Draw the plan yourself? Do you necessarily need an architect?

morning,,
you can sketch out the basics, then I would go to the architect and put it into practice. He can also tell you if it fits within your financial scope or not.


best regards Angie

Hello, you can basically only make sketches. A construction drawing that is submitted to the building authority can only be made by an authorized architect or structural engineer or in their office. They have to stamp the thing and take responsibility if it doesn't work out in the end. I hardly believe that you will find an authorized architect or structural engineer in Germany to "stamp" your drawing. Especially since that costs real money for the architect. Regards Thommi

So I also created the preliminary planning completely by myself in CAD. With the correct wall thicknesses, windows, etc. It stayed quite rough though. You can't get around the architect. The details are difficult, such as wall connections, required construction heights for the roller shutter box, wiring, flush-mounted elements, etc., etc. You really have to work deeply into it. Just imagine if you forget a minor structural detail and later it doesn't fit. That would be a disaster.

Draftsman

Hello Garn,
please think very carefully about the draftsman. We hired a draftsman who came from Bavaria. But we are building in Baden-Württemberg and are so-called "cross-border commuters." The regulations in BaWü are much more demanding – our draftsman was simply overwhelmed by this. Essentially, we had to do his work ourselves and inquire at various offices to pass the information on to him. He had no idea where to turn.

Conclusion ...
He had to hire a subcontractor to sign the submission plans and prepare the structural engineering, Kfw 40 certificate, etc. for us... he is not authorized to submit documents himself. We did not give the structural engineer a contract... the draftsman took care of that.

Don’t make the same big mistake we did! It might be that you find a better one than we did; I don’t want to tar everyone with the same brush – our draftsman was also a distant relative of my partner, and of course, we wanted no hard feelings...

But then came the impudence... we paid the draftsman (€2,300.00) and were glad that we were finally done... then came a hefty bill from the structural engineer for almost €1,500.00, which we didn’t know about – we thought there would only be one invoice from the draftsman. Naturally, we had no contract (you don’t need one and no one wants to offend anyone), and now we have to pay everything obediently, even though we didn’t commission it.
An architect with everything included + a site manager until the installation of the windows would have cost us €2,750.00.
In this respect, we are clear losers because verbal agreements just don’t work nowadays, or no contract was concluded.

- Find out everything in advance – make sure to clarify how the liability insurance of the architect or draftsman looks.
- What are the soil conditions of your property?
- Conclude a contract with the architect.
- Agree on a fixed price.
- Set a deadline.

Just save yourself the nerves... they are better used elsewhere.

I wish you much success!
Maren

Hello Maren,

actually, things went quite well for you. The costs are not high for a house. Neither draftsman nor structural engineer.

An architect certainly would not have done it including construction management for 2750Euro. You just have to look into the HOAI (Fee structure for architects and engineers). The fee is agreed net depending on the net construction costs. There are 4 fee zones with minimum to maximum rates each. And a fee for each price. Even if a house is only in fee zone 2 middle rate, at 300,000EURO of chargeable net construction costs, 33,000€ would be due for everything, including company selection by the architect. The structural engineer would then also be added.

Even without construction management, it would still be around 17,000EURO net. Mind you, net. Then VAT would be added. And the structural engineer also separately.

And on top of that, most architects never do single-family houses under fee zone 3. That is even more expensive.

Which architect would have done that for 2750EURO? I want to meet them. My offers are sometimes up to 60,000EURO and higher.

Best regards

Tobias

But you have noticed that the last answer is from 2009, haven't you?!