Developing The Design / Preliminary Design

Once concept plans are approved, the design is developed in more detail in consultation with external consultants including a structural engineer. At the conclusion of this phase, before proceeding with the full detailed design drawings and specifications, we strongly recommend that our residential clients engage the services of a quantity surveyor to estimate a full breakdown of costs.

Our architects coordinate these consultants and gather fee proposals for you. When this stage of the design has been confirmed, and if a Resource Consent is required, we put together the necessary documentation and write an Assessment of Environmental Effects for neighbours to sign-off on.

We then lodge the consent with the Council. If neighbours are happy to sign-off, and the project is not publicly notified, it will take a minimum of four weeks for the Council to process this documentation (though it can often take longer).