How to choose an architect, and the signs that say this is not the one

I am writing this knowing that it is an odd thing to do: an architecture practice explaining how to distrust an architect. But somebody’s bad experience with a colleague costs all of us, and nearly every one of them could have been avoided with two free enquiries and six questions.

None of the signs that follow is a matter of taste or of style. Every one of them can be checked with a document or with a concrete answer.

First: check that they are one

To practise architecture in Colombia two things are needed: the degree and the professional registration card of the Consejo Profesional Nacional de Arquitectura, the national architecture council. And the law goes further: to enter into contracts you have to present the registration and state its number in the contract.

The register is public and free, and it has a quirk worth knowing before you try it:

• —A search of the register, by document or by registration number, in the CPNAA virtual office.
• —A Certificado de Vigencia Profesional, free of charge. It is the document worth asking for, because it evidences the registration and, on top of that, the absence of sanctions.
• —The list of sanctioned professionals, which the CPNAA publishes with name, registration number and suspension dates.

The prohibition that describes a real practice

An architect is expressly forbidden to "lend their signature, whether free of charge or for payment, to authorise drawings that have not been studied, checked or executed personally".

That rule was not written in a vacuum. If somebody offers to "find you someone to sign" the drawings, they are proposing exactly what the rule forbids. And there is a detail worth being clear about: whoever signs is whoever answers for it. If the person who signed did not draw, there is nobody to go to when something goes wrong, because the one who drew does not appear and the one who appears does not know.

The nine warning signs

1. They will not give you their registration number

Or they are uncomfortable with the question. It is the simplest sign and the most conclusive, because the answer costs nothing.

2. They offer you "all-inclusive" at a round price

An architect cannot sign the structural design or the soil survey. It is not a commercial policy: the law reserves those signatures. Whoever offers you all-inclusive is either subcontracting — and ought to be telling you so — or is going to find somebody to sign, which is the previous sign.

3. They charge by dates and not by deliverables

The only methodology published in Colombia splits the fee by deliverable, not by calendar: outline scheme, concept design, drawings for filing, permit obtained, complete drawings and details, supervision during the works. Every milestone can be checked.

4. They show you permit drawings as though they were the project

The drawings a permit application is filed with are not enough to build from. The architectural project is "all the information needed for the construction to be executed correctly": details of joinery, stairs, bathrooms, façades, tiling, ceilings, floors, and the specifications.

Handing over the permit drawings and saying the work is finished is the commonest reason things end up improvised on site later — and the reason the budget runs over.

5. They promise you a total programme without asking you anything

The only period with any backing in the rules along the whole route is the 45 working days for the study of the permit application. Everything else depends on the project, on the municipality and — above all — on how fast you decide.

An architect who gives you a total programme on the first call, without having seen the plot or knowing who decides in your household, is giving you a number, not a programme.

6. They do not talk to you about the soil survey

The soil survey conditions the foundations, the foundations condition the structure and the structure conditions the architecture. Anybody who does not mention it in the first conversations is either planning to draw it in afterwards or planning not to do it.

7. They treat the permit as somebody else’s paperwork

The rule puts the procedure before the authority inside the architectural project, and ties a slice of the fee to the permit obtained, not to the permit filed. If your architect tells you that "you sort that out with the curaduría", they are handing you back the most technical part of the commission.

8. They do not want to sign a contract

The fee rule requires that there be a written record. And there are three clauses where every argument gets lost, and which a good contract settles:

• —How many revisions are included. No Colombian rule fixes a number; that is why it has to be written down. What the rule does give is who pays: except for an error or omission by the architect, the modification is charged to the client.
• —Who owns the drawings. They are works protected by copyright. The assignment of the economic rights must be in writing to be valid, and if it does not say for how long, it is limited to five years.
• —What happens if you cancel. The rule provides for charging the work executed, with a minimum, and it adds a condition worth understanding before signing: partial drawings may not be used to execute the works.

9. They tell you they will also run the works, in the same contract

Architectural site supervision, technical site management and interventoría — independent monitoring on the client’s behalf — are three different contracts, with three different functions, and often three different people. Mixing them into a single price is not necessarily bad faith, but it is a contract in which nobody knows afterwards what was engaged.

The six questions for the first call

1. 1What base do you calculate the fee on? It should be the construction cost, without the land.
2. 2How is it split by deliverable? If the split runs by dates and not by deliverables, there is no way to verify anything.
3. 3What is left outside? They should name the soil survey, the structural design, the topography, the curaduría charges and the delineation tax without you having to ask.
4. 4Who signs each drawing? The structural and geotechnical ones have to be signed by a civil engineer.
5. 5How many revisions are included, and when is a modification charged?
6. 6Your professional registration number? So you can check it yourself, free, in two minutes.

An architect who answers those six without discomfort is telling you something more important than their price.

What is not a warning sign

For symmetry, it is worth saying what gets ruled out wrongly:

• —That they charge more than somebody else. Architectural fees in Colombia have had no compulsory tariff for decades, and the guides in circulation contradict each other by a factor of three. Price on its own tells you nothing.
• —That the practice is small. What matters is who signs and who answers for it, not how many desks there are.
• —That they have never done a house exactly like yours. Hardly any house resembles another. What is being assessed is the method, not the catalogue.
• —That they tell you no. An architect who explains why what you are asking for does not fit the rules, or does not fit the budget, is saving you the problem rather than creating it.

In short

Ask for the registration number, check it against the register, ask for the Certificado de Vigencia Profesional and put the six questions. It is twenty minutes and two free enquiries.

That is very little next to what it costs to find out afterwards that the person who signed was not the person who drew.