Experience on offer

We have bought a small plot of land in East Bristol and will be drawing up a planning application as soon as the legals have gone through (expected in a few weeks). When this happens there will be an opportunity for a person to gain around a week of unpaid experience in early September. We will be:

Carrying out a measured survey of the plot
Converting the survey to CAD drawings
Designing a scheme for planning
(This scheme will address planning concerns but also profitability)
Producing a glitzy planning application to give the design the best chance of gaining approval

The person offering their help should be available at the start of September and should have their own laptop with a CAD programme and should be experienced and competent with graphic design packages: Photoshop, InDesign as well as 3d cad packages (especially Sketchup).

Please email CV and samples of work (planning application type photomontages and written documents) to contact@mlgarchitect.com. Please also confirm availability. You will be expected to travel to our offices in BS4 under your own steam. This is easy from Temple Meads or the centre.

Priority given to local students.

Challenge me!

"London mayor Boris Johnson has launched a database containing all the Greater London Authority land assets.

Johnson said . . . . I want developers to . . . . bombard us with great ideas on how they can transform these unused pockets of land into exciting new places to live."

This has set me thinking... what sites are there in our patch that need redeveloping? I could look at London's list and do a bit of speculative work there but, realistically, I don't know the context: To bring something new to the scene you need to put some serious legwork into researching the area. I know my region pretty well - I've worked on projects all over from Weston to Gloucester, Swansea to Bracknell.

What I'm offering is this - show me a difficult site: weirdly shaped, some crazy old derelict listed building, really tiny, whatever. Let's get together and brainstorm something amazing. No charge; just for the challenge of it.

Contact details on bottom menu bar.

Wagamama and acoustics

Just sitting in Clifton Wagamama, absolutely deafened by the clatter and general hub-bub in the room. The food's ok but I am feeling seriously isolated from the rest of my party opposite. Design is for all the senses - not just the visual.

Update

Long time no post. It's been a long and busy year with a lot of work completed, hence the lack of significant updates to the site. We're working on bringing the four completed projects online and also on updating the look of the site.

It's strange to think MLGA has been around for two years now... in that time we've done close to £500k value of work and it's showing no signs of stopping. We've realised however that there are more and less profitable sides to the business and have decided to focus on residential design and property development. There simply isn't time to properly manage building sites as a builder so we will be only offering a design and contract management service from here on.

We have secured cash funding for our own developments and are in the process of purchasing a couple of development projects for ourselves. We would also be interested in joint venturing (you put in the site, we put in the cost of the build) with anyone with a site with potential for profitable development. Being direct about this, unless the completed value of residential development in the area is over £220/sqft (ie £220,000 for a smallish 3 bedroom house), it is unlikely to be of interest. We are also interested in commercial development and are actively looking for a D1 site for a small medical centre. The purchase price for this needs to be in the region of £100k.

If you aren't sure whether your site fits the bill, please get in touch anyway.

Students!

Or how I think you can get a job...
I get on average three cv's through from graduates looking for a part 1 or 2 placement. Most are basically spamming architects in Bristol, looking for work. Some have bothered to look at my website and know the scale of work I am involved in. Either way, I don't need any employees at this point and when I do need a little bit of drawing help, I have an address book of people to contact.

The advice I give to students is always the same:
Realistically employers don't need part 1 students to design much so however cool your design ability is, you aren't going to get a job based on it - you will however get a job through demonstrating that you can walk into the job and be useful from day 1 (you can use CAD and understand how buildings are put together). An appreciation of what the project leader is trying to achieve is important but a student is a cost to an employer unless they can shift some of the workload. That workload is generally edge of slab 1:10 details and the like. We don't need Zaha Hadid, we need technicians. Along the way you will get design experience and get to see the building procurement process in action (client, contractor, planners, building regs etc) but that is for your benefit, not the employer's. If you happen to be competent to deal with any of it, then so much the better.

Different ways to get something built

Recently a friend in Cheshire sent me this:


"Hi Marc,
Very long time since we said hello! I hope you are well.
Michele and I are looking to do some pretty substantial work to our house in Cheshire and we think we need an architect.
Our house in currently a standard 3 bed semi with a small, traditional kithen. We'd like a 4th bedroom, larger kitchen / family room and a proper garage so it's a pretty big project for us.
Can you give me any advice on the best way for us to find a good, honest architect in the area? Alternatively, would you be interested in working in Cheshire? I appreciate it's a long way from Bristol so thought you might not be interested but you never know!
I hope all is well with you and your family.
Take care,
Chris"

I wrote a long email back but here are the bulletpoints:

There are four ways to get something built.

