Councils and fees

Grand Designs (Oz) presenter Peter Maddison recently advised Ballarat’s media what to do with its Civic Hall project, which was mainly not to ape historic styles.

After that he gave a tip or two on how to get the best results from an EOI / public tender process:

“A lot of younger architects work for nothing and try to take full control of a building. You need to find an architect with the right qualifications and capabilities, go through the process and select the one that is best.”

A spot of resentment there perhaps. But having seen a few public tender results over the years, I don’t think this practice of under-bidding is linked to age. A number of practices give quickie design services to councils at a cut rate price, and it looks it. Meanwhile many younger practices devote themselves to council projects they have won on cost, thinking that it is the only way to cancel out poor scores on the other evaluation criteria. Neither do any favours to architects wanting to do good work for a good fee, but a little reading between the lines of the tender documents, and a drive around the municipality could give a fair idea of which way a council swings. Or you just don’t do work for councils…

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Posted by Peter on 16.02.11 in practice