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As an architect, I would like to say that I, for one, would fix any mistake for nothing. It’s happened and I have.
Of course then there’s the situation which should sound familiar – the client pays for preliminary design only and then solicits bids from those incomplete drawings!
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Ron:
As you may notice on another posting, I'm curious to find out about how these people (who draw building plans for a living) do it. I suppose I should have mentioned this in my pervious posting, but to follow the current thread, this is our way of doing business.
Things change, either because someone wants something different, a problem has arisen, or someone just screwed up. Whatever the case, we fix the drawings, period. If it's a major re-work, we may ask for more money, but only if we did everything right the first time. Even so, I *really* hesistate to ask for more money, it's usually better to put in the extra effort, people remember that.
That being said, I (as an engineer) would not accept a design that wouldn't work. Yes, if it's minor and they are capable of fixing it, that's OK. But, it it's a major structural screw-up, make them fix it or send the job to someone else. The issues are so great (liability, structural failure, etc.), that it's not worth it. As their customer, you have the right to demand quality work, period. Just my $.02, once again...
*We are building a house on a canal in North Florida, and have just received the stock plans that we ordered. We knew that we would have to have an engineer make some changes so that the house would withstand 110 mph winds, but we were surprised to find alot of mistakes in the plans, i.e., no place to put the water heater, window openings too close to corner, etc. What should we expect when ordering stock plans? Do most of these houses have to be redesigned to conform to code?
*Speaking as a homeowner (to be), if I had blueprints drawn, only to find out from the truss manufacturer that they wouldn't work and had to be redone for $500 (or whatever), how I felt would depend on what kind of arrangement I had with the architect/home designer/draftsperson/mail order company that did the original plans. I would NOT be angry with the truss company; I would be THANKFUL that they had caught the problem before construction started.If the original agreement with the drawer of the plans was for a fixed amount of money for plans that could be used to build a house, I would expect the $500 to come out of the pocket of the person who drew the plans. In the case of a provider of stock plans, I would demand a refund (but check the fine print on the licensing agreement). If I was paying on an hourly rate plus expenses, I would be anywhere from annoyed to irate that the problem wasn't caught sooner, but would consider the $500 to be one of those "expenses" (a "consult", if you will). Frankly, I expect my design professional to seek outside help when needed.By all means, bill for design services or refuse to accept jobs that can't be done safely as designed.Hope this helps,Rebeccah
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Ron,
It strikes me that your resposibility for design etc. starts at the top plate and up..it really isn't your problem whats below that. Here our truss guys work on that basis...how we hold them up is our problem.
mark
*Coyote - You asked about how "these people " draw their prints. In the area I'm in (central Illinois) there are no building codes or building departments. We're technically under BOCA, but it isn't enforced. What has happened is that guys with a little AutoCAD experience have decided to draw prints. They typically just draw floor plans, and don't give any thought to structural design at all. So I'm not talking about mistakes, they just aren't making any effort to any structural work at all. None of these guys (as far as I know)has any structural background at all. They certainly aren't architects.
*Ron,
Joseph FuscoView Image
*If I sent you drawings with a small error, I'd like you to call me and tell me the problem. I'd either fix it or tell you what changes to pencil in over the phone.If I sent you a set of drawings with 40 hours of errors, I'd never expect you to make changes. Most of us offer free estimates. Many of us charge for design work. Designing and estimates are not the same. I would suggest that instead of making corrections, call the GC and expain the problems over the phone. Tell him that you'd be happy to offer a price as soon as you receive the corrected drawings.I suspect that if you are getting that kind of drawing, you are probably getting conceptual drawings and the GC may not even get the job. I'd be curious to know if your average is 1 in 4 for the ones you redesign or much less.
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Andrew:
Notice in the original post that the plans aren't coming from an Architect, he says, "designers." I seriously doubt Architects are getting "lazy." As an architect it is not in my (collectively 'our') best interests to do crappy work since word of mouth is the best and most powerful source of marketing available for our services.