1. Get drawings done by an ARB-registered architect or a BIAT registered technician. There are other "plan-drawing" services available but with no qualifications how do you know the person doing the drawings isn't a used-car salesman with a CAD programme?

2a. Get drawings done AND have an architect act as your representative through the build with a JCT contract between you and the builder.

2b. As 2 but have the architect as a project manager who will run tradesmen who are working directly for you.

3. Have the whole thing done by a design and build contractor. 

Here are the main risks that go with each route:

1. Once the project is on-site you have no professional support should something go wrong between you and your builder. Unless you are in construction yourself, you may not know if a "sharp" builder is cutting corners or looking for extra money not due.

2a&b. How do you know if you have a good architect? Most house projects are small potatoes for anything bigger than a one-man-band and the jobs get delegated to the most junior member of staff, often a student.

3. With a d&b company, you need to be confident that the price you are quoted includes everything you want. Also, make sure the company uses qualified architects or technicians to do the design work - if they don't, the builder might build something that doesn't work and no-one will notice until the job is complete and all the money paid.


How to avoid the risks for each option:
1. Have a builder that you really really trust. Don't just base this on one job for a friend; it might have been a fluke. Speak to their last three clients. Be realistic though - not all clients are angels either!
2a&b. The same as for the builder - find someone with a good record. Make sure that their record is for the role you actually want them to take on. In other words, don't get an office bod to try and manage a site. Expect more of them than you would a builder - there should be contracts and formal communication between you. I'd stick to one-man-bands for domestic work unless you can find a practice who don't do anything else. If you do go with a practice, make sure you only deal with the person actually doing the work. 
3. Personally (and I'm biased), I'd want a design and build company to be led by the architect, not by a builder with a tame architect working for them. Architects are like doctors and lawyers - we can be struck off. For this reason we don't cut corners. If we are working for someone else we don't have full knowledge of what is going on.


In the end I told my friend to find a local architect - using me might get him a cool design but there is so much more to do to get it built successfully.

Update on progress

Spike Island due for completion is around 6 weeks. Knowle in about the same. Montpelier job completes tomorrow.

Runswick starts next month. Henleaze as well.

Going to be looking for more chippies soon - not fully kitted up types, more like recently qualified with own transport and the basic tools.

The difference between the law and life

Most of my designs do not need planning permission - google "permitted development" and you will see why. For the typical rear extension (not in a conservation area, not to a listed building...) this means 3m deep and one storey high. There's a few other constraints but these are the main ones. If you comply with these, you can build without having to apply for planning. But consider your neighbours - if they have a window which will be shaded by your new one storey high extension they might be very upset and you may find your lovely new home is tainted by the simmering resentment over the boundary... Then again, they might not - the permitted development rules aren't that lenient and a tall set of conifers or a 6ft fence on a sloping plot might have the same effect.

The reality beyond permitted development is that you should talk to your neighbours before you ruin your relationship with them.

And then go ahead and do it anyway!

Just kidding.

Here comes Xmas!

So, leading up to Xmas we have two sites on the go: One a total reworking of a Knowle house - from the front little will change; some landscaping and a black brick, black grout planter. From the rear; a dormer roof loft conversion, a huge increase in glazing, external insulation and a kitchen extension that addresses a 5ft difference in floor level between the inside and the garden by extending downwards and sideways to create a full-width open plan diner which is both low enough to avoid blocking light to the middle room and at the same time 4+m (14ft) high. It's hard to explain so see pictures below.

The other site in Spike Island (you may have seen our little banner...) is a maintenance-type refurbishment of a large semi-detached house. I say maintenance because we aren't gutting it (much), we are just fixing the stuff that needs fixing and making a few improvements. The improvements mean moving bathrooms to the front of the house so that the rear (which has the view of the floating harbour) is freed up. Phase 2 after Christmas will see the rear ground floor kitchen extended (presuming we get planning). Since I'm posting images, see below:

What's next? Another kitchen extension to a thirties house in Knowle, a heavily crafted timber extension to a mansion house (probably)... These are lined up for Spring of next year. To anyone thinking about having work done who is reading this - get in touch now. Not just because we would like to have more work on the order books but because planning and building regulations applications take time. Planning takes at least 8 weeks so if you want that work started in spring to be ready for summer we need to start drawing pretty soon.

