Experience Area A Flashcards
The brief for the project as well as budget and time constraints have been established and assessed.
Why do you need a project brief?
Having a clearly defined project brief is important as it
is an opportunity to make sure
that yourself and the Client have the same expectations for what is going to be
produced. A miscommunication at this early stage could result in abortive work that you
may not be paid for, and a poor start to a working relationship
The brief for the project as well as budget and time constraints have been established and assessed.
Project briefs in smaller/residential practices.
Residential Clients are likely to be inexperienced in construction and may require more guidance through the design and construction process.
The brief / return brief process is helpful to identify if you have been approached by a serious Client. You may softly vet potential Clients by sending through questionnaires about their project with prompts
around site, time frame, budget, and a request for the Client to purchase the property file.
The architect would review this and complete a return brief.
This may indicate the amount of design options that would be created. An example of different design options could be completing a design based on the Client brief vs as design based on budget.
This can weed out Clients who have unrealistic expectations around budget and design.
Some smaller practices may only work with Clients that can afford a certain rate per square meter. If the project goes ahead this questionnaire can form part of the brief.
The brief for the project as well as budget and time constraints have been established and assessed.
Project brief in Teal
As Teal was a project that had previously involved another architect the initial project brief from the Client was to review the work that had already been completed against planning controls and what McP wanted to achieve. This was confirmed through discussions with a development manager at McP and the sending through of the previous architect’s concept design. The agreement for services – to be discussed
further in section A4 – outlined the site, proposed building, budget, and construction programme with critical dates which serves as an agreed project brief.
The brief for the project as well as budget and time constraints have been established and assessed.
What is the brief / return brief process?
Depending on the size and complexity of a project, it can be useful to create a return brief which takes what the Client has asked for and outlines what the architect will achieve. This is an opportunity to clarify what is and isn’t included in the architects services in a written document that can be referred to in the future, rather than relying on what has been discussed in meetings and over the phone. What has been discussed can be open to mis-rembering if there are not formal records of conversations.
The brief for the project as well as budget and time constraints have been established and assessed.
What level of information may you receive in a Client brief?
The information received in Client projects briefs can vary depending on who the Client is. For example, Kainga Ora briefs can be very prescriptive in what needs to be achieved as they are a government department which is open to public scrutiny.
Developer project briefs can be vague, consisting of a phone call to a director in relation to a new site they are thinking of purchasing and they want to know what they could reasonably build on it. Clients who are looser on details may need prompting on important elements to the brief such as project budget, time constraints, potential tenants that are wanting to attract and so on.
The brief for the project as well as budget and time constraints have been established and assessed.
Project timelines - General comment - when and how are these discussed?
Whilst the project brief is being discussed it is important to understand what time-frame the client is wanting to work to, and if this is achievable within resourcing available in your practice.
Some clients may have previous construction experience and understand reasonable time periods to work through processes, whilst other may need help to understand this.
Things to consider are project scale and complexity, how many other consultants will need to be engaged, and what their workload/resourcing constraints may be, how long council are taking to process consents.
The brief for the project as well as budget and time constraints have been established and assessed.
Project time constraints - How were these establish in Teal?
McP had an idea as to when they wanted the project to go to market, but understood that the resource consenting for the property would be challenging due to the planning zone and the size of apartment needed to have a viable project. Project time frames were also contingent on presales for the apartments. Based on this McP knew they wanted to have RC in and processing by Dec 2018 and construction completed by May 2021 (pre covid). This was considered manageable by AMR directors.
General:
What are things you can’t do if you’re not registered?
If you’re not a registered architect, or an LBP you can’t
1) Call yourself an Registered Architect
2) Have access to professional bodies that are associated with beings a registered architect - ie: NZRAB/NZIA (as an Architect or practice member if you are running your own practice)
3) Under take design work for buildings / submit consent documentation with regards to architectural plans if you are not a licensed practitioner / working alongside a registered architect/ licensed practitioner.
General:
What do you do if you complete design up to RC and the client decides to take the design elsewhere? Does Copyright Act 1994 apply?
