A client comparing three architects usually has three portfolios in front of them. All three are beautiful, because portfolios are curated and everyone in this profession can photograph a building. What none of them shows is the thing that will determine how the project runs: what each practice was actually appointed to do, and what somebody else was doing while they did it.
An appointment is a scope, not a firm. Two practices can be engaged on the same building with entirely different responsibilities, and the difference will not be visible in either portfolio. It will be visible eighteen months later, when something falls between two consultants and nobody has been paid to catch it.
What you are actually appointing
The word architect covers several distinct commercial arrangements. Working out which one you are entering is the most useful thing you can do before signing anything.
You may be appointing a practice to produce the design concept and nothing further, in which case another firm will develop that concept, coordinate it and take it through construction. You may be appointing a lead consultant, responsible not only for the architecture but for directing the other design disciplines and holding the design together as a whole. You may be appointing a practice for the full duration, from first sketch through to handover. Or you may be entering an arrangement where the architect is appointed by you initially and later transferred to the contractor, which changes who the architect answers to at precisely the moment the building starts to become real.
Each of these is a legitimate way to run a project and none is inherently better. But they are not interchangeable, and a client who believes they have appointed the third when they have in fact appointed the first will find out at the worst available moment.
The four common structures
Design architect only
The practice produces the concept and, usually, the early design development. Another firm, often a large local consultancy, takes it forward. This is common on large developments where the identity of the building matters to a client who also needs delivery capacity at a scale a design practice may not hold.
It works when the handover between the two firms is properly defined. It fails when it is not, because design intent lives in judgement as much as in drawings, and judgement does not transfer with a set of files.
Lead design consultancy
The architect is responsible for the architecture and for coordinating the other design disciplines: structure, services, façade, landscape and the rest. This is a materially larger responsibility than architecture alone, and it should be priced and resourced as such.
Its value is that somebody is accountable for the design as a single object rather than as a set of parallel workstreams. Its risk is that clients sometimes assume they have appointed a lead consultant when the appointment names only architectural services.
Full scope to completion
The practice stays engaged from concept through technical design and construction. What you are buying is continuity of judgement. The architect who decided why a junction was detailed a particular way is still in the room when the contractor asks whether it can be done differently, and can answer with a reason rather than a preference.
Novated arrangements
The architect is appointed by the client, produces the design, and is then transferred to the contractor for delivery. This is familiar on design-and-build procurement and it can work well, but it changes who the architect works for. Understanding that shift, and agreeing what the design is protected against before it happens, is the whole of the risk.
Where design intent actually lives
The three structures that split design from delivery all depend on the same assumption: that what one practice decided can be handed to another. It is worth being precise about what is being handed over, because the drawings are the smaller part of it.
A set of drawings records decisions. It does not record why they were taken, which alternatives were tested and rejected, or which dimensions are load-bearing to the idea and which are simply where the line happened to land. A floor-to-floor height might be the product of three weeks of reconciling structure, services and the view from a balcony. On the drawing it is a number, and a number invites the reasonable question of whether it could be fifty millimetres less.
This is why a well-run handover transfers reasoning, not just files: which decisions are fixed and why, which are open, what was already tried, and what the design would lose if a particular constraint were relaxed. It takes a couple of days to write down and it is the difference between a delivery practice developing the design and a delivery practice slowly rediscovering it.
The same logic explains why continuity has a value that is easy to underprice. Judgement accumulates. A practice that has been on a project for two years knows things about it that nobody has written down, and when that practice leaves, so does the knowledge.
What a portfolio can and cannot tell you
Since most clients begin with portfolios, it is worth knowing what they are evidence of.
A portfolio reliably tells you what a practice finds beautiful, what typologies it has worked in, and at what scale. Those are real and useful. What it does not tell you is which parts of any pictured building that practice was responsible for, how far its appointment ran, whether it coordinated the other disciplines or was coordinated by them, or whether it was present when the building was actually built.
Two practices can legitimately show the same tower. One designed it and left at the end of concept; the other developed, coordinated and delivered it. Both images are honest. They describe entirely different work, and only one of those practices has answered a site query at eleven at night.
So the useful question when looking at a project is not whether you like it. It is: what was your scope on this, when did you join, when did you leave, and who held the design together while you were there? A practice that answers that clearly is telling you how it works. Most of the value in a portfolio conversation is in that answer rather than in the images.
How fees follow scope
Fees vary with what is being asked for, which is why comparing fees between practices is only meaningful once the scopes are genuinely the same. A proposal for concept design and a proposal for full delivery are not two prices for one thing. They are prices for different things, and the cheaper is not necessarily the better value.
The more useful comparison is per stage. What is produced at the end of each stage, who reviews it, what is included when the design changes, and what happens during construction. Two practices quoting the same headline figure can be offering materially different work, and the difference tends to surface at the point where it is expensive.
Who is accountable for what
On any project of scale there are several consultants and at least one contractor, and the boundaries between them are where problems live. The architect is not responsible for structural adequacy, the structural engineer is not responsible for façade performance, and the contractor is not responsible for the design unless the procurement route says so.
What matters is that every responsibility sits somewhere, deliberately. The most common failure on a poorly scoped project is not that somebody did their job badly. It is that a task nobody was appointed to do went undone, and was discovered by the people building it.
Coordination is the task most often assumed rather than appointed. Somebody has to hold the disciplines against each other, decide which gives way when two are right, and carry that decision forward. On a well-structured project that person is named and paid. On a badly structured one, everybody assumes it is somebody else, and the assumption survives right up until the point where two packages meet and disagree.
Common misconceptions
"A beautiful portfolio means a practice is right for my project"
A portfolio reliably shows what a practice finds beautiful. It does not show what that practice was actually responsible for on any given building, or how far its appointment ran.
"The cheapest fee is the best value"
Two proposals quoting the same headline figure can be pricing entirely different scopes. The cheaper is not necessarily the better value — it may simply be pricing less work.
"Coordination happens automatically if everyone is competent"
Competent specialists produce competent packages. Interfaces between them belong to nobody unless somebody is named and paid to own them.
"A novated appointment changes nothing about how the architect works"
It changes who the architect answers to, at precisely the moment the building starts to become real. Understanding that shift in advance is the whole of the risk.
A commissioning checklist
- What scope am I appointing: concept, lead consultancy, full delivery, or a novated arrangement?
- Which stages does the appointment cover, and what happens at the end of the last one?
- Who is coordinating the other consultants, and are they being paid to do it?
- What is produced at each stage, and who signs it off?
- If the design passes to another practice, what reasoning travels with it?
Scope decisions outlast design decisions. A façade can be revised. An unclear appointment tends to be revised only after it has already cost something, and by then the revision is a negotiation rather than a drawing.
On COMO Residences, our appointment from Nakheel was design architect — concept and design development, ending before delivery. Knowing that scope precisely, from the first meeting, is what let the appointment work cleanly; the four structures above are not theoretical to us, they are how our own commissions are actually drawn.
If you are working through how a project should be structured, our guide to the RIBA stages sets out what each phase of work decides, architect fees in Dubai covers how scope translates into cost, and lead design consultancy explains the role in more detail. Our capabilities are organised around these distinctions, and if you would like to talk through how an appointment should be scoped, get in touch.