Website updated

So, back after the summer break and the first thing to do is to update the website with the completed works. The garage at Longmead was completed long ago but... Anyhow, Longmead and Filton are now up (links to:Longmead and Filton). Somerset is taking a little longer to put together as it is a much bigger project.

A little more on the two new projects:
Longmead:
It's only a double garage but it is all-singing, all-dancing. Not only does it look like a modern garden room with its cedar cladding, stainless-steel cappings and aluminium windows but it is also functional as it has a huge steel security shutter which makes it easy to drive into and would easily allow two cars through. The inside of the garage was also professionally fitted out with racking and worktops. To cap it all off we fitted a high-specification burglar alarm.

Filton:
I'm like a broken record - "don't build extensions where they will block off light to the rooms you've already got". In this case it was very easy to avoid - the lovely big garden got wider from the street back, allowing a nice big garden room to be built just off the corner. It's looking great at the moment but will look even better when the clients get some sofas - the kitchen table is a bit spoilt for space where it is and the room needs some soft furnishings to reduce the echo.

Update on progress

Just a quick post to keep the world informed as to what's happening.

Currently on site: Somerset Road and Filton Avenue (both started April).
Somerset Road is a total refurbishment of a Victorian mid terrace with a loft conversion and a ground floor extension. The loft conversion has floor to ceiling windows with bifolding top sections so as to create a 3.6m wide clear opening above a glass lower section (much like a balcony). The ground floor extension is as Falmouth Road; nearly full width of the plot but without infilling the gap by the kitchen window so as to create a courtyard and leave a path for natural light back into the kitchen and dining room.
Where we are at as beginning of June 2011: All the electrics and plumbing are back in, the floors have been relaid with insulation and radon protection, the walls have mostly been plastered, the kitchen and bathroom floors have been relaid and the bones of the extension are up. The loft conversion is ready for plastering. Next stages: finish extension and fit bathrooms and kitchen. Fit new windows throughout. Fit all skirtings and doors etc. Decorate.

Filton Avenue is a much simpler kitchen extension. This one has the roof on the extension and the new kitchen is part-fitted. Next will be to fit the bifold doors and do the finishes (plaster, render etc). This one will have specially made anodised aluminium facias and soffits.

Both will be finished by July.

I will make up some portfolio pages when I get some more time but for the moment I am full time on site and dealing with new work for the pipeline.

What managing a project means...

Being a "builder" is a vague term. Often people think it means a carpenter or a general jack-of-all-trades and, for the most part, it does. But when the project is of a scale that one person can't do it all by themselves, then they become a project manager. Say, for example, you ask your favourite carpenter to build you an extension. The carpenter may or may not like brick-laying and probably doesn't like digging trenches for foundations so will end up asking his friend the groundworker for a price to dig the trenches and will add a mark-up to it before giving you an overall price. The carpenter probably isn't much of a plasterer either, and most definitely isn't a qualified electrician... you see where I am going with this. In the end, you have someone who is relatively good at a lot of different trades managing the job. And this means managing lots of different people and personalities - making sure they turn up, knowing how long they are going to take so that the next person can start, ordering materials, chasing up missing pieces, getting samples... Being good at carpentry and brick-laying doesn't automatically make you good at all this. It doesn't make you bad at it either, but being one of the people "getting things done" doesn't leave a lot of time for monitoring progress and anticipating and resolving problems. In the end, most good builders end up managing rather than working with tools.

