Picking right Architect and Contractor

November 17, 2012
Day 210

I wanted to share our experience with a topic that I hope you find very relevant - that of picking your architect and contractor. You may wonder, why talk about that now.. Well, I couldn't have written about this earlier even when I wanted to. There are things that we have learnt in hindsight for which we had no insight early on. It is only after being in the process for 6-9 months that I appreciate all the parameters one should consider while picking an architect and a contractor.

So, let's go back about 24 months back in time, i.e. November 2010 when we started this process of envisioning and designing the house.

For starters, there are a number of steps before you start to construct your house. It may not be obvious how these steps are sequenced and time each would take. And therefore, we all end-up under-estimating time and effort required to even start the process. Below is the typical chronological sequence leading up to house construction.

Build your own vision of house - House building is a very creative activity and like any new thing, you want to indulge yourself fully to enjoy it. House building is as much about knowing yourself as about building a physical structure. That's where it becomes either fun for some folks or frustrating chore for others. I have number of friends who would rather buy a pre-built house and are perfectly happy with that. There is absolutely nothing wrong in that! My first advice therefore is - You intrinsically want to build your own house to have fun doing it. Don't do it to compare or compete with anyone.

Think about parameters that would influence your house. These could be external elevation of the house, spaces within the house, budget, layout of the physical structure, levels within your house, reselling or renting house partially or fully, daily habits or routines of folks who would live in the house, and so on. While you do these, pay special attention to how you and folks who would live conduct their daily lives - what are their habits, what are their likes, dislikes or constraints, and how these might change over time. All of the influencing factors above help build a vision for your house. You may either document your vision through a document, or create a Google sketchup or anything in-between. Point is to have somewhat specific idea that describes personality of your house.

There is tons of material available on web and I'd suggest to make yourself familiar. You may also refer to various house design magazines, or read newspaper columns, or blogs such as this to arm yourself with experiences of others. The book that I found particularly helpful in our process is Designing Your Perfect House as it clearly and comprehensively articulates the whole process.

It is hard to put a time-limit on this step and my advice would be to set-aside time each week to build your vision. It is easiest to lose pace on this activity, or postpone it to later stage and doing so has the risk of either compromise, or having to start all over again after you have realized your own vision.

During the process, you may either feel you have a perfect idea of the house, or you may feel confused about what your house should look like. If you feel you have perfect idea, I would say stop now and proceed to the next step. However, don't be rigid about your idea - it will change. Allow for changes as long as they fit within your vision for the house. If you feel confused, keep looking and as you do research, jot-down items that you either really like, or really dislike. Over time you will see a pattern in what you really like or dislike and that will help you create a picture of how your house should look like.

Meet various architects - It is important to meet different architects as they have different styles and preferences. Some of the variations we have seen amongst architects were

1. Some architects build houses of contemporary style while others favor traditional style
2. Some architects have a good eye towards attractive elevation while others are better at detailed planning of individual spaces. 
3. Some architects are fixated towards a feature of the house such as stairs or floor levels while others may be fixated towards earthy materials or concepts.  
4. Architects that are well reputed may relegate most of house design work to their sub-ordinates while relatively young architects themselves design the house. On the flip side, well-reputed architects have tons of design ideas and experience which very young architect may not. 
5. Some architects tend to design tens (if not hundreds) of houses in a year while others may only do 5-10 in a year. 
6. Some architects charge flat fee versus others that charge % of total house cost. 
7. Some architects have designated contractor that they work with while others work with any contractor of your choice. 

I am sure there are other parameters as well but this hopefully provides rationale why it is important to get to know the spectrum to make an informed decision. Ultimately, there is no right or wrong decision, it is what you feel most comfortable with. 

Next obvious question is how to get to know what type of architect you are dealing with - Well, you will never have 100% idea, but a few things that can help are

• Look at houses they have built. Don't rush to conclusion based solely on pictures, pictures can be very deceiving. It is important to visit the houses to get first-hand view of houses. While picking the house, pick a combination of relatively new (< 1 year old) house as well as somewhat older (2-5 years old) houses. Once you have seen 3-4 houses you might start to notice a pattern. 
• Provide your requirements and ask if architect would make a mock design. This will give a sense of architects' vision in reference to your own. 
• Do reference check with house owners. Often, pointed questions elicit better insight than a generic question. 

Finalize an architect - No matter how many architects and how much analysis you do, there will never be surety while finalizing an architect. The point really is you want to have reasonably good idea of architect's style and should feel excited at the prospect of him building your house. For us, it was this intuitive sense when we finalized the architect who designed our house. 

