complex and laborious process for professionals. Especially for those who “willingly run in circles” their former (and often other people’s) creative developments.
Therefore, the rates of some venerable architects, reaching a hundred dollars per square meter of the total area of the object, cause surprise. The maestros pull the “price blanket” heavily towards themselves. Well, apparently there is still demand for “big” names. But what is striking is something else: under these prices pull up the so-called “lightened” designers — yesterday’s and today’s students, unburdened by engineering-construction and any experience at all.
However, the prices of these categories are more than offset by the tens of thousands of quite cheap dilettantes, whose army multiplies every day. To be fair, let us note that these “designers” simply collect money from clients, giving nothing worthwhile in return.
My opinion is that the price (more precisely, the specific rate) for a complete, quality project in the reconstruction of apartments (not to be confused with their renovation, for which a project costs a third as much) should not exceed the mark of 20 у.е./м2. Exceeding this level is possible in very rare cases, on complex and unique objects with deeper elaboration of exclusive solutions and the associated increase in the volume of design products. But this, too, should happen only at the initiative of the clients.
Naturally, everything set forth above is useful to bear in mind when building a country house too. The specific rates for a complete and quality INDIVIDUAL (not to be confused with a standard one!) project for house construction only begin at the mark of 20 у.е./м2. The exact price depends on the composition and volume of design materials, the thoroughness of their elaboration and a number of other factors, among which are the potential of the architect’s creative possibilities and the level of his financial pretensions. The latter, of course, should be justified not by the performer’s self-esteem but by the so-called professionalism coefficient.
A sketch design (which is sometimes passed off as a complete one) can be valued at, at most, a third of the sums indicated above. However, the market is an open thing, and everyone has the right to buy and sell at their own price. For clients, it is important to know what lies behind a given price. A standard set, alas, does not exist.
Obvious cheapness of an apartment renovation or house construction, as a factor, is a sign of its inferiority, of the client’s unpreparedness, of the designer’s or contractor’s unprofessionalism. If the consumer is not financially ready for his construction, it is better not to start it at all. But saving on the project is also unwise, although it is not easy for the ordinary consumer to determine the line where “necessary and sufficient” ends.
Most of the abandoned or “frozen” suburban construction sites suffocated, among other things, because the construction of houses was carried out according to ersatz projects — standard or “re-ground” for individual ones — which are briskly traded over the Internet. It is very upsetting for people overpaying for these “reprints”. For example, clients overpay threefold when they buy, for 500 bucks, nothing more than a photocopy of the passport part of a standard project, consisting of floor plans and sections. Of course, this data is sufficient for carrying out approvals, construction and registration of the house. But throwing away “extra” money for something that costs very little is, to say the least, unwise.
Those who, in addition, acquire for the same sum the remaining part of the project offered “to the passport” (the working drawings) “get caught for money” even more. First, a “set of photocopies” is not worth this money; second, it adds little reason to the overall “intellect” of the construction, as most often it is a certain “template” developed (by someone, but not by the sellers of projects themselves) according to old norms for public and residential buildings, oriented at yesterday’s technologies, oversaturated with errors and material-intensive solutions. The latter is a clear disregard for the client’s pocket.
The volume of this article, set by the editorial board, does not allow all aspects of the “design” topic to be revealed, not to mention the nuances. Well, let us continue what we have begun in future publications. Private construction is a complex complex consisting of technical, organizational, technological, material, social, financial and other factors. Deviation from the fairway set by the optimal algorithm for solving a particular renovation or construction programme is fraught with conflicts and overspending of the client’s funds. In general, to start implementing the intended construction undertaking unprepared — that is, having only desire and funds — is the height of imprudence.
There is, of course, no standard template that “combs” all small constructions into one pattern. However, knowledge of the “underwater rocks” and bottlenecks will allow clients to avoid numerous typical mistakes that migrate from site to site and have their financial equivalent. Practice has shown that those who continue along the path of apparent, at first glance, cheapness later pay long and cruelly for their mistakes. One’s own construction is not the place where one can be cunning, for the cunning one deceives himself.
