Construction Administration

Lately I have had people ask me if I would consider giving them drawings to get a building permit with, and that's it.  They are looking for ways to save money, and they think that by not hiring an architect to do Construction Administration, they will have more money to spend on the acutal construction itself.  

There are sooooo many reasons to keep your Architect for Construction Administration.  These are the boring reasons:  

• First, the drawings and specifications prepared by the Architect might not be used as intended or substantially adhered to by the contractor.  If problems subsequently occur with construction, the design professional may be embroiled in allegations that the documents were negligently prepared.  
• Second, there will be no opportunity before construction to find and correct possible errors or omissions in the construction documents.  Clearly, correcting problems on paper is much cheaper, faster, and easier than correcting them in the field. 
• Third, if the Architect does not evaluate the work of the contractor as it progresses, the opportunity is lost to have construction defects and deficiencies corrected before it is too late.

The photo above shows the exciting (at least for me) reason why you should use an Architect for construction administration:


Many ideas just pop into my head while constuction is underway.  The photo is of the Long Island Cauliflower Distributer barn renovation in Orient.  The corregated metal with the letters painted on it used to be located on the exterior of the house.  When it was time for demolition, we (the Owners and I) decided to keep the letters and siding, because of the local significance of LICD and for nostalgic reasons.   We were going to replace them in their original location, but then we decided to move them to a more prominent location on the exterior.  Later, we decided to move them inside.  I truly believe that the collaboration of Owner and Architect was essential to this decision, which we are all thrilled with.