As you may have already guessed, above process does take few weeks to few months depending on your situation and there is always cost of over-analyzing. It is not unreasonable to expect 4-6 months to finalize an architect. Not that I recommend this approach, but we also know of friends who picked an architect and had to change their mind mid-way through their house design. While you'd lose retraining amount, it is better to cut your losses than to compromise on your dream house.

Some of the things that we learnt about our architect and why we feel very excited about him even today -

1. Coincidentally, our tastes matched much more than we originally thought. Our choices matched in picking materials, traditional design of the house, attention to detail, and standards of quality. 
2. Accessibility - We never had to struggle to get his time. He has been intimately involved in design. He is our direct contact and has always been very responsive.
3. Flexibility - Whatever requirement we have had he has designed creative ways to incorporate them. In rare instances where we were not excited about design, he has shown flexibility to incorporate our input and revise design. 

House building is a long and intimate process where architect and contractors are your trusted partners. As the owner, you should take initiative to build such a relationship as that will result in final product that everyone will feel proud to attach themselves to.

Iterate over design - You would typically meet architect to provide your requirements. Depending on architect, this meeting is either free-form or more structured. There are quite a few questionnaires available on web for design of spaces. Here is an example of questionnaire for House overall or for specific room such as Kitchen. Find one that you are most comfortable with and fill that out. This will help clarify your thoughts even if you didn't share with your architect. We did both - independently brainstormed our preferences and then followed-up with similar questionnaire list to refine our thoughts. Some of our preferences are listed below

• Open floor plan – No kitchen door, Large windows
• Vastu compliant
• Sunny in living areas
• Good air circulation
• Porous boundary between outdoor and indoor living spaces
• Environment friendly – rainwater harvesting, solar energy, composting pit, recycle water for gardening, toilets, etc.
• ...

End result was when we met architect he got pretty clear picture of our likes and dislikes, our personality and that helped him build the design. As you can see from image, initial concept plan very much was in line with our requirements. We certainly were very excited seeing such a concept plan. The courtyard feature for example has been both unique as well as one that meets our expectations.

Once you have concept plan, you want to internalize it for few days. Observe how you and others who would live in the house live daily and how your house would fit-in with those habits. Note down refinements. This is also great time to re-look at those magazines, newspapers, web, for design ideas. Don't be influenced by the fancy materials and color combinations - those will come for later. Right now, you want to think about spaces and ensure your current and future needs are incorporated within them. Also, pay attention to how spaces transition from one to other to make sure it is natural. You also want to ensure that space is oriented and sized appropriately. This is the phase where structure of your house is defined and more you can glean from your research to validate or refine ideas, less you will be surprised later. This phase can take anywhere from 2-6 months depending on how many iterations it takes to finalize.

Submit plan for approvals - Once your design is finalized, architect creates plans that have to be approved by your city municipality. Depending on your state and country, requirements, process and schedule for city approval would vary. Suffice it is to say this process takes times and is easy to be overlooked. For us, it took nearly 9 months and unfortunately there is not a whole lot that one can do to make it faster.

You may want to check with your municipality, architect, contractor or any 3rd party if there are avenues to start the approval process in parallel with previous stage of house design. For example, out of 9 months, we could easily have overlapped 2-3 months had we paid some of the fees up front. Any way, in the whole end-to-end process of house building, I found this stage to be most idle and frustrating, both because it causes break in momentum and because you have no direct control. Like they say, best to not fret over things for which you can't do anything!

Meet various contractors - Depending on architect you pick, this step may or may not be necessary. When you do have the pleasure of picking a contractor, you do want to start about 3 months prior to anticipated start data of construction. That will give sufficient time to assess various contractors and also not delay construction start. Like architects, there are a number of parameters to consider

1. Quality - Contractor is the one who will realize paper-plan into real-structure. You don't want water leakage in the house after mere couple of monsoons, for example. It is critical to observe in detail houses that contractor would have built. Older the house give you better sense of durability. Newer house give you sense of attractiveness of construction. 
2. Speed - Some contractors tend to be fast while others can be real slow. Fast is generally good as long as that doesn't result in compromise. Contractors that are slow or have break in continuity of construction are best avoided. 
3. Communication - A critical factor is being able to communicate with contractor and his workers. Some contractors, especially fast ones, have number of houses going on in parallel and delegate day-to-day activities to their "managers" and workers. If these folks either don't understand the language or are not able to relate to incorporate guidance it often results in frustration and stress. It is also of great benefit if contractor is e-mail savvy as often you may just suggest your requirement through web link or pictures and it is much easier to send link rather than bring him a print-out. 
4. Experience - Thumb rule here is of course more the better. That would have exposed them to variety of styles, materials, architects, and owners. Each of those will help them mature and therefore be a lot more effective partner to work with. 
5. Resourcefulness - There are a number of functions that your contractor manages - civil, electrical, painting, carpenter, and several more. Given that these folks tend to be laborer-type, there would be an ongoing churn that contractor deals with. On top of that, depending on specific requirements of the house, contractor will need to procure specialized workers and materials. You want contractor who has alternative plans for every situation without compromising architect's vision. 
6. Accessibility - Contractors that delegate their job are always going to be hands-off. They also would have number of parallel construction going on and would always be time constrained. Depending on their attitude, some times we have seen they interpret architect's drawings themselves not bothering to check-in with the owner and architect. There are others who do only few houses but are thoroughly engaged in day-to-day activities. 
7. Estimation and planning - Contractors have to upfront estimate the cost and timeline of the project. Then, on an ongoing basis, they have to schedule mobilize material, mobilize resources, and sequence day-to-day activities, all within that high-level schedule. This skill doesn't come easily to most folks and I have yet to meet a house-owner whose house was delivered without his "micro-management".  Obviously, a contractor who is able to do as much independently will offload you. 

