Hi everyone,
I'm a newbie here. I have been snooping around this website for months as I have found mountains of useful information to help me plan my renovation. But I was just hoping for more insight into the whole building/renovating regarding our home.
Last year, we engaged a Syney architect to help us design & plan renovation on our 30yo house, thinking this would be worth the investment since my husband & I have no experience in renovations, we have no friends or relatives who can advise us, and we both worked fulltime. However this turned out to be the first big mistake as it has been our architect who has been stuffing us around and actually hindering our planning progress. (we can't even start building yet).
So to summerise our story:
We engaged our architect in Mar 09. They took 6 weeks to get back to us with ONE concept design("we don't do multiple designs; we only work with one good layout"). We hated their design, and I pretty much gave them a picture of something I liked which they promptly copied!. So no idea or design input from them from the very begining. We ended up with a very bland/project home look but I thought we could embelish this later. Then with all the consultants involved in the DA application, it was Oct 09 when DA got lodged & because it was a very simple renovation it got approved by Dec 09.
Our architects were uncontactable during Dec/Jan holidays and it was Feb before we began work on our construction certificate & tendering process/documentation. By this stage,the principle architect we engaged was now far removed from our project, and one of his underling draftperson was in charge. He was totally useless & I refused to even talk to him after 2-3 weeks. We got another "underling" architect assigned who began on our project but this person unfortunately has never seen our house, do not have any concept of our plans yet the architectural firm thought that was still perfectly ok. So she was documenting every detail of our renovation without really knowing what's feasible, she has never left her office, she rarely asks any questions from me and when I get progress drawings from her, it seriously takes me days to go through them and fix up every single stupid errors. To give you an idea, she draws ceiling fans when the ceiling is concrete slab, she marks downlights through slabwork. The worst part is when the errors are addressed, she doesn't necessarily fix them on the documents, and so I have to go through days of review to see if she's fixed the previous errors before I can move on to the next stage. When comments are provided, they aren't always fixed the second, third, or fourth time round. I gave up on so many ideas as these architects just cannot be bothereed. Oh btw, these architects only work via email & phone communication and any site visit is extra charge! But it seems, they only answer their phones only half the time, and follow up emails rarely. So since february, I have been stuck in a very infuriating to&fro line of communication just to get the f**** architects to document our renovation plans. At no stage have they been available to consult any design features, so I have engaged my own outside designer to help me who has been truely wonderful but even when I gave my architect her drawings for them to include in my overall document, they haven't been able to do it. We started complaining about their lack of effort last month. when we try to contact the principle architect (the one we engaged at the begining), he has never returned any phone calls or emails, but insteads lets one of his "underilings" reply back. Maybe it got all too stressful for the "underling" architect as she has now abruptly quit the firm & the office even refused to tell us this until a week later. So we have now been assigned a fifth person from their office who is quite a senior architect, but obviously way to busy to address our "small" project. We abandoned our building tendering process in the middle, and am in the process of salvaging what we can with the tender/spec documents so far before we move on. Overall, the architects have been very neglectful, are happy to take the money & produce very pathetic work(even I can tell they spent negligible time thinking about our project, and I'm not even an expert). We made a decision that it was quicker, easier & a LOT cheaper to go without them, and instead hired a project manager to help us during the building stage. We have asked the architects to release all our plans & documents to us so that we can progress with interior/exterior design details with someone else. Despite their agreement, it has now been two week but they have yet to send us anything except the final invoice! (we have kindly said we will not finilize our payment until we know the work is complete).
Another stuff up from them - they submitted our construction certificate without telling us & * when I asked (I have no idea what drawings they submitted) when we have yet to choose a builder. When I asked what drawings/plans they submitted three weeks ago, they have dragged their feet with multiple excuses & so far failed to tell us. We don't really know what our architects have committed us to building ( I have a vague idea from the DA plans) Oh well, we can always find out from the city council what they submitted... (At this stage, they are even witholding our CC stamped plans).
At this stage, I am really furious that we wasted 17 months with this negligent company who pretty much stuffed us around (believe me I have endured a lot of incompetence from them) and still won't even allow us to move on & start building. I have tried to be reasonable with them as they are holding our 17 months & >$25K worth of drawings, but because of their neglect/stuff up, we can't even engage another person to fix things up now..
Is there a minimal standards that architects are legally bound to? (I heard rumours of none)
I am resolved to the fact that we have wasted probably two years and $25k with these architect, but I would like to salvage as much as I can so that I will not have to reapply for another DA. I would really love some suggestions as how I should go about this as I know stressing my legal rights to them will probably not help what I want to achieve.
I'm afriad it's a sorry lesson learned.
Beware of (some) architects.