The design team work stages in France: a complete guide to how a construction project unfolds

The maître d'œuvre (MOE), the design team, is the professional body appointed by the maître d'ouvrage (MOA), the client, to design a building and to direct its construction. On most building operations the design team is multidisciplinary rather than a single practice.

On small projects, a house or an apartment refurbishment, the architect may carry the whole of the design work alone. On larger operations an all-trades design consultancy completes the team, and complex projects, public-access buildings, high-rise and commercial schemes, call on separate specialists for each technical discipline.

The fee guide published by the MIQCP, the interministerial body for the quality of public buildings, gives an indicative distribution of design team fees by stage. As an order of magnitude, French fee levels for a full appointment, ESQ through to AOR, generally sit between 7 and 14 % of the works cost excluding VAT, with an average near 12 % for a standard operation carrying no environmental certification.

Source: MIQCP fee guide, and Hamburger, Maître d'œuvre Bâtiment, 3rd ed., Eyrolles.

The design stages cover all the intellectual work produced before the site opens. They follow a logical progression: each stage sharpens the technical and financial definition of the project, and commits it a little further.

The esquisse is the first spatial translation of the brief. It tests whether the architecture is feasible and produces a first budget envelope from cost per square metre ratios. It presumes no settled technical solutions: it is a stage of intent.

• ℹ Architectural deliverables: principle drawings at 1:200, massing sketches, landscape integration.
• ℹ Cost deliverable: an order of magnitude obtained by applying ratios. Indicative accuracy: ±25 to 30 %.
• ℹ What is at stake for the client: confirming the project is feasible before committing to anything, and in particular before submitting the planning application.

The APS turns the concept into preliminary technical options. Areas are fixed, structural principles settled, concrete, timber or steel frame, façade types, mechanical systems. It is at the end of APS that the design team commits to a provisional forecast works cost, with a contractual tolerance.

• ℹ Architectural deliverables: floor plans, sections and elevations at 1:100 to 1:200, outline description.
• ℹ Cost deliverable: an APS estimate by trade or by functional element. Accuracy: ±15 to 20 %.
• ℹ What is at stake: the decision to carry the project forward on realistic financial ground. An APS estimate set too low creates difficulties that cannot be undone at APD or tender stage.

APD is the hinge of the project. Technical choices are settled and the drawings are precise enough to support the planning application. It is here that the design team enters its definitive commitment to the forecast works cost. Any overrun of the final cost against that commitment can trigger penalties on the construction stage fees.

• ℹ Architectural deliverables: accurate drawings at 1:100, outline description of the works, complete planning file.
• ℹ Cost deliverable: preliminary APD measured quantities, with a description by trade. Accuracy: ±10 %.
• ℹ What is at stake: APD engages the financial liability of the design team. Reliable APD quantities are the best shield against later claims.

The PRO stage produces the technical documents the tender process requires. Construction drawings, technical specifications by work package, detailed quantities, priced schedules: a contractor must be able to price its bid precisely from the PRO pack alone. It is the most demanding stage in sheer volume of documents.

• ℹ Architectural deliverables: construction drawings at 1:50 to 1:20, technical details, detail books, drawings by work package.
• ℹ Cost deliverables: technical specifications (CCTP) by package, PRO quantities, priced bills (DQE).
• ℹ What is at stake: the quality of the PRO pack governs the quality of the bids received. An imprecise specification breeds ambiguity, and ambiguity breeds variations.

ℹ Structural works and finishing trades: two distinct cost worlds The structural works, gros œuvre, cover earthworks, foundations, reinforced concrete and frame. They generally represent 30 to 40 % of the works cost depending on structural complexity. The finishing trades, second œuvre, cover everything that clothes the building and makes it work: roofing, waterproofing, external joinery, plasterwork, insulation, finishes, mechanical services, electrical and plumbing. They represent 60 to 70 % of the works cost, and that is where budget control is really won or lost. The milestone known as hors d'eau, hors d'air, watertight and weathertight, reached when the roof and the external joinery are in place, is a key contractual marker: it opens the internal finishing works.