Like with picking an architect, it is difficult to find contractor that excels in all of the areas. What you want to do is identify the ones that you are willing to make compromise on and ones that you want contractor to be really strong in. Following things help you in revealing contractor's strengths and weaknesses.

• Visit as many houses that contractor built - Add combination of houses that were constructed a few years ago, to the ones that recently completed, to the ones that are under construction. Visit the house under construction few times in a week will provide snapshot their workers' day-to-day behavior. 
• Talk to the house-owners whose house were recently completed or better yet are under construction. They are likely to share "horror" stories if there were any. 
• Engage with contractor on detailed design and construction planning - Ask him about where he would procure material, workers, what are the specific milestones he'd shoot for, how you and him would track progress and so on. 

Finalize a contractor - Most of the criteria to pick a contractor are also described above. The main point I want to stress here is the dynamics between contractor and architect. Again, look at house building as an exercise where you, architect, and contractor have to have the right dynamics. Architect and contractor have to communicate and trust each other as much as their equations with you.

The most important aspect is for contractor to realize that his role is that of implementer and architect has to realize his role is that of designer and inspector. Contractor therefore focuses on building good quality house within time and estimates of cost provided. Contractor can make suggestions to you and the architect but ultimately has to execute on decisions given to him.

Thankfully, we have had that equations set from day 1 and therefore it has not been as stressful experience as it could otherwise have been. I urge you to set that equation as early in the process as possible.

Start construction  - Aha, finally, the day arrives when you can see some real action. It takes good 24 months from building first vision till you start construction. By now, you have accomplished huge part of house-building - assembling your team and establishing plans! You have already come half-way, believe it or not. You will soon be able to see your abstract dreams taking shape. It is start of an exciting phase in house-building. Celebrate accomplishment of this milestone !

Some best-practices to keep in mind going forward

1. Visit your site every other day if not every day to track progress and compliance to plan
2. Keep a payment chart that tracks when you made the payment, to whom, and what it was for. 
3. Track schedule very closely. Like any project, devil is in the details. More questions you ask architect and contractor of immediate milestones, dependency, inspection schedule, decisions that you have to make, more informed you would be. 
4. Ensure that you, architect and contractors meet at least once a month. Quite a few finer details get ironed out through these conversations. Preferably, these meetings should occur at the site itself.  

That's all for now.. It has been a long post, but hopefully worth it. Feel free to point out any details you would have liked to see and I will see if I can incorporate it.

Ground Floor Roof

Day 210
November 17, 2012

Ground Floor Roof !
While walls come-up quickly and show visible progress, it takes a bit of time to get roof completed. For starters, it is advisable that all walls progress at more or less equal pace as roof construction can not start till all walls are up.

In our house, we have wirecut bricks in certain areas and as I mentioned in my earlier post they take a while to procure and once procured take further time to lay them in place. One of the reasons for delay is it requires specially skilled mason to handle cementing of wirecut bricks.

Additionally, we had specific pattern to arrange them in. A couple of the patterns are shown here. Patterns make the wall come alive; they however cost a bit more both in terms of quantity of bricks as well as time taken to lay them so they are appropriately aligned.

As a layman, these delays were not obvious to us at the start.

Having gone through the process we now know that laying wirecut bricks takes twice as long and laying wirecut patterns takes thrice as long as the normal bricks. For us, these added 3-4 weeks to overall schedule.

Obvious advice is to be paranoid about each task - ask stupid questions as that'd uncover potential surprises that can be avoided.