Mark and Joe have it right. Ron S., If they give you a preliminary drawing (no matter what they call it, i.e.: finished, CD, etc.) give them an explicitedly labelled "Preliminary Estimate" back!
Sidenote: I think there is a real 'dummy-ing down' of Working Drawings going on in the architectural profession but it is not happening all that much at the Residential end. Most residences aren't touched by an architect unless it is a sort of mindfull conversion or addition, spare the highest end residential.
Where it is happening more often is in the commercial/speculative marketplace where liscensed individuals must 'stamp drawings' drawn for speculative Developers who pay only for "code compliant working drawings" - drawings to get them PASSED at city hall. These drawings are specific enough to pass basic structural parameters, minimum egress requirements, and fire safety; BUT, lack the regularity, modularity, and basic 'Rule of Thumb' kinds of features that Contractors are used to working around.
That is the kitchen in which the recipe for 'thinning the stew' is written.
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Your question came up during a Residential Architecture class I'm taking .....The best advice is assume nothing. Don't assume that it meets your local codes. Your plans may have been designed for a northern climate , i.e. with a basement. Stock plans are not necessarily bad but going over them with a fine tooth comb might not be a bad idea ...... better to find out these things before the first nail is driven.
*People. As Code Enforcement Officer I did all the plan reviews. There was a plan drawing outfit in the next town, used by many builders in the area, that often was the source of aggravation. On many occasions I rejected the plans because of structural problems and code violations.It got so bad that I called the plan drawing outfit and told owner that her plans were no longer acceptble in my town. Even architect drawn plans are not error free. On out of state drawings I worked to help the buyers have the necessary corrections made without it costing them. The building official has the right to accept or reject plans; use him in your battles with house plan drawing outfits. You should not be financially liable for asking that errors be corrected. GeneL.
*It seems to me that the problem is that we're not clear on the source of the bad plans. Architects, fly-by-night drafters or cheap customers. If the plans are as bad as they sound, I doubt it's the architects. Customers may not know better, but they're not the ones using the autoCad. So if it's unregulated, uneducated designers, I'd ship 'em back to the GC with a note as to faults. If you're only one of the bids, they're not going to pay you to correct them until they've decided on who gets the job. And if you're not getting the job, why do someone else's work.SHG
*Ron: what's the average value of a truss job? I thought that was a pretty competitive field; maybe forty hours of design is on the high end, but how could you guys make a profit on the job if you're taking 20, 30, 40 hours of your time, even if you do get the job?That said, I find design stuff is really difficult to get paid for. Even if you start off on the right path, things change and you into a redesign just to keep things moving, and it always seems to be for free. In my case anyway.
*O.K., I'll try to reply to 3 of you at once. Gene - the problem I'm faced with is that there are no (enforced) building codes, and no building departments. Most areas around here are basically rural, and have no building departments. SHG - The source of the bad plans is guys who have AutoCAD, and simply draw floor plans. They have no structural background, and make no effort to see if it's actually possible to support things the way they draw them. In this area, Architects rarely draw residential blueprints. Adrian - The truss jobs we're talking about range from the most basic houses to $30,000 or so. You're right in saying that trusses are competitive. That's part of the problem - there just isn't enough margin to support doing this kind of stuff for nothing. If we b get the jobs, I suspect we come out alright. I always add 10% or so to the estimates to cover the design time. But this in no way covers the 3 out of 4 that we b don't get.
*RonI worked for a truss company for three years as a truss designer(92-95).We were small at that time with plenty of work load.Any way for what its worth here is what we decided to do;Solve the structural bearing and connecting problems of the truss related items for the GC, and make notes of points of interest.If a plan came in like the one you described we would probably conference on it,make notes and explain to the GC that his incomplete set of plans will cost him mucho xtra from all the trades but us, and that we would prefer to have a better set if possible.If a customer continued to do this to us, we would then consider him high maintenance.And his markup would rise accordingly. Usually with this type of GC,markup was not a problem because the security we gave him as part of his team.Today this truss co. is highly regarded as one of the best for the complicated roof structures and many framers offer discounts to the GC if they will use this particular truss co for their roof system.for what its worthRob
*KERPLUNK!!!(Mark falling off his chair)
*Mark and Joe - You're correct, to an extent. But we also sometimes provide the floor trusses or I-joists, and some or all of the structural beams. (glulams or LVLs) Maybe I should've mentioned that earlier.......
