Gus Potter

Not quite. It cost me roughly 250 k in lost wages to go to uni. When I came out I had to start at the bottom of the SE ladder at the age of 44. I sucked it up until I learnt enough about SE stuff and went back to running my own business. So for me I was very lucky as I don't have kids to support. I'm 62 now. It took me about 10 / 15 years to become a really competant and prove to myself SE that I can hold my own against the best. I deliberately write on BH in a foaksy manner, am chatty as I just want folk to have fun. In my day job I do the same until some idiot starts having a laugh. I also do claims work agaist say the NHBC, I'm not chatty, I can be absolutely brutal in this cases. Sometimes it's nice to take folk down a few pegs and rub their noses right in it and make them pay compensation, you get that feeling.. I warned you and now you are f_cked. My financials work like this. I don't have massive pension provision. But I've got a good brain. I recognised that if I educated myself and used my business exerience I can work and have fun well beyond my 70,s.

That is fab news. It doesn't matter whether you are someone like me that chips in with a bit of free professional advice or someone that has just got together enough funds for a deposit on their first home. It's essential that we encourage and share ideas and most importantly the enthusiasm.. which can make you money. The easiest way is to avoid unforced errors, which is essential if younger and building a pot of funds. BH does this as you can see the other mistakes folk make. There are a number of members on BH that are wealthy, if you look back some have come.. milked BH and then gone. Some have stayed and are giving back. I don't resent that, it's just adult life. That said there are many that I know have saved thousands and can't be bothered ( or are just not socially educated) to donate a tenner. But the Mods really need folk to gather round them, give them some support both financially and morally. The current mods at some point will have to hang up their boots. I would love to see BH out lasting me!

Ask your SE, they should have detailed this out already for you. BC are not Structural Engineers. I might chip in as an SE but I would need to see the drawings first. There are lots of different types of raft. Until you know where the uniform loads are , where any point loads are you can't start on the drainage design.

Thank you for the kind words. To expand a bit.. I do this sort of stuff as a day job.. But once you have designed your first hundred steel beams the excitement kind of wears off. I has to be done and you have to knuckle down as it puts bread on the table and vitally impoprtant you are perfoming a Civil duty. You can't be lazy and drop your guard as folks lives are at stake. There is a common miss conception that SE's and Civil Engineers design for the Client alone. This is far from the case. Our primary duty is to the public, that can be anyone that later buys your house for example. It sets us aside from Layers, QS's etc. Architect's fall between the cracks @ETC. They also have to design so the building is weather tight for example, if it's not it can cause deterioration the the stucture. In the round the Architectural profession and Se is very much bound together. That is why you must foster a good design and professional team. At the end of the day they will stand the best chance of delivering what you expect to pay for. I quote Ruskin on the law of economics. There is hardly anything in the world that someone cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price alone are that person’s lawful prey. It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money — that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot — it can’t be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.” My work is also my hobby. I love desinging stuff. I started out as a builder after getting an HND after leaving school, became an SE and then married up that with the stuff I learnt as a builder to become a designer that also does the Architectural side and everything else that interests me. The best bit of my job is taking on the hard an unusual stuff as you have to design from first principles and then justify your design to other professionals who may be critical. It's a test of my knowledge, my communication skills, a bit of diplomacy, presentation.. all backed up with hard maths and probablility. Yes there still is the SE sums, the admin, sorting out contracts.. but at the end of the day after forty years of learning I kind of feel I've arrived and I derive immense enjoyment from the creative side and working with folk who know I'm not talking shite. If you look up the definitions of what an SE it often says it is someone who practices the art and craft of design. This is what lots of folk are doing on BH.. they often just don't know they are! It's my job to say.. hey folks you are doing great work, lets see how we make it work to get buiding regs / planning approval etc. I hope you are in broad agreement with my above sentiments. Keep posting and don't be a stranger. Take note of this. I learn loads form BH, every day is a school day for me. The folk on BH are often advocating the latest design ideas and innovating. Many come from different backgrounds and are highly knowledgeable both technically and with huge life experience. If I want to keep up it would be daft for me not to take BH folks ideas and ask.. how to I translate that into something that can be practically built. Lastly.. a pure pitch for BH and the mods. They are doing a fund raiser which I support.