Roof height

Unless a house has tall ceilings, most people don't pay attention to how high the ceiling should be. They usually go with the standard 10 or 10.5 feet height. And so did we. Our architect, however, had designed drawings with 11 feet height. As the walls were getting constructed, I actually felt 11 feet looked too monstrous in some rooms and was reluctant to go with that. Being the first-time house-builder it is very hard to know whether to stamp your opinion, or go along with architect's design. Do some research on advantages and disadvantages to find an answer that is right for you. Here is a quick summary of pros and cons of 10 feet vs 11 feet.

• Taller ceilings give feeling of spaciousness. Rooms look a lot more elegant. 
• Taller ceilings cost more and take longer to build.
• Taller ceilings in a multi-level house mean more stairs to climb.
• Taller ceilings help with keeping room cooler as hot-air stays at or near the roof. 
• Taller ceilings provide larger storage space should you construct wall cabinets. 

We decided to go with 11 feet and after the roof was casted, I was thankful to have listened to architect and contractors' advice. 1 feet makes a huge difference in feeling of spaciousness and elegance.

Electrical design

As soon as the roof is cast, a number of activities - electrical, window frames and shutters, plastering, etc. can happen in parallel. By now, your architect should already have finalized furniture layout and should be talking to you in terms of electrical layout.  It is critical for home-owners to freeze both these items at this stage as without them none of the other work would proceed.

For example of electrical drawings, here are a couple of samples from our house. Undoubtedly, there will be a few iterations to get these right. So, allow yourself a bit of time on how you'd live around your new house. That'd determine number and type of lighting you'd need. Lighting is one of the crucial aspect to set ambiance so you want to make sure to not rush it.

A couple of rules that we followed for electrical layout

• Be liberal with points - I have observed that more often than not after the house is done you realize need for additional plug-points. While this costs a bit extra upfront, I'd much rather not have to open-up electrical (or avoid having power strip everywhere) after house is done
• One open plug-point per wall is a thumb rule - Again, calibrate according to needs of each room
• Avoid too many types of lights, we picked a type (e.g. wall mount) and repeated that across the house. 
• Avoid more than 6 switches in a switch-board - Hard to remember which switch is for what and looks kinda ugly.

Roof construction:

1) Order materials - While this is an obvious thing, some times procurement adds delays. In our case, we needed long-enough "bamboos" for 11 feet ceiling and those were not readily available. Ensure that contractor orders steel, cement, sand, aggregate, etc enough in advance so that it arrives in time.

2) Setup centering - This is where maximum time is spent. Workers setup metal sheets supported by the bamboos. Depending on roof area this can stretch over in days or weeks. Thumb rule is to expect 1 room per day. If you have stairs, those are also done at this stage. This is because they need to ensure the leveling of stairs occurs at the same time as centering is set up.

3) Do form-work - Once centering is setup, they lay-out steel rods that will hold the roof together. This is done in usual mesh pattern. For about 1000 square feet roof, it took 1-week to set this up.

4) Layout electrical conduits - Contractor will identify electrical drop points in each room. These are essentially points from which electricity flows into the room. It is good to have electrical layout finalized at this point although if it is not, contractor will identify a few default points.

5) Structural inspection - One final step is to get structural engineer to approve construction. Structural engineer is the one your architect would have consulted to structurally build your house. His approval is critical to ensure house meets the safety standards he'd have set in place during design.

6) Pour cement - Pretty straight-forward step. I was surprised that this takes usually 4-6 hours. My contractor suggested to manually make cement so as to have better control over proportion of cement, aggregate and sand. However, market is also full of ready-to-pour cement mixes as well. Go with whichever you (or rather your contractor) feels comfortable with. It is important that whole roof is done in a day to allow roof to solidify at once.

7) Remove centering - Once cement is poured, make sure it is cured regularly. This allows cement to bind really well. Curing happens for few (2-4) weeks. Typically, centering stays for support for about 6 weeks.

8) Payment - My contractor insisted to have fewer but bigger payments and that model worked very well for us. My second payment was when ground floor roof was casted (first was when plinth level had reached). My BOQ (bill of quantity) is also structured for each phase (Plinth, Ground floor roof, First floor roof, etc.) This model allows me to easily verify actual versus estimate in BOQ much more easily. Every time bill is raised, architect also needs to verify quantity of material used vs estimated and doing it less frequently makes his task also easier and more efficient. Any way, point of this bullet is to verify how you are tracking with respect to estimated cost and justify any deviations. 

9) Schedule and Quality review - Final check-point at the end of this phase is to review schedule and quality with your architect and contractor. This must be not just at the macro-level analysis of big-picture items, but rather a finer-level analysis.. For example, what factors contributed to delays, what compromises led to aesthetics or structural inadequacies. By now, you'd also have had a good rapport with both architect and contractor to unequivocally communicate action plan going forward. My advice is actively ensure that mistakes are not repeated, don't assume that someone once told will henceforth do the right thing.