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Ron:
Where I'm at (Northwest Wisconsin), at least in some areas, you need to be licensed. Thanks for the clarification, I can understand your frustrations.
Once again, just being able to draw doesn't make you an architect...
*Ron and Rob can I ask another question of you two? Can you tell me how tall a truss you can ship (truck)? I've been told that 16'(tall) was pushing it and 20' was possible with special trucking arrangements.Thanks.
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Ron,
Joseph Fusco
View Image
"The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -- Plato
*Ron,You could try "shortcutting" the system by overdesigning. For instance instead of calculating all the loads etc, for the min size, go for the next few sizes up. To illustrate, often on our prints we are given say 5 different size headers for openings. Instead of fooling around sorting out timber, possibly putting the wrong header in the wrong opening etc. we now just use the largest size header, for all openings. Makes it a lot simpler when framing and the cost is negligable.In any case we always jokingly say that the plan is only a rough idea of what the client wants!!It is not unusual for us to change member sizes ( to a larger size ) if we feel it won't do the job.
*PRP - I think someone's pulling your leg, unless things are a lot different where you live. I've never heard of a truss machine that could build much over 14' tall. Anything over 13' 6" is realy pushing it. Some fabricators are limited to 12' tall or so, depending on their fabrication and shipping equipment. Maybe someone was referring to "piggyback" trusses ? That's where they're built in 2 pieces, and assembled at the jobsite. Doing a 20' tall truss in 2 pieces is no big deal.
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Ron,
A couple of things come to mind while reading your post. First, are you or someone at your office a licensed structural engineer? It seems that by "designing" the structure of the house rather than just the roof members, you're assuming a lot of liability for yourself and/or your firm. Who do you think they'd come after if there was a structural problem with the house. The "autocad wizard" who "designed" the house or you? It's kind of like wiring a ceiling fan for someone and two weeks later the house burns down. Where do the inspectors focus? On the last work done , that's where!
Second, sometimes an educated consumer is your best friend. Everyone knows that nothing is free. . . but it doesn't stop most of us from looking. If you can, inform clients that your costs vary based on the completeness of the drawings received. GCs should understand this already. The homeowners will not understand unless they're told that the plans they bought can't be built without additional details. Most people aren't stupid, they just never had anyone explain how things work.
Are your competitors providing design services for free? Why, if you're a truss designer, are you designing lintels, bearing walls etc. If you're hired to provide a truss design then design the truss and let the GC figure out how to build the house on his own! If he wants more, he pays more. Bill hourly like a real design firm.
Eric
*Thanks Ron!I think I was told the same. The Trucks could only carry something 14' tall, 16' if they pushed it on at an angle or something. Anything over 14' was likely to be two-pieced.
*I feel all of your pain! My hubby and I paid $600 for blueprints (Vellums, so we could legally make changes). Boy are we ever going to have to make changes! The contractor that we plan to hire took one look at the things and said that they look to be 20-30 years old and are unbuildable. He said that the house would not hold up structurally if we followed the plans, so now we are having them redrawn at the cost of another $500-600. What are our chances, if any, of recouping any of the $$ we originally paid to the company that supplied us with our junk plans?
*Yeah, in addition to the fact that our plans were unbuildable, my husband found many simple errors; measurements that didn't add up and views that were reversed from what they should have been. Consumers should have some sort of recourse when they do not get what is paid for. Laissez faire has its limitations.
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... depends ... sounds like fraud to me! Yet caveat emptor is the rule.
But you aren't ignoring them, you're having them "redrawn." So it's not a total loss?
