Well – actually, you probably don’t “need” an architect. I good majority of cities and towns do not require drawings for permit review for a residential project to be stamped or prepared by a registered architect, (with some exceptions once the size of the house exceeds set limits). Anyone who knows what information the typical town building inspector is looking for on a set of drawings, and knows how to get the information across legibly on paper, can do this process themselves. Another avenue would be to hire someone skilled in drafting and house design that is not a registered architect and let them provide the design and drawings.
There are a good many small house additions that I have worked on that fall into the category of “you don’t really need an architect for this”. This type of project, for example, would be a project consisting of a couple wanting a simple 12 x 18 family room addition of the rear of their house – nothing fancy, nothing complicated, a simple gable roof, no unique roof lines to match up to or fight with, the client already know exactly where they want it off the house, etc.. Any competent builder can put it together using standard, traditional building practices, and any competent draftsman can put together the drawings for town permit review. If you have a tight budget, which most my clients do, and your just coming to grips with what construction actually costs, you realize quickly that the more places you can save the better.
Design and permit drawings are usually the first “big” number clients hear regarding any planned project, as the design process and the permit drawings are usually the first thing needed to get the process going. So often times, I will have clients (or potential clients), balk at a fee proposal because they’ve found someone else who offered to do it for less that half my quote. Usually, I wish them well and good luck, and leave them with a quick reminder that things will likely go just fine, but to be careful – because when they don’t go fine, they usually don’t go fine– real bad. I have been practicing on my own now for only 5 years, and have already, twice, run into past could-have-been clients calling me back a year or two later regretting their decision to not hire me (or an architect) to do their “simple” addition drawings. Both times, (which I find humorous), they were calling first and foremost, to give me a phone number of a friend of theirs as a referral, even having never actually obtained my services themselves, and secondly to express their regret at their decision to go with a cheaper draftsperson for their drawings.
Why, do you think, I get these calls? Well, the simple truth is that almost every project, no matter the size, has its own set of challenges, its own unique situations that can create chaos if not carefully thought thru, and planned. This is why you need an architect. These little unique situations are not just annoying and time consuming; they are also, usually, expensive. The list of things that can go wrong with the simplest of additions is endless; I have seen situations where roof trusses were ordered, fabricated, and delivered to jobsite just to find that they did not match the existing roof slope that they where intended to align with; I have seen foundations poured without any window openings, and need to be saw-cut out after the fact upon a city inspection; I have seen one misplaced dimension on a drawing result in 50 prefabricated roof trusses prefabricated two feet too short, two weeks to late to catch it; I recall a story of a 3 story stair being designed and installed up to a livable attic area not equipped with a dormer in the roof to allow the headroom for one to actually use the stair to that level; windows installed in walls directly in front of stair runners; … the list goes on…
Of course, even architects are blindsided at times by unforeseen conditions, but the benefit of having an experienced eye reviewing, and developing the project is that most of the “little things” get picked up and dealt with before the problem is built and then becomes a big (expensive) problem. These mistakes mentioned in the previous paragraph are not inexpensive to fix – these are all thousands-of-dollar problems. Granted, mistakes happen – to everyone. No set of drawings is ever perfect, but the goal is to keep the imperfections to minor things, not major, expensive, structural system oversights.
An architect will also benefit a client on a small project by suggesting options. There are always options to any design that may have not seemed obvious to a client at first glance. An architect is trained to find these options, often times resulting in a better final product or a project that fulfills all of the clients needs for considerably less cost. You, as a client, are not likely to get this level of expertise unless you work with an architect. If you hire someone for a few hundred dollars, you’re not going to get anyone actually thinking about your project – no thought put into possibilities, changes, improvements, cost savings, etc. Your draftsperson will be working towards a budget, and you will likely only get a set of drawings showing the one option you had originally come up with, as there will be no time in the budget for considering options. I’ve seen the results before, after construction, (after its too late to change) (and after spending 80,000 dollars) – where an addition is added to a house and the clients realize quickly, after living with it for only a few months, that some things just aren’t working as expected, the layout could have been better, or they would have done it differently if they had realized one thing or another.
