ᐅ Is Detailed Planning Recommended for a Single-Family Home?

Hello everyone,

My wife and I have decided to build a house in the near future.
We have already found a suitable plot of land.

A friend who works as an electrician suggested that we look for an architect who also offers detailed planning services.

This turned out to be quite challenging.
Now we have come across this YouTube channel “TGA Kompakt.”

It all sounds convincing at first, especially since we really do NOT want to do anything ourselves and have very little knowledge about the subject 🙁.

But does anyone have any experience with complete building services planning (TGA) for a single-family home? Should we go for it or not?

Best regards and good luck with building / renovating / remodeling

Let me put it this way: it’s not outright nonsense, but a doctor would probably call it an optional self-paid service.

I’ll explain it in the style of the guy from that video channel: imagine you go to an MEP (mechanical, electrical, and plumbing) planner – sounds appealing, right? As a layperson, you can do everything right that easily. He creates a great plan for you, everything correct, completely detailed; you could even hire someone inexperienced to carry it out – nothing can go wrong anymore.

You pay the planner for this, thinking: this has value, you save money elsewhere, which the guy basically explained correctly.

But here’s the catch: what happens if you go to an architect who knows his usual contractors and sends you to a general contractor he trusts because that contractor has proven routines, including with these kinds of things – meaning their standard practice hits the nail on the head based on experience.

That contractor is supposed to work according to the specialist planner’s drawings. Now you have two options: you doubt that his routine will deliver an equivalent result and demand strict adherence to the clever plan. Then the executing specialist does things differently from the versions he masters perfectly. This carries the risk that the outcome won’t be as good as his tried-and-true standard approach.

Or you trust the contractor, whose reference projects show that his rough-and-ready execution is flawless. Then he does it as well as always, just not exactly as in the planner’s design. In that case, you’ve basically hired the clever planner for nothing.

If your second car has leather seats, the MEP planner is right for you – if you’re a regular customer, go with the architect and the one general contractor he works well with, and that’s it.

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I don’t know any homeowner of a single-family house who had an MEP planner. Despite the increasing amount of technology in homes, I still consider it unnecessary, even though my opinion on “modern” technology like heat pumps or ventilation systems is not highly regarded by the trades involved.

Try to get as much as possible from a single source (heating, water, ventilation) and have that planned. Electrical work fits around it, and things like photovoltaic systems can be considered separately since they have very low complexity. That’s sufficient.

Of course, an MEP planner—especially those seen in promotional videos—will see this differently. But they also believe you need an engineer to buy a car, which fortunately is not the case; anyone can choose a car and its accessories from a catalog and have it delivered. Many people don’t even need a salesperson for that.

We have an MEP planner for our single-family house.

You usually hire an MEP planner for commercial properties or a villa in the mid seven-figure range ;-)

I know about 50 homeowners in our community, and none of them had an MEP planner. Well, actually, they all had several—an electrician, a plumbing specialist, a heating engineer... ;-)

You certainly do not need an MEP planner for a standard single-family house. MEP stands for Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing engineering and is involved when the technical requirements for building services (heating, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, ventilation, photovoltaics, solar thermal systems, etc.) become too complex during project planning to be handled by the usual specialized contractors in each trade. Or when multiple building services trades require coordination with advanced control and regulation systems, such as in commercial projects or very high-end, larger private developments.

What you do need, however, is an architect who will manage your construction project from the initial sketch and site-related assessment through to a building and planning law-compliant design, resulting in a permit-ready concept that fits within your desired budget. This work is performed only by an architect authorized to submit building applications, not by an MEP planner. Architects typically offer this detailed planning as part of their core service to clients. This is outlined by the HOAI (Fee Structure for Architects and Engineers), which not only makes an architect’s fees transparent for clients but also structures the planning process of a construction project into nine phases (service phases).

Finding a suitable architect for your project should not be difficult. Search locally in the area where you plan to build. Research architects’ websites online and shortlist candidates based on style and focus. Then you can request an initial, often free, consultation by phone or email, where you can explain your project and budget. For addresses of architects authorized to submit building applications in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), for example, you can contact the North Rhine-Westphalia Chamber of Architects (Architektenkammer NRW, AKNW) in Düsseldorf.

Where is the plot located? Is there a development plan (zoning plan / building permit plan)?