Post a photo of where you are are the moment.

It's hard to argue with something like this, best is to just smile politely and wish them the best of luck. Well done you. Big savings to be made here. One practical example is say you have to deal with the water board or other service companies You can be hanging on the phone for ages, then get cut off!. When, I can, encourage Clients to do this initial work but brief them first on the right questions to ask. I get paid for guiding, you save money, doing something yourself and being proactive. It is also beneficial as Client gets a deeper understanding of the project mechanics and who the desing all fits together. They feel they have more control and are better informed. In the example above I allocated 8 days of director time. I had a feeling when I wrote that it would provoke a response, probably incredulous mostly, some may have had a choking fit. But I set it up in the context of a small practice. The director is not trousering £100.00 an hour. That rate has to pay for admin, PI insurance, Software ( expensive), unpaid time spent generating the buisiness in the first place and a whole host of other expenses. Actually the £100.00 an hour is likely too cheep. I allocated 15% profit. You can in life work for someone, often with less financial risk. When you run a business you have to build some capital to cover bad payers, the govenment changing the tax and rating system .. and its fair you should be able to take some reward at the end of the day, maybe have enough to build a pension fund similar to what someone in the NHS may have? Your point on enjoying working with your Architect and have enjoyed working together is hugely valid. This has hidden value as they are invested in the project. I engourage this. Often I keep an eye on my projects even though my formal brief may be concluded. Clients often phone me during the build and say.. Gus what about this? Often with a comment I can save thousands or just reassure them.. and that kind of puts my design fee into perspective. Another way of looking at this. If I save two weeks of tradespersons time that can amount to often over 2.0k.. On BH there are a few folk that do desing / project management as a day job. There used to be a guy called the R_Sole ( something like that) who worked in Scotland, highly knowlegeable but got hounded / many thought they knew better and.. he left. There was a bit of a gap then @ETC turned up with his valuable Architect input. In terms of fee rates for SE's / Architect's I am confident we can justify our rates (which may not be the cheepest but maybe best value) and what you get for your money. Of course there are bad Architect's and SE's, but this is often due to a lack of experience rather than them being chancers. One key thing that can cause you to fall is poor communication with the Client. Fom time to time a Client may ask me something that I can't answer straight away. I just fesse up and say I don't know! , but I'm going to go off and find out, then work it out and give you a reasoned and evidence based answer. If you are generally happy and have a good personal relashionship then grow together, pay their current rate. Last thing today I got asked by a Contractor I work with to come and look at a job where the Scottish SE (SER Engineer) has been sacked by the Client, from my initial findings I get a smell of profession incompetancy. Their Architect has dropped some clangers. They are in mid build. They told me what fee they had paid to the SE (SER Engineer) .. I can't see straight away that it's unlikely they could have produced an competent design for that amount of fee money. I'll not post much more but my initial suggestion was let's see if we can find some tools that might encourage the SE to want to be "unsacked" and the Architect to come back to the table in an "enthusiastic manner" on our terms.

