The instinct with a new site is to call an architect. An architect makes the site's potential visible, and a drawing feels like progress. But an architect designs to a brief, and on most sites nobody has yet written one that has been tested against a budget, a planning strategy and a market.
What goes wrong when design comes first
Without a tested brief, the scheme tends to grow to the largest envelope the controls might allow. It is only costed once it is drawn. When the estimate comes back over the feasibility, the options are all expensive:
- redesign and pay the fees twice
- cut the scheme and lose value
- carry on and hope the market moves
Meanwhile the planning application has been shaped around a building that may never be built.
What a development manager sets before design starts
- The brief: what to build, how much of it, for whom, and to what standard, tested against end values and costs.
- The budget and program: a feasibility the design has to stay inside, and a timetable with the decision points marked.
- The planning strategy: the pathway, the likely issues and the evidence the application will need.
- The team: which consultants, in what order, on what scope, so fees are not spent on work the project does not yet need.
The architect is then appointed to design a scheme that already works financially. That is a better commission for the architect as well.
Does it cost more?
It usually costs less. The development manager's fee sits inside the project budget, and the savings come from what does not happen: the redesign that never gets commissioned, the consultant scope that is not duplicated, and the planning application that is lodged once.
At 57–71 Stephenson Street in Cremorne, the feasibility and brief came first. The architect was selected against that brief, and the scheme lodged with the planning authority is the one that stacks up.
When an architect first does make sense
- An owner who already has a tested brief and a budget, and needs a design to take to market.
- A small, simple project where the architect also acts as project lead.
Above roughly $20M of finished value, the brief and budget carry too much risk to leave until later.