Process - Six stages, held honestly.
South African architectural appointments are scoped in six work stages. Here is what each one delivers, so you can read this page against a fee proposal line by line.
Inception
Establish what you are actually trying to build, and whether the site and the budget agree with it. This is the stage most likely to be rushed and most expensive to get wrong.
For a hospital or a specialist facility this is where clinical briefing happens — departments, adjacencies, bed and theatre schedules. For a commercial or residential project it is site constraints, zoning rights, and an honest first view on what the budget buys.
Included in this stage
- Client brief and requirement schedule
- Site and zoning analysis
- Statutory and approval route review
- Preliminary budget and programme view
Concept and viability
Test the brief against the site in plan and section, at a level of resolution that can be costed. Options where options matter, and a recommendation rather than a menu.
The output has to be viable, not just attractive. A concept that cannot be built for the available budget is not a concept — it is a delay.
Included in this stage
- Concept design and options appraisal
- Area schedules
- Feasibility and viability report
- Client presentation and sign-off
Design development
Resolve the design with the other disciplines in the room. Structure, MEP, fire, landscape and interiors are all making decisions that constrain the architecture, and the architecture is constraining theirs.
This is where compliance routes get locked in — energy under SANS 10400-XA, fire, accessibility, health licensing. Chosen here they are cheap. Retrofitted at submission they are not.
Included in this stage
- Developed design drawings
- Cross-discipline coordination and clash resolution
- Outline specifications
- Local authority submission drawings
- SANS 10400-XA compliance strategy
Documentation and procurement
Produce a drawing set and specification a contractor can price accurately and build from without a queue of questions. The measure of this stage is the RFI count during construction, and it is a fair one.
Tender documentation, evaluation support and recommendation — including the awkward work of comparing bids that have been qualified in different ways.
Included in this stage
- Construction documentation and details
- Full specifications
- Tender documentation and bills of quantities coordination
- Tender evaluation and recommendation
Contract administration and inspection
Administer the building contract, inspect the works, resolve what the drawings did not anticipate, and certify what is actually complete rather than what is claimed to be.
On refurbishments and additions in operating buildings — a hospital, a mall, an airport — this stage is mostly sequencing. Every phase must hand back a facility that still works.
Included in this stage
- Site inspections and progress reports
- RFI and instruction management
- Payment certification and change control
- Phasing management in live facilities
- Snag lists and practical completion
Close-out
Final accounts, as-built records, guarantees and the defects period. Unglamorous, routinely neglected, and the thing you will need in five years when something fails and nobody can find the drawing.
Included in this stage
- As-built documentation
- Operation and maintenance information
- Defects liability management
- Final account and close-out report
What does not change - The stages are standard. The discipline is the differentiator.
Every architect in South Africa works to these six stages. What varies is how honestly each gate is held.
- No stage closes on a promise. A stage is complete when its deliverables exist, not when the programme says it should be. Carrying unresolved work forward is how a two-week problem becomes a two-month one.
- Compliance is designed, not appended. Energy, fire, accessibility and health licensing routes are chosen in design development while they are still free to choose.
- Coordination is a deliverable. Cross-discipline coordination is scheduled and reported like any other work item, because if it is not scheduled it does not happen.
- The client hears bad news first. Programme and budget risk is reported when it appears, not when it becomes unavoidable. This occasionally makes for an uncomfortable meeting and reliably makes for a cheaper project.
Tell me about your project
Whether it is a brief that needs shaping, a design that needs an independent pair of eyes, or a project that needs someone to hold the whole thing together — say which one it is, and you will get a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it.