Design Reuse Fee
Design Reuse Fee
(OP)
I'm curious to know what the concensus is out there about structural design reuse fees.
As an example, I am doing a proposal for 12-unit condominium buildings above parking (4-story total), where there will be three identical buildings. The architect wants me to give a fee for the first building only, with reuse fees on the other two buildings. All that's involved in the reuse is changing the title blocks and signing & sealing. Of course, the liability and reponsibility for the two repeats is the same as the original.
In the few instances where I've encountered this in the past, I had settled on a 50% reuse fee, and didn't have any problems. In this case, however, I get the impression the architect is expecting much less.
Another way of looking at it is to say "what would my fee be if they were constructing all three buildings at one time ?". I might have three times the munber of sheets, but not much in the way of additional effort, but again there is the liability (especially condos). Many times I set my fees based not just on the effort involved, but as a percentage of the cost of the building. Based on that senario, the fee would not be discounted at all.
I would appreciate any and all opinions.
As an example, I am doing a proposal for 12-unit condominium buildings above parking (4-story total), where there will be three identical buildings. The architect wants me to give a fee for the first building only, with reuse fees on the other two buildings. All that's involved in the reuse is changing the title blocks and signing & sealing. Of course, the liability and reponsibility for the two repeats is the same as the original.
In the few instances where I've encountered this in the past, I had settled on a 50% reuse fee, and didn't have any problems. In this case, however, I get the impression the architect is expecting much less.
Another way of looking at it is to say "what would my fee be if they were constructing all three buildings at one time ?". I might have three times the munber of sheets, but not much in the way of additional effort, but again there is the liability (especially condos). Many times I set my fees based not just on the effort involved, but as a percentage of the cost of the building. Based on that senario, the fee would not be discounted at all.
I would appreciate any and all opinions.






RE: Design Reuse Fee
RE: Design Reuse Fee
Checking shop drawings, site visits, possible construction fixes (RFI, contractor screw-ups), and most importantly liability will exist as if they were three separate buildings.
In a similiar case, my firm designed two schools which were essentially identical. Our CD fee was something like 120% of the CD cost for one school. Our CA (shop drawings, RFI's, site visits, etc) was 200% of the CA cost for one school.
If I was in your position I would shoot for 25% of the CD cost for each additional unit, plus 100% of the CA cost for each additional unit.
RE: Design Reuse Fee
"25%" suggests that liability is only worth 25% of the design fee. Somehow I think it's worth more!
Good comments archeng59 & AggieYank
RE: Design Reuse Fee
Dik
RE: Design Reuse Fee
RE: Design Reuse Fee
VOD
RE: Design Reuse Fee
I wouldn't go too low on the discount.
RE: Design Reuse Fee
I might look at the fee for designing 3 ea. $5 million buildings as one $15 million project and then triple the price for shop drawing reviews, meetings, etc. You have not control or guarantee on when the three buildings will be built or by whom. Also, what happens if any of the buildings gets built later after a building code changes? You would have a hard time getting someone to pay you for revising the design.
Professional liability insurance companies also don't like condo projects or cookie-cutter designs for mass production projects.
How badly do you need the triple project? Price it accordingly.