personally i never use an architect. why waste the money? there are so many outlets for plans online that there is very little left undone. just find an existing plan you like and tweek it a little for your tastes.

daisy, I HEAR you! Your architect is incompetent. Is she licensed? Is there a board to which you can take your complaint? What can you do to recover at least some of what you've paid her?

We wrote off about $5K to someone like your gal. After the dust settled I realized that he probably had a personality disorder, perhaps passive-aggressive. He also represented himself as licensed, but was not! I've since regretted not going after him for the money.

How did you find this sweetheart?

Your architect is acting completely unprofessional and irregardless of your statement that she is a nice person...she is certainly NOT being nice to you!

Does your contract address the issue of meeting deadlines? I would certainly sit down and have a real conversation about the difficult position that she has placed you and your family into with her lack of professionalism. And, when I did so, I would not take the blame as you have alluded you would do!

I hope that this architect will be reasonable, but in truth, you will probably not be able to walk away with your plans at this point, so you can either stick with this situation or you can walk and essentially give away the $$$ and time that you have invested.

BTW, your architect's comments that she couldn't deal with you because she had to do work for other clients (commercial or residential...who cares?! your money is just as good.) instead of working on your project would have angered me even more than the delays. That's just poor form!

Might you go over to the 'Conversations' side of this forum and ask mighty_anvil his opinion?

I just read your post to my DH. (How we enjoy picking at old scabs!) He and I think you are entirely too 'nice'. We'd be calling an attorney right NOW to see what recourse we had.

I waffled a little, wondering how big a project this is, as a huge house *could* take nine months to design. However, you say the architect has NEVER met a deadline. I hope you are not in rental housing, like we were!

Our suburb has 'volunteer' review committees -- DH termed them Bungling Busybodies. No one on the BRB was an architect, but they did have clout. They and their constantly delayed meetings cost us many months, and that was AFTER we got our plans stamped and submitted. The professionals in the building department were fine, but their job performance was tied to dealing with the volunteer boards. The board demands were entirely illegal, having nothing to do with building codes, but to fight meant waiting a year to get on a court docket. I hope you will not face that.

There are many professionals in every field who act like this, and the continue to do it because they know they can get away with it with most of their clients -- the ones who are too "nice" to confront them with their failure to perform on time.

Do her a favor and tell her what's wrong. She's being very unprofessional and you need to make that clear to her. She needs to know that you're the ones who are paying the bills and have the right to control the situation.

Sit down with her and set some hard deadlines. Tell her that you'll turn over the project to someone else if she blows anymore of them. You need to do this in a firm, matter-of-fact way without being in any way nasty or emotional. If she can't take this frankness, you probably are better off having someone else finish the job.

This type of post is often about GCs - he "gets us", we like his work, he never delivers anything on time....There are people that are talented but horrible at time management or the business side of things.

"How hard is it for an architect...to look at floor plans and elevations and recreate them?"

You cannot have another architect recreate the plans from whatever PDFs, hard copies, etc., that you have. She owns the copyright to the design. It is hers, not yours. Not fair, yes, I know. That's the law. So if you want to build this house without her and without risking a lawsuit, you need a copyright release from her. How likely that is, I have no idea. Usually it is unlikely.

She is not going to change. She probably has clients that go to the top of the list, likely connected to builders she always does work with or commercial clients (repeat business), and you will never be one of those clients. If you complain to her about all the missed deadlines I guarantee she will either (1) blame you ("You didn't make it clear that date was important"), or (2) she will promise to meet the deadlines in the futute (won't happen). If you are going to "break up" with her you need to be firm. I mention this because you have been too nice so far. Approach it like you are doing her a favor, that she is obviously very busy and you need more time from her than she is able to give right now, that you will have someone else complete the changes to the plans, that you will pay the balance owed and have her sign a copyright release (VERY IMPORTANT) and you will part amicably. If she refuses to sign the release that is when you get not so nice. Don't yell or swear, but BE FIRM. You say you have been patient, TOO patient, that she has continually missed deadlines that have jeapardized your project, that she has continually made promises and not kept them and that at this point you really think she doesn't value you as a client. Mention some dates and her screw ups with the architectural committee.

And post a question on the conversations side here and hope Mighty Anvil (an architect) replies. Ask him what he would recommend you do re: her and moving on to someone else.

Good luck. You should probably also contact the attorney that reviewed the architects contract with you before you signed it (you did have it reviewed, right?) to get his/her opiniion on your legal options.

It seems to me that every excuse she gives you might as well be translated as, "you're not important enough to me." As in, "you're not important enough to me to submit plans to the city on time," "you're not important enough to me to look at the city's comments on time," and "you're not important enough to me to follow through on a commitment to deliver papers when I say I will." I think her carelessness is disrespectful, and the fact that she's doing it with an apology doesn't mean anything if she doesn't change her behavior.

