Everyone talks about sustainability, craftsmanship, and innovation — but almost no one talks about the problem quietly undermining all of it: fee-shopping. It’s the unspoken practice of collecting multiple design quotes, comparing them on a spreadsheet, and choosing the cheapest option. It sounds reasonable. It sounds smart. But in practice, it’s one of the fastest ways to sabotage a project long before construction even begins. At ISA™, we see the damage it causes every day when clients come to us after things have already started going wrong.
Architecture is not a commodity. It is not interchangeable. And it is definitely not something that can be compared by price alone. Yet fee-shopping reduces complex, specialised professional services to a single variable: cost. The assumption is that the drawings will be “roughly the same” no matter who prepares them, so you might as well pick the cheapest. But the truth is simple: drawings aren’t created equal. One set can save you tens of thousands in construction errors, while another can bury you in variations, redesigns, and delays.
Poor documentation is one of the biggest hidden costs in construction. You won’t see it on the quote. You’ll see it when your builder calls you every week asking for clarification because details are missing. You’ll see it when structural elements don’t align. You’ll see it when services clash. You’ll see it when you start paying for redesigns and variations — all because someone rushed through the work to meet a fee that never should have existed in the first place.
Good architects spend hundreds of hours resolving details, coordinating with consultants, researching materials, and ensuring the design is actually buildable. Cheap providers don’t. They can’t. The fee doesn’t allow it. To win the job, they must cut time, scope, thinking, coordination, and quality. The result? Projects that look fine in a presentation but fall apart the moment they collide with the reality of construction. It’s not because those providers are incompetent; it’s because the race to the bottom forces them into a corner where quality simply isn’t possible.
Fee-shopping is toxic for both clients and architects, and we refuse to participate in it. When we give a fee proposal, it reflects the real time and expertise needed to deliver a design that will stand up — both aesthetically and during construction. We don’t discount. We don’t cut corners. And we don’t pretend that quality design can be rushed. Our clients come to us because they want something rare: a project that works, lasts, and holds its value. That outcome is impossible at bargain-bin prices.
If a designer charges half the fee, they must do half the work. And the missing half always shows up later, in the form of: construction variations, redesigns, engineering issues, delays, builder confusion, poor detailing, unresolved waterproofing, missed compliance items, and structural coordination errors. These problems can easily cost 10x the savings clients thought they were making. In extreme cases, clients spend more fixing the fallout than the project would have cost to design properly in the first place.
The right question isn’t “Who is cheapest?” It’s “Who will save me money during construction?” The right architect pays for themselves by: preventing mistakes, tightening documentation, coordinating consultants properly, anticipating builder questions, reducing variations, designing for buildability, and protecting your vision. Cheap drawings don’t do that. They shift risk onto you — the client — and onto your builder.
No — but comparing them by price alone is where projects derail. Compare value, experience, process, and documentation quality instead.
Because scope, coordination, time spent, and accountability are significantly reduced. Cheap fees require cutting corners to stay profitable.
Our fees reflect the real time and specialist expertise needed to deliver buildable, enduring architecture — not just drawings.
Budget blowouts during construction. Poor documentation leads to variations, redesigns, and delays that far exceed the initial “savings.”
Look at documentation samples, detail clarity, coordination processes, site involvement, and how they protect your vision during construction.
Fee-shopping feels harmless, but it silently erodes the foundations of good architecture. You can’t get thoughtful design, deep coordination, or enduring quality at a cut-price fee. When you hire the cheapest designer, you pay for it during construction — one variation, one compromise, one redesign at a time. At ISA™, we believe architecture should enhance value, not destroy it. And that begins with refusing to be the cheapest — and choosing instead to be the most thorough, the most careful, and the most committed to getting it right.
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