Tendering is the stage that joins design to construction. It carries two distinct duties: assembling the tender pack (DCE) and analysing the bids received (ACT).

The DCE gathers every document issued to tendering contractors so that they can price the work. The design team assists the client in assembling the administrative and technical pieces of the pack.

The packaging strategy, deciding whether contracts will be let trade by trade or to a single main contractor, rests with the client. It bears directly on the final cost and on how demanding the site coordination will be.

Once the bids are in, the ACT duty is to analyse them, compare them and support the client through negotiation with the contractors. The economic stakes are high: bid analysis reveals under-pricing, a well-known source of later variations, and abnormally low bids.

• ℹ Economic analysis of the bids: checking that prices hold together, comparing package by package, exposing the gaps against the estimate.
• ℹ Comparative bid table: the summary that lets the client see every offer in a single document and decide on an informed basis.
• ℹ Settling the contracts: technical and financial negotiation with the selected contractors before signature.

Spotting an abnormally low bid: the B&A mechanism

A contractor's bid breaks down into direct costs (DS), site overheads (FC), operational costs (Fop), general overheads (FG) and B&A, profit and contingency. The B&A is the contractor's risk provision and its margin.

A bid whose B&A falls below 3 to 4 % of the selling price excluding VAT is in a fragile position: at the first hazard on site, weather, unforeseen ground conditions, a change of brief, the contractor is in deficit and will try to recover through claims and variations.

An architect and a quantity surveyor who can read that price structure are able to warn the client before the contract is signed, and to spare everyone an expensive dispute later.

Once the contracts are signed, the design team enters its construction duties. These stages are less documented than the design stages, and yet they decide the final cost.

Financial monitoring during DET is particularly critical. The architect and the quantity surveyor must validate the contractors' monthly applications against real progress on site, not against declared progress. Any over-validation creates an imbalance that is hard to correct at the end of the job.

The DGD, the final account settled at AOR, is the definitive balance of each works contract. It brings together every validated application, every signed variation and any liquidated damages. Drafting it rigorously is the client's last financial protection.

Whether the client is public or private determines the legal frame the design team appointment sits in.

Loi MOP, law no. 85-704 of 12 July 1985, and its implementing decrees define the mandatory frame for design team appointments by public clients. Its founding principle: entrust the design to a single team, answerable for the coherence of the project from first sketch to handover.

The core appointment under loi MOP necessarily comprises ESQ, APS, APD, PRO, ACT, VISA or EXE, DET and AOR. It cannot be broken up or split between different teams for design and for construction, save in particular circumstances.

One point is essential and often misunderstood: the fee stated in the original appointment is provisional. Final remuneration is only settled at the end of APD, when the design team commits to the definitive forecast works cost. Where an overrun is the design team's responsibility, penalties apply to the construction stage fees.

For a private client, a developer, a private individual or a company, no regulation dictates what the appointment must contain. The contract is freely negotiated. That freedom has its advantages, tailored duties and negotiated fees, and its risks.

The trap of an incomplete private appointment: an architect engaged only for the planning application and the design stages, with no site duties, loses the ability to check that what is built matches the drawings. Defects then become the architect's liability without any means of having prevented them.

Every design stage carries one or more cost deliverables. Their quality governs the reliability of the client's financial decisions, and the exposure of the design team.

Producing these deliverables is a considerable workload, and small architectural practices routinely underestimate it. A poorly calibrated APS estimate can absorb several days of research into ratios, adjustment and presentation, for a result that nonetheless binds the design team for the whole of the operation.

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Documentary sources: Léonard Hamburger, Maître d'œuvre Bâtiment, guide pratique, technique et juridique, 3rd ed., Eyrolles, 2016 · Yves Widloecher and David Cusant, Manuel d'analyse d'un dossier de bâtiment, 2nd ed., Eyrolles, 2018 · MIQCP fee guide.