*I dont think it's very difficult to tell a gc that he needs bearing in certain locations. Sometimes I would call the plan drawer(not architecht! hence the problem!)and ask for some revisions to his plan because he obviously didn't understand roof structures. Any good entity wants to improve in his choice of profession. If a plan is really that bad then let him do the run around for most his mistakes! you'll still come out the good guy by forcing the standard to be raised. And the Contractor will have found a company that does a little extra.later
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Remember the first "lousy blueprints" thread I started a few weeks ago? The company I work for is considering what response to make to the problem, and I wanted to get some input from you folks.
As you may remember, I work for a truss manufacturer. The blueprints we're getting have progressively been getting worse all the time. We have a lot of guys in this area that have AutoCAD, and they seem to think that they're instant architects because of that. Consequently, we end up doing a ton of design work before we can even bid jobs.
For example - I got a print a while back that was really bizarre. A 2.5 story house, all cut up with dual sloped hips, vaulted ceilings, a full basement, and gingerbread trim. There were absolutely no beams or headers specified anywhere, and no footings indicated in the basement floor. I spent about 40 hours designing some means to support the structure, and sent the bid on to the GC. The guy who drew the house had made several mistakes. One of the walls in the 3rd floor loft was only 4' tall. Many walls that needed to be bearing did not stack from one floor to the next. I got these all corrected and passed the info along to the GC with the bid.
My problem with this is that the other designers and I are spending a ton of time doing this type of work, and aren't getting paid for it. (If they had hired an engineer to do the work, it would have probably cost them $1,000.) The homeowner may have no idea how expensive this house will be, and the house will probably never be built. Our bid-to-job ratio on this type of thing is about one in four.
What we're wondering about is if we should start charging a fee for doing design work on houses of this sort. If we did this, they could then take the finished product and take it elsewhere for bids. (They may be doing that anyway) But we're not sure how the customers would react.
I don't mean that we would start charging for bids on the trusses, but for our problem solving/engineering work. We often end up specifying what walls should be bearing, where beams and posts should go, and what beams to use. We also end up correcting a lot of mistakes on the prints.
If we keep doing design work for "free", we'll have to raise our prices to cover the extra overhead. I don't like that idea, as it forces everyone to help pay for the design work on the really nasty houses.
So how would you all feel about this? I know many of you are GCs, and I'd like your input. Also what about you homeowners out there? How would you feel if you had a blueprint drawn, only to find out it didn't work, and that it was going to cost you another $500 for design work?
Any input is appreciated.
*Ron,I have not had that problem with architechs, If they do a bad drawing I give them a call and they rectify it. My problem is with house designers. Usually the owner pays by how many drawings are done and is to cheap to pay for a full set. I tell them if they want me to do drawings and design work they can pay for it! Remember when you do drawings (especially structural) you take on responsiblities for the design. An occasional mistake is expected. I had one drawing that showed a roof that physically wouldnt work I refused to give a price on it. If I build something that doesnt work I would be expected to fix it. Homeowners should start holding the designers/architechs feet to the fire and making them redesign their screwups. Stare sending drawings back, or only give an estimate and let the contractor know it wont work and you wont give a definate price or build it until someone givesw you proper drawings. As busy as everyone is this is a good time to institute such a policy.Rick Tuk
*I'm probably guilty of drawing "bad" prints, but I'm the one building from them, so it's tough luck on me. But if I had a vendor that would help me out with tricky engineering problems, I would happily pay them for it. Expertise is what we're all selling, and no-one has a right or should have an expectation to get it for free.
*As an architect, I would like to say that I, for one, would fix any mistake for nothing. It's happened and I have.Of course then there's the situation which should sound familiar - the client pays for preliminary design only and then solicits bids from those incomplete drawings!
