If you are working with an architect, this is your guide to help prevent problems with your working relationship. I personally service about 100 clients per year, I have been working in the profession since the 90’s, and I have had 4 previous clients who got upset with me. I’m no expert in what to do when things go wrong, but I do have a good track record on how to keep things good. So where do things go wrong? In my experience, here’s what I’ve encountered:
Money. This is the main stressor for most people. I had a client who got upset because we wanted them to pay us on time. We charge hourly for our time, and we send a bill at the end of each month for the time we spend working on our client’s behalf (within an estimated amount discussed ahead of time). After about 8 months of working together, this client paid their first 4 invoices about 2 months late. After the next 4 months, they didn’t pay their final four invoices despite many many many reminders we gave them. Once it got close to the 3 month late period, we let them know we would no longer do any further work until we were paid, and we also issued late fees according to our agreed terms. The client was happy with our work and continued to ask us to do more work - they just quit paying. We kept reminding them to pay, but they would not answer any money questions. They would only communicate with project-related questions. So, we next warned them that we would have our attorney file a lien against their property if they didn’t at least respond with a plan to pay us. They still didn’t respond with a plan. Then we started the process with the attorney, and we showed the client the lien paperwork with a notice that we would file it at the end of the week. They responded immediately, and they were mad to say the least. They owed us for our work and our attorney’s fees (according to the terms of our agreement). I consulted with mentors and other professionals to look at the situation before proceeding, and they all agreed that we should file the lien. Then the client eventually paid us, but they would not pay for the legal fees that we encountered due to their non-communication. So, we had to file the lien to recover those legal and lien fees we incurred. That was the last thing we wanted to do, and we even gave the client payment options such as a payment plan, an ownership share in their development project, and a few other options. They just didn’t respond. Silence. There was nothing for us to do but to file the lien since there’s time limits for that sort of thing. So what’s the moral of the story? Be communicative! If there’s an issue, talk to one another, so you can both plan accordingly. We were well under budget on this project and the client was happy with the work, so it was rather confusing that the client would wait so long to pay us since they actually expected to pay much more than we ever billed them.
Money. Another time, a client was upset because we billed them for our time that they asked us to spend. They claimed they didn’t want that work done yet, but they emailed us (in writing) that they wanted the work done. In this situation, the client requested two weeks earlier NOT to do that specific work. Then after two weeks passed, they emailed us again asking us to do that work. It’s in writing. First it says hold off. Then next it says to do it. I even followed up with an email that said, “ok we will get started on that work for you.” The client still didn’t want to pay for the work they requested because they claimed we didn’t listen to their initial request. We claimed that we did listen to the initial request (which is why we did not work on their project for 2 weeks), and we also did listen to the second request to continue with the work. They said that second request was meant to be just an FYI for when they authorize the work to proceed. I asked why their email said to update the drawings with a long list of requests, and why they didn’t oppose my followup email that said we would get started. They just said we didn’t listen. I asked several mentors and professionals to look over the correspondence, and they all agreed it looked like a clear authorization to proceed. The client got really nasty and started with name-calling. I just responded by offering to get a 3rd party mediator to review the situation since that is what our contract says. This irritated the client even more. I think this worried them since it would have been obvious to a 3rd party that they were incorrect. So what’s the moral of the story? Be clear! I don’t know what I could have done to be more clear, but communication is definitely key. This is why I followup EVERY call and email with a quick note about what I’m going to do before I do it. I was actually way under budget on this project too, and the client was happy with the work. It’s rather weird that a client would act this way, but I sense they just ran out of money.