The difference shows up when things go wrong. I'm making myself vulnerable to criticism here but believe me, things go wrong to everyone sometimes. I have recently completed a large garden room/garage for clients in Horfield. The garage itself was a prefabricated concrete kit with a steel roof which we customised with beautiful cedar cladding, stainless steel copings, modern aluminium windows and a full internal fit-out (I'll take some pictures when the weather improves and get a new page up). The garage was ordered from a large manufacturer (who shall remain nameless) and the fitting date set.
My programme was based around this date with the site being cleared, the slab and road being laid all in good time. When the date arrived, the garage did not. This was down to "ordering difficulties" with the steel roof and "with a massive increase in orders". As the fitting date came and went, information from the company rapidly dried up. At this point we had three options - 1. Sue - which would lead to a court case and no garage. 2. Mount an internet smear campaign in an attempt to shame the company into getting on with it - which would probably lead to court case and no garage. 3. Phone them three times a day, everyday, talk to their MD, talk to their production manager and generally make such a pain of myself that fitting the garage was less hassle than dealing with me. Obviously, I went with 3 and the garage arrived ten days late which, due to the electricians and the carpenters now being off-programme, caused the completion to be a month late.

I firmly believe that, without my intervention to chase the manufacturer so tenaciously, the garage would have arrived at least a month late (and the fit-out therefore another month beyond that). I also maintain that no-one could have anticipated that an off-the-peg prefabricated garage would have supply issues. A made-to-measure special component, yes, but not a standardised mass-production item such as this. A carpenter builder wouldn't have had the time to chase the manufacturer. This managing builder did.

So the point is this - if your project is time, cost or quality critical, make sure the person building it is in a position to manage it properly. If you don't, then go into it with your eyes open - you may get only a passable standard, it might arrive very late and with costs that somehow seem to crept up - or, if you are lucky and everything goes well, you might get a very cheap job!

What's getting my goat at the moment!

Well, I say at the moment, but it's actually been the case for a long time...

What annoys me is the way that in the UK, job titles get protected but not job roles.
For me, this means I can call myself an architect but not a structural engineer. But I can submit my own calculations for building regs (not that I do) so long as I don't call myself an engineer.
Why this is so very wrong is that any Tom, Dick or Harry can submit a building regs or planning application so long as they don't call themselves an architect. So why does this matter? Well neither the planning authorities nor building control have the responsibility of making sure designs are viable or safe. Shocking, but true - a building regulations compliance certificate doesn't actually mean your building is compliant, just that the bits that the inspector saw were compliant. If something is wrong with the building - for example there aren't any wall ties in a cavity wall and the thing is in danger of collapsing - you can't sue the building inspector, only the designer. And if that person is an "Architectural Designer", in other words, potentially a used car salesman with a CAD programme, then you have no-one to sue - these people can't get professional indemnity insurance since they aren't professionals.

More importantly, if the structure falls down and kills someone, then you as the client, have a legal responsibility under CDM regs to have appointed qualified people. That doesn't have to be an architect; a BIAT (British Institute of Architectural Technologists) technician is pretty good, depending on the scale of the project, but the point is, there is no getting out of it - the client's responsibility begins (and can end) with appointing suitably qualified people to do the work.

The basics of development assessment

So you've found a project - maybe a dilapidated flat that can be bought cheaply. What is a good deal and how much will it be worth when it's finished?

There are three basic terms to know: Acquisition, Development and Disposal.

Acquisition is the cost to buy the thing. So; purchase price, stamp duty, legal fees, searches, title clarifications, anything you can think of that you need to spend to get the ownership of the property.

Development is the cost to get it from the point where you have become the owner to the point at which you want to rent it out or sell it. This is more complicated but some basic rules of thumb can be applied:
1. You need to know the size of the thing you want to build. Most surveyors and valuers work in square feet. To convert square metres to sqft, multiply by 10.764.
2. Next, you need to know the cost to renovate or build the thing you want. This varies regionally and by level of finish but my guide prices at January 2011 are:

£100/sqft for basic residential or office new build
£150/sqft for excellent-spec residential new build
£75/sqft for basic residential refurbishment
£120/sqft for excellent-spec residential refurbishment

This will give you the ballpark contract value for a contractor (builder). You also need to consider professional fees:
Architects will charge between 6-10% for new build and 10-15% for refurbishment.
Engineers will charge 2-5% generally but can be used more piecemeal (for example if you only need an engineer to design a beam then you will only pay a few hundred pounds).
You may also need highways engineer, a planning consultant, an acoustic engineer, someone to do the energy calculations and an archaeologist. The price of these is extremely varied and depends on the scope of their works - mostly you won't need any of them.