I can see how you might not follow. I said something like this: Now typical rates for a structural engineer working under the IR35 scheme in the UK are about £350 to £500 a day, equates to £45 - £70 an hour as they get paid for a full 8 hour day. Much depends on experience! I'm taking this as a new build, much of the below is just general and intended for all BH folk to let folk see a bit of what is behind the curtain. Lastly please excuse my spelling and grammer as I'm off duty. For a bit of fun I've copied your brief items 1 - 8 below (made it gold colour text and italic) and tried to guess the time (with a bit of interpretation) that I may set against each item to work out the time. Once you know the time you set the rate.. then add profit and VAT if applicable. It's going to be a guess but hopefully it lets BH folk see how someone like me puts together a fee quote and the thought process behind it. I've put my own slant on the time. Oh now.. you know Lawyers do it but the 1/4 hour or less and have different rates. If any want to quibble then convert to legal rates.. and we can work back from there... just joking. No worries... The fees to date cover items 1-8 below. 9-21 are another couple of thousand. We have planning approval, have discharged the pre-commencement conditions and we're probably 50% of the way through the remaining points. PREPARATION 1. Development of initial statement of requirements into the Design Brief on behalf of the client confirming key requirements and constraints. Half a day to meet you, ask questions, listen to what you want,understand how you live. Interrogate you a bit, gently. Work out if we can get along. If the personal chemistry stinks then walk away. Often I find folk are actually nervious and that comes over at times as a bit aggressive on the Client side. You have to have the skills to recognise that and cut folk a fair bit of slack. Half a day to do a bit of background reasearch, quick due dilligence on you, the Client. Half a day to think about the design, what the Client has told you and what they have not. When I go to meet knew Clients I observe how the live curently, I encougrage them just to talk about themselves. Say husband and wife how they try and communicate their ideas. Once I'm in the room the answers they give are often different from the way they talk to each other. One day to put together a design brief of requirements / constraints with some ideas on how you go about meeting thier requirements. This can be things as simple as.. we want a traditional pantry. We want that to be cool and ventilated for example.. plays a bit of havoc with the U Values but if that is what is required then srecognise that. 2.5 days work. For context: You are running a small Architectural or Engineering practice with 2 / 3 Directors and a few staff and generating plenty leads then the hit rate should be between 1 in 3 to 1 in 5 jobs. Less than 1 in 3 and you are not maximising profit. More than 1 in 5 you are wasting money. This is an old accounting rule of thumb. Many practices have repeat customers so you can maybe drop the price a bit due to regular custom in these cases. On a personal note.. you have to want to do the job. You are going to invest in the project and if your not then the Client will sniff that out, it's not a good look! 2. Surveyor and measure the house. DESIGN Ok on a new build you get a setting out engineer that has all the right equipment. Their stuff can cost 15 - 20k for a high end total station. Say a day for them. Get their info, take the data into you CAD package and think about what you are seeing. 1 day 2 days work 3. Prepare a number of sketch designs as your brief and for discussion purposes. This can include hand sketches, 3D computer modelling and physical models. 2D cad sketeches, use colour to helop visualse: 3 days 3D This is something that Architects love but usually is complete mince and gets put in the bin later. Hand sketches fine. Physical Models.. few these days can do it. 2 weeks. At this stage the contract is signed and the objective is to get the key information you need to communicate with the Client. It's early stage stuff. You can much more quickly adapt 2D drawings than a 3D model. The secret is to produce lots of 2D concept drawings to narrow down the options before you go into 3D mode, if you ever have to. Ok say 4 days for this item. 4. Prepare final design/make alterations in accordance with your instructions this will be weighted at 20% of the design fee. 3 Days Planning 5. Prepare planning drawings and other information if needed. 3 days for the planning drawings, making the submissionand all the paper work etc. other information is open ended, can't put a time on that as no idea how much work is involved. 6. Submit the Full Plans and Design Statement. 2.0 days, design statement 1 day as you have already spent a bit of thinking time. Say 3.0 days. 7. Act as clients agent during the planning process and advise on planning requirements. 2.0 days 8. Notify the neighbouring owners of the construction under the Party Wall Act etc. 1996, prepare notification letters only under the act. Applcable to England only, not my bag but say 2.0 days. The above adds up to about 21.5 days work. This will be roughly split between a senior person and a technician. Split it 3/4 technician and 1/4 director. 3*21.5 days / 4 = 16.0 day technician @ £30.00 per hour = £ 3870 1*21.5 / 4 = = 8 days director @ 100.00 per hour = £4300 Sum of above is £8170. Add profit @ 15% = £ 9395 ex vat. Now the above is probably going to raise an eyebrow or not. Someone like me who just works for themselves will be cheaper. But I can tell you that for 4.0k you are not going to get much quality information that you can later use. I would say that they are too cheep and you are likely to get stung. For items 9 onwards there is no way you are going to get any useful information for 3.0k. You are likely going to get absolutely pelted by your builder and are putting yourself at massive risk. |Your advisors should be assessing your competancy, ability, h ow you are going to manage this, what work you are going to do yourself and so on, advising you on your chances of satisfactory copmpletion and telling you where you are likely going to need support and then detailng and drawing accordingly. That is the skill you pay a good designer for.. they recognise you weak spots and where you are strong. Now actually all I have to do is save you a couple or three week site labour time and I've washed my face even if the fees appear higher at the outset. Sorry to dish out the tough love. But you are tying you own hands at this stage. To do this amount of design work for such a low fee.. you designer would be much better off working a Tesco/ Are they insured?

