Teach your clients well: an ounce of prevention will save a ton of billable hours

Residential Architect, May, 2004 by Cheryl Weber

architect Scott Guyon, AIA, thinks of his clients as heroes. Of the new homes built in central Kentucky last year, only about 10 percent were designed by architects. So, he figures, the relatively few brave souls who request his services are not ordinary people. They have a higher threshold for uncertainty than most, and they've got faith that the reward will be worth the moments of fear and loathing, which are inevitable. Even so, they are utterly human. "I would say the biggest problem any client will face is the workings of his own mind during this process," says the Lexington, Ky.-based architect, as though he were a psychologist.

In some ways, he is. We live in an instant gratification society, one that's accustomed to buyer-protection plans, escape clauses, and consumer advocates. But unlike other purchases, architecture is a piece-by-piece venture in which clients have huge sums of money at stake and little recourse or control. In that sense, "much of this process is like getting a life-threatening disease," Guyon says. "Over the course of a year, they can talk themselves into a very high level of anxiety. It's a constant shepherding process."

Every architect has a story or two about the client from hell, the one who insists that the veneer on the $50,000 cabinetry isn't what she ordered, even though her signature is on the back of the sample; the one who picks apart every invoice; or the client who wants to be the GC. This column isn't about those people. Architects are supposed to recognize the warning signs and send potential troublemakers on their way--politely, of course. But even perfectly good projects for reasonable people can go terribly wrong. When it comes to clients, certain problems crop up like clockwork, unless there are safeguards to avoid them.

word perfect

As an attorney for architects and engineers, Eric Singer of Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon in Lisle, Ill., has seen all the bad things that can happen on a project. And the conventional wisdom still holds true: Almost all of them can be tagged to misunderstandings or unreasonable expectations that don't get corrected at the outset. Most, he says, can be avoided by going over a carefully worded contract with clients. "I like AIA contracts as a starting point for their boilerplate and details a lot of people wouldn't think about," Singer says. "On the other hand, there are lots of things in the AIA documents that architects don't understand. They're big and scary and onerous. You can create a letter of agreement as a good compromise and use it to educate clients, but you need legal help to draw up the letter."

For example, most architects see themselves as perfectionists, but that can work against them. Here's where a good contract puts things in perspective. Karen Erger, an attorney and insurance agent with Holmes Murphy & Associates, based in Des Moines, Iowa, sees a lot of client-drafted con tracts that want to hold their architect to "the highest standard of care." While every architect aspires to that, the clause is not insurable if there is a claim. "What that means is that the contract isn't fully insurable because you've agreed to perform perfectly, versus the tort standard of ordinary care," Erger says. "Those extreme things are drafted by clients who really want to protect themselves, but they're doing a disservice by raising coverage issues where there really should be none."

More to the point, the clause raises the opportunity to set clients straight about the vagaries of design and construction. Erger likes to relay the story of the engineer who stood up at a conference and said that he tells clients he's never designed a perfect project. "That's a pretty hard thing to say to clients you've just wooed and won," she says. "But talk about the fact that there may be delays. Clients will need a contingency fund to cover those."

Miscommunication about when the design phase ends and construction documents begin can also result in contention, says Singer. The agreements architects use often omit details about the development phases, he explains. So clients don't understand that once you start construction drawings, it will cost them extra money to move things around. "Having them sign off on the design is a way of educating them that they'll incur an extra tee if they make a change from that point on," he says. "Be clear about charging an hourly wage for the extra work."

best estimates

The biggest threat to a client's loss of faith, of course, is a construction bid that's over budget by several hundred thousand dollars. To avoid bitter disappointment, Sprinkle Robey Architects in San Antonio, Texas, is careful not to do any design work until the owners' wishes are firmly aligned with their budget. Once design is in full swing, and preferably with a contractor on board, the architects will offer an "opinion of probable cost," says Davis Sprinkle, working off a software spreadsheet that is continually being updated based on meetings with local contractors and figures from industry-standard costing books.