You can always find cheaper people to do all of the works, but the important fact is cost certainty, not cost alone. You want to price all of the works before you buy (as much as you can) and to have prices from the various people that are reasonably accurate. To get straight to the point, someone offering to do the architecture for 3% may struggle to do the work as they have to work on twice as many projects to pay the bills - result? Either a delayed project (with higher loss of revenue/borrowing costs), substandard design work (mistakes due to using less skilled employees to do the work) or cheeky extra fees to make up the difference. All of which mean you cost plan goes out of the window.

Stick to people at reasonable rates who do a good job.

Finally, Disposal
This is the cost to get your profit out of the job - the most obvious is sale. So: Estate Agent's fees, finance settling charges (if any), tax. Possible extras - advertising, furniture hire for dressing up the property...
There are other ways to dispose of the asset, of course - it might be refinance prior to let (so converting a development loan to a mortgage) or sale to holding company.


All of the above should lead you to a return on investment that you can compare to lower risk forms of investment - bonds or even savings accounts. Don't forget to budget your own time as well. It is a poor investment to work an extra 20 hours a week for 6 months and to invest £20k in order to make a £20k profit. Consider that an extra job will pay possibly the same amount without you risking your £20k investment. 

My first post

So following the advice I have been given by the kind people on propertytribes.ning.com, I am starting a blog. In it I plan to discuss property and architecture related matters as they come to me. The intention will be to keep to generalities - the sort of things that will appeal to most people as opposed to the intricate details of, say, a rainwater gulley detail.

For example: Today I had a telephone conversation with Peter Armistead who is based in the North West. It came about because he had posted a request for an architect recommendation on PT (http://propertytribes.ning.com/forum/topics/manchester-architect) and I replied.

His query related to the conversion of a basement in an existing house to a flat. The rest of the house was already subdivided so he was looking for planning gain. Peter stated that Manchester City planning had already said on a previous project that they wouldn't allow a 3000sqft house to be subdivided into 8 flats and he was concerned the same thing would happen here.

3000sqft / 8 = 375sqft but this will be less communal areas. From experience, I know you can design studio flats from 250sqft, 1 bed from 330sqft and 2 bed from 410sqft. And these have been given consent in three counties around Bristol as well as in Sutton Coldfield. So there isn't any legal reason why 8 doesn't go into 3000. The real message behind the planners comment was "we aren't going to support this application". Taking a step back, the planning process requires an application to be processed by a planning officer who prepares a report recommending approval or refusal (with reasons) by the planning committee. So the planners were actually being candid and saying "we don't like the idea, we're going to find reasons not to support it, don't waste your application fee." But the flats being too small wasn't a legal reason and if they couldn't find legal reasons to put into the report for the planning committee then that committee would have a job refusing it. Why? Because of politics - refusal notices come with grounds for refusal - lists of "why not?" If the decision is appealed, it goes to central government who come down hard on unjustifiable refusals. The council gets made to look silly, in other words.

The reasons that normally come up are:
1. Parking - neighbours hate subdivisions because of the resultant increase in cars in the area. Most subdivisions deal with this either by being close to public transport and providing good secure cycle storage or by having on-site parking.

2. Access - if on-site parking is required, the vehicular access to and from the site must be approved by the highways department of the council.

3. Infrastructure provision - not normally a reason for refusal, but a development of 2+ bedroom houses is probably going to be asked for a ("section 106") contribution to local schools/libraries.

4. Listed building or conservation area - this amounts to the same thing: carte-blanche for the planners to recommend for rejection based on "not being in-keeping with the area". The way through this is pragmatic negotiation prior to application - get the architect to talk to the planners and get everything tied-down before the application is submitted. Otherwise lots of things such as materials get made into conditions and this is where the build can get very expensive.

There's more, obviously, but this is the main stuff. So the decision for Peter is - how contentious is his idea, and does he want to upset the planners? If it's a fairly sensible conversion of a Victorian semi-basement with level garden access then I would say go for it. If it involves serious excavation to create a dingy studio with only borrowed light then I don't see the need to potentially ruin his on-going reputation with the planners.

And then there's value - he already owns the building so there's no acquisition cost but any flat is going to cost £40k+ to create - is it worth it? How much will it be worth/will it rent out? If the answer is £80k/"yes and quickly" then, again, go for it.

The cost to apply for planning is relatively cheap - probably around £2500, all fees included - but the critical question remains of final value vs total costs.