There are times when it's worth it to put up with someone who's careless this way, and there are times when it isn't. It's up to you if you want to continue with her or not. Sue's notion of couching it as a favor to her is a good one, and I would also suggest asking her to recommend one or two other architects she would trust to take over the project. She might be more graceful about stepping out if she feels she has some input into who takes control next. Even if you don't end up going with her recommendations.

Thank you all for your comments (except for vhehn - seriously, if you want to tell me I'm an idiot (or, conversely, that you are the smartest person in the world), why hide it, just tell me you think I'm a moron and be done with it. You don't know me, and you assume that I'm throwing away perfectly good (and hard-earned, mind you) money because I'm a d*mb*ss. If gloating in front of someone who's down is the way you roll, I'm so glad I don't know you in person.) - 15 hours after the initial discovery of "OMG, it's happened again" (and the resulting pit in our stomaches), our anger and sadness has mellowed a bit, abut we're both intent on salvaging this situation in a professional and drama-free manner.

I probably haven't chewed on the situation enough, but after digesting your comments and putting all the pieces together, I'm inclined to do the following: 1) wait for her response (except I really really really want/need to know if we submitted, and/or if we're submitting on Monday, omg......), 2) unless there's a fantastic reason why Friday didn't go as agreed, request an off-site coffee meeting with the architect and synthesize your comments in to a conversation that says, basically: look, we think you're a really talented architect [she is!], but it's clear you're extremely busy, and maybe too busy to devote the type and timing of attention on our project that we need. It's causing us a lot of unnecessary stress and heartburn, especially this early in what we know will be a stressful year and a half [between the rest of planning and the build]. We see a couple of good solutions: a) now that you know how difficult the slipping of schedule has been on not only the timing of our project but on us personally, if you'd like to continue working on our project, we'd like to continue working with you, but we need hard milestones. [and then discuss the milestones, timing, etc....maybe these need to be in writing.....]. 2) if you're just too busy and don't see that changing, we'd be disappointed but would be willing to transfer the plans to another architect to complete - do you have any that you'd recommend? How do we properly transfer the plans?

As you can tell, I do soft-pedal rather than throw blame in situations like this - I'm very willing to be firm, but it needs to be in my own voice, and unfortunately (I guess), that's my voice when dealing with people that I actually like (err, you "heard" my other voice above, when responding to others!).

chisue - thank you for understanding, and yes, she's licensed, has a nice boutique business, and is actually really talented. she just sucks as client service. We found her as a referral from a neighbor who has (in our opinion) the prettiest new build in the neighborhood - we live in a 50's era rancher town on quarter acre lots in a part of the country where that's considered really big - most of the Bay Area is on 4000-5000 sq ft lots). To his credit, he DID warn us that while she's a terrific architect, she'd be "tough to get a hold of, as she's very busy" (maybe that was neighbor-code for "she'll miss every deadline").

dixiedoodle - agreed, I'm not planning on getting any $ back, so that's not what I'm after. Actually, for the $ we've paid thus far, we ((heart)) the house plan. Yes, in hindsight, the comments that translate to "they're more important than you" are, at best, inappropriate. At the time(s), it seemed more like casual chit-chat.

feedingfrenzy, sue36 and sovra - thank you all - your comments and thoughts are the basis for the planned conversation. We actually *would* like her to see the plans through, just need to figure out how to tell her that we can't continue this way, it's too painful.

I will go post this in Conversations to see in M-A has additional thoughts. What do you all think of the planned conversation, and how would you tweak it?

I think your planned conversation sounds reasonable. Have you ever voiced concerns before when she's been late or have you just listened to her excuses and not pushed further? It may just be she got comfortable from that knowing that it didn't seem like a big deal if she missed things from you guys as you didn't push the issue back then. Your conversation may come as a bit of a surprise to her too so keep that in mind, if that is how you've handled it in the past.

I think if you do continue to work with her you probably need to become assertive each time some expected milestone is missed.

I agree your planned conversation is reasonable. But I don't think I would give her another chance if she (again) missed the milestone date for the architectural committee.

well if you want to hear what i really think. it sounds to me like you are a bit of a marshmellow that is having a hard time accepting the fact that you just blew 13k on a dud of an architect.

GDaisy,
I'm so glad I saw this thread! I feel for you, and I was thinking that we were the only ones with a sloooowwww submittal...we haven't even submitted yet, so you're ahead of us.

I'd also point out to her how NICE it'd be if plans were approved, and you could start the build before rainy season hits, so framing and roofing could be done by then.