There are a number of response to this question which depend on a few things. Firstly, what does your contract with the client cover. Did they employ you to complete work up until Building Consent? On site observation? or was in only to RC? If it was only to RC and you still didn’t want the client to take the design elsewhere you would have to review the contract you signed with the client and confirm that there was written assignment where the client had agreed to transfer their copyright ownership to the architect. (ie: D8 Intellectual Property Rights in AAS) If this hasn’t occurred, the client owns the copyright of the design and can take it.
If you had the signed agreement which transferred the copyright ownership to the architect and the drawings included the copyright symbol you can begin legal proceedings against the client if they took the design elsewhere.
I think that this is very common within my experience of working in this field at both Ignite and Ashton Mitchell. KO jobs regular are moved from the design architect to a delivery practice who may be associated with a winning contractors bid.
If you’ve been engaged past the point where the client is wanting to take the project elsewhere you can talk to them about the greater risk/ fee exposure they would be introducing, a potential for comprised quality. If you know the architect they are going to you can’t speak poorly of them. If you haven’t finished the stage you are working on, you could try to complete that. You would also need to follow the termination process in the contract - likely would need this in writing.
General:
How do you engage other consultants and limit your liability with other consultants?
There are 2 general options - firstly the consultants are engaged by the client, and secondly you engaged the consultants directly as sub-consultants.
- Consultants engaged separately is preferable with regards to limiting your liability as you are only responsible for delivering your package of works. If the separate consultant fails to perform then it is on them.
- Sub-consultants. The NZIA recommends against this in practice note 7.102, but acknowleges this may be required for government work. Key things to be aware of is what your Professional Indemnity Insurance covers. As I understand the NZACS has provision of sub-consultant work. You will want a ‘back-to-back’ sub-consultancy agreement with mirrors the terms of the practices consultancy agreement. But before you hire a sub-consultant you need to be sure your PI insurance will cover it. You also need to be careful if you are hiring consultants outside of your discipline and go through a careful selection process.
General:
What types of insurances might you need?
Professional Indemnity Insurance and Public Liability Insurance. (D11 - AAS. AAS also requires that separate consultants have similar insurance terms as the architect).
Professional Indemnity Insurance protects you against financial harm in the event of an error or omission whilst providing service or advice, where those errors or omissions cause a third party to suffer a loss and the law enables the third party, e.g. your client, to seek compensation of a civil nature for that loss from you, as the service professional.
Public liability insurance protects your business in the event of an unforeseen incident. It covers claims made by the public that happen in connection with your business’s day to day activities.
Public liability insurance is often provided with product liability cover, and ensures if needed you can pay compensation for unintended and unexpected personal injury and property damage arising from your products or services.
General:
If you were in practice this time next week, what would your hourly rate be and on what basis?
It would depend on the overall annual salary I was wanting to pay myself. You’ve got to figure out the nett productivity in the year (ie: hours after holidays, stat days, sick day), what your overhead costs are. With that you might get a rate of $80 base line an hour. Then you’ve got to allow for profit. So usually charging out at 2.2 - 2.5 times the baseline.
I’d also talk to others I know in the industry about what they are charging.
The NZIA use to have the guide to architects charges, which 2 practices I’ve worked in have used a sanity check to what they are charging.
How do you negotiate with someone / developer who is trying to beat your fees down?
You have to make a commercial decision. Understand what your bottom line is - have best and worst case scenarios in mind. You could look at reducing your scope of works/ deliverable but you have to be careful not to undermine the profession by doing this, or produce substandard work.
If a developer wanted a commercial project built on a tight time frame, how would you go about planning this?
It depends on if the developer has come to you with something realistic or not. As an Architect you should be able to understand the time required to complete the design, if you’ve had previous experience with that type of project before. You should have an idea about your workloads, and how quickly you could mobilise a team onto the project. And also how long it is generally reasonable to other consultants to complete projects.
With regards to building something on a tight time frame - that really is a conversation to be head with a construction company. They should have a better understanding of where delays are in certain product supply.
Once those initial conversations have occurred you can talk with the client and potentially a contractor about procurement methodologies. A tradition procurement method just isn’t going to be appropriate for a fast track project. Likely at the minimum you’d want early contractor engagement. Potentially a staged consent process so the design and construction time frames can be compressed.
What are you liabilities under AAS?
In the contract - 6 years from date of act or omissions. Tort - 6 years from date damage could be reasonably discovered. 10 years max.
