Additional fees from architect

RedDress36

Hi Everyone,

Looking for your thoughts on this. We are looking to extend/convert the attic this year and to this we need to submit planning application.

We hired architectural technician to do all the plans and submit the application. At the start he sent as a proposal that all the drawings needed for the application will cost fixed fee of €1800 (plus application fees). During the planning our neighbour (boundary wall) requested some additional drawings and information including a detailed drawings of the new boundary wall including dimensions, construction details, material types, etc. This was all provided by our planner.

The planner sent us yesterday final invoice and it’s including extra €500 for ‘Addiction details and Correspondence with Neighbour ‘. We are really supervise about this additional fee as he never mentioned them to us and nothing was agreed. Also his original proposal including sentence ‘..The fee quoted does not include for any work in relation a first party appeal or response to a third party appeal to An Board Pleanala against the Planning Authority…if such eventually arises a separate fee will be negotiated’
Nothing about addiction fees for the drawings for neighbour and he never mentioned anything, nothing was negotiated.

Planning Application is to be submitted tomorrow and he is looking for this payment today.
Is this normal? I do understand that he had to provide additional drawings for our neighbour but he just never mentioned any additional cost.
I would be grateful for people opinion on this.

Many thanks.

Graham

RedDress36 wrote: »

I do understand that he had to provide additional drawings for our neighbour but he just never mentioned any additional cost.
I would be grateful for people opinion on this.

I'd have expected the additional costs to be honest.

The AT quoted for a job, you then added work to the job. What made you assume there would be no charge for the additional work?

At the same time it would have been a good idea for one/both of you to raise the subject in advance.

Penn

RedDress36 wrote: »

During the planning our neighbour (boundary wall) requested some additional drawings and information including a detailed drawings of the new boundary wall including dimensions, construction details, material types, etc. This was all provided by our planner.

The planner sent us yesterday final invoice and it’s including extra €500 for ‘Addiction details and Correspondence with Neighbour ‘. We are really supervise about this additional fee as he never mentioned them to us and nothing was agreed.

Is this normal? I do understand that he had to provide additional drawings for our neighbour but he just never mentioned any additional cost.

Presumably, your neighbour asked you for the additional drawings regarding the boundary wall, and you then asked your agent to do them. That's additional work outside of the planning application. Such drawings wouldn't have been required in planning (though a basic level of that information would have been part of planning). I'm guessing it's likely your neighbour may have objected to your planning had they not been provided with those drawings, but ultimately you engaged your agent to do additional drawings and deal with your neighbour's request. That's additional work.

The additional fee seems reasonable if it was you who asked the agent to do the extra drawings for your neighbour. Even if a fee wasn't agreed, the fee seems reasonable in comparison for the extra work undertaken.

DOCARCH

Additional fee seems reasonable, but really should have been highlighted in advance.

Metric Tensor

Agree exactly with DOCARCH - the additional fee is about right and maybe even a little low if you're Dublin based.

You probably wouldn't feel bad about it if he had mentioned it earlier.

Possibly poor communication but you are not being screwed.

sydthebeat

DOCARCH wrote: »

Additional fee seems reasonable, but really should have been highlighted in advance.

yes agreed....

the additional fees are warranted, but as per his own letter they should have been negotiated / notified first.

and €500 is not bad for what youve described.

think of it as money saved.

if the neighbor had not been happy with the proposal, they could have appealed it to an bord pleanala ... and youd be looking at multiples of €500 to answer their concerns at appeal stage

RedDress36

Thank you everyone for your responses. We called him and came into an agreement to lower the additional fees. We are happy to pay as it was additional work but this it should be agreed earlier to allow us to budget for it. We really enjoyed working with him and didn't want to finish on bad note.