News ACANews MAY 2021
A new RIBA fee calculator and the ACA alternative In pre-Thatcher times, the RIBA published fee scale graphs, writes Alfred Munckenbeck. These began at a construction cost of £20k and ended when costs rose over £5m. Since 1975 construction costs have escalated by a factor of about 10. The RIBA never updated its charts and by all accounts they were not based on properly collected data. Now, fast forward to 2021 when the profession is clamouring about chronic underpayment and the RIBA is shortly to release what they call a “Fee Calculator” for architects. One would expect this to help solve the conundrum of convincing clients of the value of decent fees. Instead, it is an in-house calculator for architects who are challenged with basic arithmetic, will only be available to Chartered Practice members and will cost them a further £90. Its author considers it good value. It should be available next month. The calculator works a bit like a conversion tool on the internet. You input some numbers and it does the arithmetic. In this case, you input your rent, rates, other fixed costs, staff and partner costs and how many hours each staff member will need to carry out each stage of the job. Since no firm wants to proceed on basic cost alone, it asks for a profit margin. The author proudly declares it does not use "charge out" rates. It then, all by itself, multiplies your staff rates times the time per stage and presto, out the other side pops the lump sum fee you could charge for each stage. It seems extraordinary to me that any office would be so innumerate as to need to pay for a special product to multiply cost by hours rather than using a common
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