The Design Build Up Stage - How To Plan For The Design Process Of Your Home Extension - A clients guide.

Once you have engaged your home extension architect or designer they should be providing you with some form of 'time-line graph' to the relevant design stages with target completion dates. Be wary of any professional that fails to supply this most basic level of pre-planning information.

They will then need to arrange for a measured site survey of the property and the site in general. Again be wary of any professional outsourcing this part of the design stage other than for the most complicated of dwellings. A good home extension architect or designer cannot appreciate or get a feeling for any existing property without personally measuring it in my own opinion.

You need to get involved and 'get under the skin' of the dwelling you are proposing to alter and modify. You can only do this by being 'hands on' through this important stage.  Without it a scheme design could be proposed that cannot be built on site without further alterations or structural upgrades that you were not be expecting.

From your clients brief or terms of reference the home extension architect or designer will then prepare a scheme design proposal in the form of a formal drawing(s).  I call this my 'Design Stage 1'.  Some Architects refer to this as one or more of their 'work stages'.  I also issue a covering letter / report that explains the design proposal with my rationale behind any suggested alterations.

If you have selected a good experienced professional for your scheme they usually offer you alternatives as well for your consideration.  I often do this simply to 'stress test' your own current thinking to see any alternatives still stand up against a clients initial set of ideas.  It's good to be challenging in my opinion.

You should allow between 4 to 8 weeks for this process as you may need to go through several variants and tweaking of the suggested design before you are ready to submit for formal Planning Permission.