The Owner's Architect

Do the Math. If my building layout is inefficient and it cost me say, just 2% of my labor costs, over time my mistake will easily exceed the cost of my architect, my contractor’s fee and maybe a large chunk of my building. Suppose my building cost $10M, my direct labor costs are $5M annually and I plan to be in the building for 20 years. If my floor plan makes me 2% inefficient, then over 20 years I have wasted $2M. Now consider the cost of the guy who designed the building. Maybe I chose a less qualified firm to save 1 percentage point of the cost of the project, or $100,000. Oh lets be generous and say I found a fella that would undercut everyone else by 2 percent and I saved $200,000. What I saved in fees I wasted in labor costs…ten times in fact! I would have been better off to pay the extra 2 percent and hire the firm that knew what it was doing.