Rationale Design

FEES

The fees charged by the practice are generally in line with the bulk of similar metropolitan architectural practices.

There is no standard schedule of prescribed fees for architecture: the federal Competition Commission is very clear about this! The Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA) does however publish a Fee Guide. The RAIA surveys architectural practices to see how much it costs to provide services across a variety of building types and costs, and graphs the results. One way or another most Architects use this guide as a basis for setting their fees. At the least it represents a reasonable industry standard for fees.

Rationale Design uses this RAIA Fee Guide as a basis for setting its fees

The 3 most common ways of arranging architectural fees are:

FIXED FEE
(for scope as agreed)

PERCENTAGE (%) OF THE COST OF THE WORKS
(for agreed scope of service)

HOURLY RATES
(for work as required or scope as agreed)

Each form has its pros and cons, and sometimes it is appropriate to use a combination of them.

Many people don't want to spend too much time on hourly rates because they are hard to budget to. On the other hand sometimes, at the start of a project, the exact scope of the work, or even the budget, is not known - indeed resolving this can often be the first task. In this case it is impossible to set a percentage fee (percentage of what?) and we cant set a fixed fee if we don't know what the scope of our work is. For this reason we sometimes start on hourly rates and convert to a fixed fee or a percentage when more detail is known.

A percentage fee is the most traditional way to engage an architect. There is an inverse proportionality between the percentage charged and the project cost. This reflects the fact that a small budget job doesn't necessarily take fewer hours than a bigger job (passing a camel through the eye of a needle is tricky!). Conversely a million dollar house doesn't necessarily take twice as long to do as a $500,000 house.

CHOOSING A SCOPE OF SERVICE
Many people don't engage their architect to do the full range of architectural service. Many are able to take over aspects such as tendering, running the building contract, selection of finishes and colours, detailing of wet areas. Indeed some people just need some sketch designs to point them in the right direction. In choosing a scope of service, you should think about:

How much time you can commit to the project
What relevant experience can you bring to the project

Building is expensive and involves a lot of players, but it can also be very satisfying! We will help you to choose how much to bite off.