ᐅ Is it beneficial to work with an architect together with a general contractor?

This is how we proceeded. A friend who is an architect designed the house for us. Since she was unable to work for us due to her employment situation, we took the plans to various general contractors (GCs) and requested quotes for turnkey construction, including the planning services. In our case, the architect’s design was only used to obtain comparable offers from the GCs.

What do you expect? If the general contractor is too expensive, there is probably something included that you won't get later. If you plan to do some work yourself, those costs may be excluded. A floor plan from a company catalog, however, does not replace an architect 🙂

marcus86 schrieb:

We have now found a suitable option. The house is from a large general contractor, but we would prefer not to build with them for cost reasons. We have the floor plan and other key specifications of the house.

2. Is it possible to approach a general contractor right away with the floor plan and specifications to get a cost estimate for the total project?

Strictly speaking, you are not allowed to reuse the floor plan without permission from the architect who designed it. It is protected by copyright!

Best regards, Bauexperte

Thank you all for your responses,

Payday schrieb:
What are you expecting? If the general contractor (GC) is too expensive, there’s probably something included that you won’t get later. Of course, if you do some work yourself, those tasks might be excluded. But a floor plan from a company’s catalog doesn’t replace an architect.

Exactly. For example, that would be the KfW 40 standard. For us, a gas boiler with solar water heating, a ventilation system with heat recovery, and solid insulation are enough to meet the KfW 70 standard. With an additional compressor pump and a chimney, you could probably reach KfW 55.
However, I also assume that the general contractor wants to finance their show homes somehow. In my opinion, they recover this through relatively high prices.
That’s why my idea was to have the house planned by an architect and then contact local GCs. This way, you could get different offers. The question is whether this makes sense, or if you end up paying for the architect’s services twice? And how far should the architect’s involvement go, including the building permit / planning permission?
I want to contact a GC because I expect better cost transparency than when building with an architect.

Bauexperte schrieb:
Strictly speaking, you are not allowed to reuse the floor plan without the consent of the architect who designed it. It is protected by copyright!

I don’t want to use the floor plan exactly as is. Some small changes will be made, like enlarging the bathroom and moving two windows.

DerBjoern schrieb:
That’s how we did it. A friend who is an architect planned the house for us. Since she couldn’t work for us professionally due to her employer’s rules, we took the plans to different GCs and requested turnkey offers including the planning services. In our case, the architect’s plans only served to get comparable offers from the GCs.

Would you say in hindsight that this was a good approach, or could you have planned directly with a GC? How much did the offers differ?

Hello,

marcus86 schrieb:

I don’t want to copy the floor plan exactly. I want to change a few minor details. I was thinking of enlarging the bathroom and moving two windows.

Slightly shifting interior walls does not affect the copyright of the design. Windows are not inspected by the building authority as long as your application is submitted through the simplified approval process (building permit / planning permission).

I find your handling of others’ intellectual property to be questionable!

Regards, Bauexperte

marcus86 schrieb:

Would you say that it made sense in hindsight, or could you have planned directly with a general contractor? How much did the quotes differ?

We are satisfied with how things went. However, it should be noted that the architect’s services didn’t cost us anything. We requested quotes from six general contractors based on the plans. Three didn’t submit any offers, and the other three were very close in price, at least after negotiations were finished... Contractor 1 = TotalX, Contractor 2 = TotalX + $500, and Contractor 3 = TotalX + $1,500. We ultimately chose Contractor 3. But from the prices, you can see that all three contractors had pretty similar calculations.