*Sounds like the architects in Ron's neck of the woods are just getting lazy. Bet they haven't dropped their % rates, either. Face it, they're ripping off the client, who is paying for structural design twice -- first from the architect who doesn't do it, second from the truss mfr who absorbs and presumably passes on the cost.As I probably said in the other thread, first off I would worry about the liability. (I'm an attorney, it's instinctual.) When there's a structural failure someday, God forbid with fatalities, you're going to get tagged with a lawsuit that may cost tens of thousands to defend, or a lot more if you lose. If you DON'T take responsibility for design and just build-as-specified (except for designs you can tell are incompetent, and which you must reject) your exposure is that much less. Be certain that your insurance extends to your design work. Being too nice can be costly.As for $$$ -- it was argued before that if every truss mfr over there is doing structural design, you have to do it to stay competitive -- horse pucky. I didn't realize it until you quoted the numbers above, but the overhead you're carrying is significant, multiplied by the fact you get only a fraction of the jobs you engineer.So I bet without this work you will be able to sharply underbid the competition, and offer engineering as a separate service. A homeowner or project manager is going to want to know why the low bid wasn't taken, and if it's because the architect didn't do the job paid for, more questions will be asked. No one takes well to being so obviously cheated. Pretty soon the other mfrs will follow suit, provided your company has too much market power to be ignored. And the crayon-wielding architects will be pilloried and flogged in the town square. (Ah, the good old days.)Again, my 2¢.
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This is a big problem and subject of much discussion in our office. There does appear to be a dumbing down of contract documents. I see this from Architect's - our work is commercial (90%) and high end residential (10%)- not just draftsman/desigeners. MAny of the draftsmen I know where trades people first and actually produce great drawings.
There are a few reasons that I have heard for the poor information coming out of some architectural offices - one is that the competition has forced the architects to tighten their belts and lower their fees to the point that they get by with as little as possible and count on the shop drawing/submittal process to pick uip the missing pieces. This is where the suppliers and subcontractors end up designing the building and not getting paid for it because the competition at that level is such that if the fee is added to design the work thier bid is thrown out, etc... It's a vicious cycle. The other part of this is that to stay competetive the Architect uses unskilled in school or just out of school help. These AIT's get thrown into the hot seat before they know that a 2 x 6 is not 2" x 6" and that a 10" duct will not fit in a 2 x 10 joist pack.
The other thought is that there are alot of ex-carpenters turned G.C. out there that will get involved in a project for peanuts and put a number of unbillable hours into a project to make it work and to get more work. This allows the design professional take for granted the idea that the contractor will work it out for no extra money so I'll just give them the gest of what I want on paper and review it in the field. The designers are spoiled by too much hand holding.
Others blame it on the fact that they are so busy that they simply do not have time to fully coordinate a set of drawings let alone write spec's.
This is all compounded by Owners who want to "fast track" the project.
This is a problem that needs to be looked at - maybe all of you architects should bring this up at the next AIA convention. From where I sit the information that is being called Construction Documents when compared to the information of the past looks alot like the framing material you get today vs that of ten or twenty years ago.
I'm a draftsman who takes pride in what I do. I make sure everything is detailed, and detailed right. Right down to sometimes the most absurd of things. But you know, it makes a difference. I don't have to waste my time explaining to somebody how to build something. Provided they actually looked at the plans... Which unfortunately is all to often. I attribute that to their past experience of not having a good set of documents. It's sad really.
But on a positive note, in 40 years they'll have been out of business for decades and I'll still be around. Funny how that happens.
Wasn't going to chime in here but......
After reading your post I'm going to weigh in. I'm sure your drawings are very good and your attention to detail is sufficient.....BUT when I framed houses exclusively I saw a ton of drawings. I'd have to say that I saw a lot more incomplete, inaccurate, or unrealistic drawings compared to complete drawings. So the next time a framer misses something on the plans (surely it's his fault) maybe you could "waste your time" and humour him so that he doesn't have to "go out of business" without your gracious explantion.
Is it possible for a carp to simply miss something on the plans, or does it automatically mean he never looked at them at all? Would it better for him to not "waste your time" by seeking an explantion and just "wing it"? Some of us on this end take pride in our work as well. That's why we "waste our time" calling you to "waste your time".
Diesel,
VERY well said, and is the absolute truth
be well
Mark