Once you have established if you need local authority Planning and/or Building Control approval, you will need to employ the services of an architect. If you don’t know who to use, contact us at our offices, and we can give you the contact details of several from which you can choose. As with all things, some are better than others! Plans will be required to enable builders to provide quotations for your project, and the more detailed the drawings, the better and more accurate the quotations. The drawings relating to the Building Control approval will carry the information needed to provide a quotation, and the detail can also include your specific requirements, such as electrics or fittings.
As already stated, the best advice anyone can give you would be to retain your chosen architect to manage and administer the contract and to run the project on site as your representative. You are probably investing a reasonably large amount of money, and it would be false economy to suggest that you are capable of doing this yourselves as clients unless you have experience of contractual law and quality of work within this industry. Most cases of dispute arise out of clients and contractors disagreeing over cost, quality, or both. A Contract Administrator is there to avoid these disputes, and P.A. Hollingworth & Co. is unlikely to enter into a contract with any client if they have not retained the use of a person qualified and capable of managing a construction contract. We take this view to avoid conflict.
