A handful of professional building consultants are needed to complete every building project. It’s not as simple as instructing an architect to design a building; it’s often much more complicated. Each consultant adds a specialist skill to the design team and, of course, charges fees.
As a rule of thumb, it’s worthwhile allowing around 10% of the total budget of your project for professional consultants’ fees. However, depending on the complexity of your project, it might be more, for example, if you are working on a listed property or aiming for a highly energy-efficient Passivhaus.
Our clients regularly ask which professional building consultants they need for their projects, so here’s a quick summary of the more frequently used members of the design team:
We work with these on just about every project:
- Surveyor for a measured survey and sometimes a topographical survey
- Structural engineer
- Party Wall surveyor
- Building Control or an approved building inspector
- CDM consultant or Principal Designer
If you are adding a basement to your project, you will probably also need these professional building consultants:
- Drainage & Flooding Consultant
- Ground Investigation
Not essential, but often very valuable:
- Planning consultant
- Cost consultant or Quantity Surveyor
- Mechanical and Electrical Engineer (known as M&E)
- Interior designer
- Landscape designer
- Pool designer
- Fire engineer
- Heritage consultant
New to the team:
- Energy modelling consultant to meet part L&O of the latest Building Regulations
This list is by no means exhaustive, as there are many more potential specialists you may need. As your architect, we can help you find the consultants you need and work with them to integrate their design to ensure all of the consultants work toward a single vision.
Hopefully, this list gives you a good idea of the team that might be required for your project. However, please contact our architectural and interior designers here if you need further guidance.