I ask my self. The idea of a balcony is that you can see out. At times you may want privacy.. but you use say pot plants for that. You also want to do a bit of sun bathing. There will be a few eco enthusiasts that do this but most in real life will give it a swerve. Why don't they just fix solar to the walls instead?

Ok in my day job I spec windows doors etc. Now on my own home I've got some high end aluminium windows, doors and roof lanterns. The deal on the headline is that the overall installtation has a warranty for ten years.. but the fine print says the glass units are valid for only seven years. I was pleased with the product on my own house. I ask my Clients to have a look at their product. Now I'm in year six and one glass unit is starting to mist up. I think the supplier is going to be keen to fix it, as I pass business their way. Here is a key point. There are loads of folk building ordinary self build houses that are trying to get the U values down.. but they don't realise that the glass may fail after 7 years and they have no come back. It is financially complete bonkers to spend money on high end glazing units that may be out of warranty in seven years.. but still there are folk on BH doing this. Ok if you have loads of cash to burn / may be dead in ten years time then fine. But for young folk just starting out it's complete nonsence. I my case the window supplier is not far and locally based. Buying stuff from abroad comes with greater risk! It's like that wee baldy chap on on Dragons Den that says he can get everything cheeper from China. If you want to buy windows then the two things that matter most are; the warranty on the glass units and the back up advice on installation. It's very rare that the actual frame fails.

Great thanks from me for responding to my question.. which was what did you get for your 1%. Say your build cost was 400k then 1% is 4.0k. For items 1 -8 that is ok ish but most of the info will be general. The rest is much more expensive.

On balance the chances are that provided you did not add too much water then your founds will be ok. For all. I reported on foundations in a dispute that was about to go to court. It was an extension that had been badly built, BC got involved and asked me to verify as an SE that the founds / concrete stength was ok with the added water.. I got the concrete delivery ticket and eventually found out just how much water had been added to the mix. I then had to back calculate the reduction in concrete stength with the added water and show the founds would still be ok. In this case I could. In laymans terms if you add water it means there is less cement / aggregate per cubic metre. It's like say dense hardwood with lots of cellulose, small cells compared with softwood with larger cells and less cellulose matrix. A hard wood has more "stuff" thus stronger. The same principle roughly applies to concrete. The mechanics work a bit like this. Below is me taking a chart, working out the change in what we call the water to cement ratio and arriving at a reduced concrete strength. And the spot mix ticket looked like this in 2022.

For less than 1.0% you must have got the most basic service which is not for all. Can you let us know just what you got for your 1%?