Money. Noticing a pattern? People get concerned about money. I had a client that asked us to do some work over the phone. It was a very small project that would only require a few hours of work. Usually we send out a contract for signature before we start working. In this case, the client needed our quick help, so she emailed us the existing plans of the house, told us what to do over the phone, and we explained how much it would cost before we spent a couple hours on the small project. We got the limited amount of work done and emailed it to her with our bill. She didn’t pay it, but then she asked us to do even more substantial work. We decided to send over the contract for her to sign before we continued working (like we normally do). Once we sent it, she said, “I never signed this, and I never asked you to do the previous work. So it’s not authorized, and I’m not paying you.” I said, “why did you tell me to do the work over the phone and email me the drawings of the existing house? And why did you ask us to do more work after we did the initial work (and say it looks great)? And why did you ask us to do more work after you got our first bill?” She just didn’t have an answer and ghosted us. She was using the fact that we didn’t sign a contract yet to believe that she didn’t need to pay us for the work that she requested verbally and via email. In the end, we did convince her to pay what she owed, but it was not easy. So what’s the moral of the story? Sign the contract before starting any work. It’s unfortunate that this type of thing happens once out of 1000 projects, but it affects all projects thereafter. As the saying goes: one bad apple ruins it for all.
Money (again)! If it isn’t clear by now, people get stressed about money. We all do. In this circumstance, we designed an addition for someone, and we got through the very preliminary steps to enable us to have something drawn for builders to look at to give us rough estimates to build the project. As an architect, I don’t have control over what things will cost. Only a builder can agree to build something for a certain price. I can only guide people in the right direction to keep their project reasonable and hopefully in the right ballpark based on my previous experience with something similar. In this instance, I told the client that the addition they wanted us to design would generally be at least $300 per square foot to build. They were ok with that. The problem is that before you start designing a project, there isn’t a specific size or solution yet. You need to design it to know how big it is and how much it might cost. You can’t put the cart before the horse. You need to design something to know what it might cost. The key is to do as little designing as possible to get to a point where you have some basic drawings to invite builders to offer rough pricing. In this case, the client kept adding and adding and changing despite our plea to tone it down because they were already on a tight budget. They were also on a tight lot where the design solution was very tough to fit on the property within the zoning codes. Again, we needed to design something, so we could see if it would need tweaked to fit properly on the property. Once we designed it, we could then see if there’s any specific items that we would need to make smaller to get other things to fit within setbacks from property lines. After making these tweaks, the client would then make more changes, and this process went on for many months. Each time they asked for a change, we emailed them, “I suggest we not make any further changes to the drawings until we first get preliminary pricing from a builder to know if we are on budget or not since these subtle design changes do not have significant construction cost impacts, but they do cost more to design each time you request them. Let’s first get an idea of construction cost, and then let’s dial in the design accordingly just in case the construction cost necessitates the scope being reduced significantly.” Despite our repeated warnings, he did not heed our advice and kept asking for more and more design tweaks. Eventually we got to a point where we could get pricing, and some of the builders’ estimates were way over budget and others were just slightly over budget. That is normal actually. In discussions with the builder who was pretty close to the desired budget, we figured out what we could change about the project to keep it on budget. This required us to tweak the drawings again, as expected (and as explained to the client about 20 previous times). This angered the client, and he got really sassy with us. I think it was more of a case of realizing he was wrong despite all the verbal and written warnings we gave him that we predicted this would happen. So what’s the moral of the story? Listen to your architect! We do this same process over and over and over again. We know what will happen next before it happens. We know when it makes sense to take a risk. We know when we need to pause the process to check with others in the industry for further guidance. At the end of this one, the client was treating me and my staff really nasty, so I told him we cannot associate with people that behave like that. I set him up with everything we did for him, so a new builder and new architect could easily pickup where we left off. I said I would be happy to answer any questions that may come up and advise throughout the duration as he works with another firm. I don’t know what we could have done any differently here. Sometimes people just cannot get out of their own way despite the highly experienced advice that is offered to them.
In summary, the problems listed here are all the outliers. 4 times out of about 1000 projects. That’s not bad and problems should be expected. We have been very diligent about being very clear communicators since that is the root of all these problems. It does take 2 to communicate properly though, and people can have different communication styles. Since we do take our own communicating seriously, we always try to ensure our client communicates with us clearly too, so we can avoid problems. That has been very successful in the past 20 years.
If you’d like to learn more about our design process, visit www.josharch.com/process, and if you’d like to get us started on your project with a feasibility report, please visit www.josharch.com/help