Our house designer had said 2 months for his design, but we're going a diff. path than you did. We went in knowing that we'd have to do more work, and so far, he suggests what I need, and I get it. His design was about 2 months, but then I had arranged the survey, the soils report, the grading and drainage report (that's the pending one right now), after finding all these people, and getting bids first. We're at about 6 months, but almost ready to submit. I'm trying to stay on a tight budget, so I knew I'd have to sacrifice time (over quality and budget).
I just wanted to offer support, and hopefully once you have THE TALK with her, she'll realize that this is an issue and improve. Best of luck, and let us know what happens!

I think your planned conversation sounds reasonable. You might also stress to her the damage she is doing to client relationships (I'm sure you're not the only one) by continually missing deadlines and not following through with promises.

Tell her that you think she is a talented architect, but a lousy business woman. If she does not have a support staff (office manager, filing clerks, etc) to do her "busy work" for her, then she most certainly needs one. A good office manager can take care of the scheduling details, as well as visits to town hall to do the actual filings, and would allow her to concentrate on design work.

It certainly sounds like she needs a competent assistant to keep her on track. You classified her as a "boutique" architect. Does that mean she's trying to run her business single-handed? Sounds like that's a major part of her problem.

Good luck.

Happy Saturday, everyone ~

juniork, thank you for the comments - I hope your submittal goes well! We were sort of on the same path - everything that wasn't pure architect was arranged by us (soils report, grading & drainage, site survey), though often with referrals from the architect. We definitely know it's a hands-on process!

chapnc, thank you for the suggestions! i guess by "boutique" I meant she's not one of those large architectual firms - she's owner and principal architect of her business - has 2 or 3 "junior" architects working for her, but she signs off on everything that leaves the office. she also has a couple of office support staff - i've learned to book meetings through her office manager instead of waiting for her to arrange meeting times. :) it's all about management......

she actually phoned us with updates on the process twice, this week! we now know exactly when our plan is up for review by the town's review committee. we haven't had "the talk" yet - given the communication this week, my thought is that going forward, i will be unwaiveringly clear about our expectations, due dates, etc. (I thought I was before, but now it will be a conscious discussion), rather than rehashing history.

oy, what a roller coaster ride. and we haven't even started building! :) one of these days i'll figure out how to post pictures and put the plans up here to share. will be interesting to see what y'all think about our plans for this tiny (compared to so many of your lots!) suburban lot.

> for all your support -

gerberadaisy -

I can empathize. Your architect should assign a "project manager architect" to your project. And, the main architect should sign off and insert herself on key points of the design process.

What I've learned is that it will speed things up greatly if you drive progress through the "project manager architect". Manage that person efficiently and closely, and you will get the results that you want. Don't worry about your main architect so much - she's there for creative vision, political experience (of the city) and ensuring that the junior architect has the process down. Just be sure the manage the junior architect and set expectations and deliverables for the junior architect.

I'm in a similar process as you are - I've been working with an architectural firm since November 2006 (!!) and we haven't broken ground. In the past 1.5 years, we've been through the city's neighborhood character review committee, the city's department of building inspection, we've done the neighborhood notification, we've had neighbors object to loss of view (which are not protected here), we've had neighbors tried to extort us for 250K, we've done soils reports, structural engineering, sun studies (to counter neighborhood objections), we've had to play chicken with the neighbors heading into the city's discretionary review meting, we had to go through mediation between our architect and neighbor's architects, etc etc etc.

Now we are finally ready to submit for the permit. We couldn't have gotten remotely this far without our architect - we're about 85K into the project.

In the meantime, my husband has switched jobs, we've become parents. We're probably looking at another 2 years.

So, I can entirely empathize with what you are going through. Chin up! And remember to manage your junior architect. Call them every 2 days for a status report. Make sure you take meeting minutes and circulate them after every meeting. Do ensure that deliverables are hit - treat managing your architect like managing an employee (but do stroke their ego) and you will do well.

Cheers

I feel sorry for your situation, but must admit I see this alot in my line of work. I currently work for a residential design firm based in Ohio that designs high end custom homes all across the country. I get calls 10 to 15 times a year with clients who are not happy with their architect. For one, she's working with commercial clients as well as residential ones. It's no secret that architects make more money on commercial projects than residential ones. Only about 5% of all architectural billing last year (nationally) was for residential work.
So unfortunately it sounds like your not so high up on her list of priorities. If you decide to part ways with her you could ask for the rights to what has been completed so far so you can take the plans elsewhere. If done nicely she might just ask for the contract to be paid in full first (depending on how the initial contract was set up). If you do look elsewhere I'd recommend finding a firm who concentrates solely on residential work. I have listed my email if you need more help. jay@jkapeladesigns.com