Food for thought: Another way of approaching this is to ask. What would it cost you to get a washing machine repair Engineer? Say £50- 60 quid an hour? Ok they have a "down time" that they don't get paid for as they may be at your house for an hour then have to drive to the next job, but someone has to pay for that. Now typical rates for a structural engineer working under the IR35 scheme in the UK are about £350 to £500 a day, equates to £45 - £70 an hour as they get paid for a full 8 hour day. Much depends on experience! Go to a self employed SE/ Architectural Designer like me who has no employees then the rates are about the same except that I have overheads. These are primarily my software, my PI insurance and admin costs. Admin / business generating costs. Admin is admin, I pay an accountant, have to keep records, a secure data base etc.. but quite a lot of time is spent generating business that a contractor under IR 35 does not have to do. Turning now to say a small Architect practice with four or five employees that are innovative, expanding and so on. The overheads shoot up, often dramatically. How long is the string? Well it has no end. This is a summary for sake of conversation. It used to be in the old days that say Architect's, Engineers, Surveyors got a percentage of the build cost. But as the market got more competetive and folk like say MBC timber frame (the list is endless) came along and offered a design service then the main designers.. like Architect's, SE's just shifted part of the design work onto them. Now all that worked ok for a bit.. but now it's got to the stage where the lack of coordination is really causing problems. This is not helped by TV programmes ect that often suggest you can pick builder and design sevices like something off a barber shop menu and it will all be ok at the end of the day. My take: It's vitally important to understand what you designer is offering. Not just in terms of say doing a few drawings but also their understanding of how the design process works practically and how you go about communication to and finding the right builder. . I find that often once I explain this "added value" then many are happy to pay for a service that includes much more than drawings and some structural calculations. In the round once you become a competant designer then the rest is down to communication.. which is a skill in itself. 2% of a build cost for an Architect Take a house extension at 100k.. you won't get much for your two thousand pounds. take a new build at 300k with all the work that goes along with that, dealing with the roads, environments, water board.. all that stuff all for 6.0k. Just maybe but I would not do it as I know I would have to cut corners.. which will come back to bite eveyone. Quite often these days I break down my quotes / estimates into how long I'll spend on each element of the design. I'll maybe say.. two days to survey the site, at £xx amount per hour and so on. I find Clients embrace my transparency. It is very rare that they come back and say my hourly or daily rate is too high. In the round I don't think applying a percentage fee cost works anymore.. you have to be much more streetwise.

Well done you! Keep us posted.

As purely an observation. Many posts on BH relate to BC / Planning and in the round tend to take, let's say.. a disparaging view. In my day job as an SE I often get phone calls about this kind of stuff. Many calls go along the lines of.. Gus can you give us a report that says it's all ok. In particular we would like you to say by all Ok we mean.. everything is ok.. structure, insulation , condensation control etc! We would love you to say this as we want to maybe get lending and later on when we come to sell we need your paper work. But to report (and for my PI to cover you and I) I need to know if there is anything that is going to compromise say timbers.. hence I need to look at say condensation risk, weathering details and so on. I could of course say.. the structure is fine.. but caveat, as I must do, to protect myself.. and then the lender will ask for more detail. We end up back at square one. Nick. In technical, insurance and SE reporting terms this needs clarification. Most of this stuff is designed for a 50 year life span. SE's design on the probability of the maximum load occuring over a 50 year period. It is fool hardy to say if after 20 years it's going to be fine going onwards as the structure may have not been fully loaded up yet. In the next 30 years it may be subject to the full design load. This is the difference between someone like me that is going to have to carry the can if someone gets hurt later, or a claim is made and someone who has lots of experience.. but only 30 years of it! This is not an abstact concept. An easy example is say a loft conversion. You have a kid.. they grow up to be a rugby prop, they ask their mates round to the attic room, they party, there is a bit of "dynamic" loading. Very quickly you can exceed the design load and eat into the factor of safety. Another is snow loading on a roof. Now over the last decades we have not had lot's of snow. But the climate is changing. The air can be warmer, the cold fronts more defined. The risk is that we get a heavy dumping of wet and heavy snow that traditionally would blow off a roof to some extent. Wet snow just sits there. I base my SE judgements partly on the experience of SE's and Civil Engineers over that last 200 years (often more that) which have been woven into the modern design codes we use today. This then allows insurer's to write premiums and banks to lend. Now insurers understand how SE's approach risk and vis versa, the probability of failure and where they can seek recourse to say an SE's policy. Probably the thing you should be concerned with most is to ensure it is not going to fall down or later the structure start protesting. Really!