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Yeah, I'm not bitter about it. There were times I was a little miffed.
I do think that their process has room for improvement in the first 1-3 phases of the schedule bc the costs were fairly out from what we were first presented with, to once we were at stage 4-5. Which wouldn't be a huge issue if you hadn't paid £10-15k to get to that point.Once you commit to the build, then costs can vary and unforeseen things happen, especially in old houses.
You are also paying a premium for a turnkey service which reduces the amount of stress - something which having had quite a stressful 12m with work/family I was very grateful for. I'm a layman about these things and would rather pay someone to deal with it than have it stress me out.
My wife worked out the final cost yesterday :'/
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Tenderloin
EC are a rare beast of a design led architecture firm who actually also build what they design via their contracting wing. So in theory they are a step ahead of a regular firm who will either have a QS do a cost review or make a broad guess. Or not - and wait till tender returns come back high er.
Even so I gather on this project the initial design needed to be revised to meet budget.
My point is that until you resolve any design to a reasonably high level of detail - you’ll never get a real idea of costs. And bearing in mind the design and planning process may take 6-12 months + it’s no surprise that often tenders come in more than expected at the outset.
Some clients will weather this because they want what they want - others can’t and have to compromise.
Within reason - If you start a conversation with a client by being negative about what they want to achieve given the budget - the risk is they go elsewhere to someone else who tells them what they want to hear.
I think it’s unrealistic to expect architects to also be cost consultants (and yet the RIBA domestic schedule of services seems to suggest we should be)Architects are not trained in this at any point.