Most people only find out how their design team is structured when something goes wrong.
The architect has drawn a beautiful open plan living space. The engineer, brought in later, explains that the span needs a steel beam considerably deeper than the ceiling void allows. Nobody is wrong. But somebody is now paying for a redesign, and the programme has slipped by three weeks.
That situation is common, and it is almost always a coordination problem rather than a competence problem. It is also the reason HD McKay operates as an integrated practice, with architecture, civil and structural engineering and project management sitting in the same building rather than in three separate contracts.
What integrated actually means day to day
It is less glamorous than it sounds, and more useful.
It means the structural engineer sees the first sketch scheme, not the planning drawings. It means when the architect is deciding where to put a large opening, she can turn around and ask what it does to the load path before the idea hardens into a drawing a client has already fallen in love with. It means drainage, levels and site constraints are understood at concept stage, because the civil engineer walked the site with the design team.
None of that requires a formal meeting or a fee variation. That is the whole point. The conversations that prevent expensive problems tend to be short, informal and early, and they only happen when people share a corridor.
Where architects and engineers pull in different directions
It would be dishonest to pretend everyone agrees. The professions are trained to optimise for different things, and that tension is productive when it happens at the right time.
Architects are working towards light, space, proportion, how a building is used and how it sits in its setting. Engineers are working towards load paths, deflection, durability, ground conditions and what can actually be built safely and economically.
So the honest version of an integrated practice is not that everybody nods along. It is that the argument happens in week two over a set of sketches, rather than in month eight over a contractor’s variation order. The client sees one resolved design instead of two competing ones.
The three points where it saves real money
First, planning. A scheme that is structurally and civilly coherent before it goes into the local authority is far less likely to need redesign after a request for further information. Every redesign costs both fees and calendar time.
Second, tender. Drawings that have been coordinated internally produce tighter, more comparable tender returns, because contractors are not pricing risk and ambiguity. Vague information always gets priced, and it never gets priced in your favour.
Third, construction. The variations that hurt are rarely the ones where the client changed their mind. They are the ones where the architectural intent and the structural reality met for the first time on site. Coordinated design removes a large share of those before anyone breaks ground.
One point of responsibility
There is a softer benefit that clients tend to mention more than any of the above.
When one practice holds architecture, engineering and project management, you have one number to ring. You are not the person relaying a question between three consultants who each think the other should answer it, and you are not the person absorbing the delay while they work it out.
That matters most under pressure. Building regulations, certification and the paperwork around compliance all sit far more comfortably with a team already working from the same information. Our ISO 9001:2015 quality management system underpins that, so the process is documented and consistent rather than dependent on who happens to be free.
What to ask any design team
If you are appointing a team for a project, whether that is a house, an extension, a commercial unit or an industrial building, a few questions will tell you a lot.
Ask when the structural engineer will first see the design. Ask who coordinates between disciplines, and whether that is a named person or an assumption. Ask who you ring when there is a query on site. Ask how changes get communicated to everyone who needs to know.
The answers will tell you whether you are buying a coordinated design or a collection of separate drawings that you will end up coordinating yourself.
Working with us
HD McKay provides architecture, civil and structural engineering and project management from our Letterkenny office, working on residential, commercial, industrial and public sector projects across the north west and further afield.
If you have a project in mind and want to talk it through before committing to anything, we are always happy to have that conversation.
HD McKay
Unit 262, CoLab, ATU, Port Road, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, F92 YXK8
074 912 9243
