If you can’t trust, abandon the project now. It will never work without trust. It will just cost you scads of money for nothing. And if you don’t select a contractor for real world input during the design phase, you’ll end up spectacularly over budget for plans that you’ll just have to abandon as unbuildable. Amend the aim to Design/Expert Advice/Re-Design/Expert Advice/ReDesign/Bid/Expert Advice/ReDesign/ReBid/Build/ReDesign/Change Order/Reduce Scope/Build/Done gor 10 years, until you lose your mind and want to downsize from all the things you thought you needed forever.

Trust the architect as much as the architect should trust you.

So, if he looks like, say, this elegant gentleman, (as opposed to the drab senior in a cheap cap and Walmart tee to your left) no deal?

Albert Allan Rosenberg*

Nope, no deal. I can't see his eyes. ;-)

(I had to look him up... Egads!)

Does he have grey hair (white) and slightly overweight?

Does he have grey hair (white) and slightly overweight?

Of the hair he has left, yes, it's white. And he's only slightly overweight around the midsection. Plus, he's tall. ;-)

@User's post is too funny, and true.

Personally I think you should be separating architect and builder and don't go looking for recommendations between them. Do your own due diligence. It's a great idea, as 'oak says, to get the builder to see the plans before the arch is done.

Mutual trust and respect is an essential element in the design, bidding and construction of a house, just as it is with a surgeon, attorney or accountant.

Keep looking and interviewing until you have found the necessary trust.

You are not going to remove the bias. However, not all bias is bad. Odds are an architect is going to favor a contractor that he works well with. So while you might sacrifice a completely level playing field, you gain synergy between the builder and architect.

This is different than colluding for personal gain. To be fair, a certain percentage of architects are crooks, as are a certain percentage of accountants, doctors, lawyers, plumbers, electricians, etc. The best you can do is check references and take comfort in the fact that if he hasn't been caught, he is either not a crook or smart enough to not get caught. If he he is smart enough to be a crook and not get caught, you are going to get screwed, but you at least stand a fair chance of getting a good house too.

Umm...so is the lesson to look for and find a smart crooked architect to get a good house?

In the room I am sitting in, the number of crooked architects is nonexistent, and there are a few good house drawings.

Umm...so is the lesson to look for and find a smart crooked architect to get a good house?

There is this old business adage that is a bit dark but somewhat useful.

There are three types of people available to hire. (1) The guy who is costing you a fortune and you know it. (2) The guy who is costing you a fortune and you suspect it. (3) The guy who is costing you a fortune and you are completely unaware of it. So hire the third guy for profit and sanity. If he is smart enough to not get caught, he is smart enough to make you some money plus you will be happier.

As far as my understanding a design-bid- build situation is not hiring a separate architect and then a contractor but instead you hire a builder that does this all in house.

No, you’re describing the fox guarding the henhouse version of design build with the builder in control. Design build as a collaboration between independent entities is a much better option.

Design, bid, build, puts the onus on the customer to have the ability to control themselves in the candy store. 2 separate responsibilities, from 2 separate hires, with little or no collaboration before the sticker shock happens. Most clients have no such restraint in a candy store. Mainly because they don’t have a clue as to how much true custom really costs over faux custom.

@live_wire_oak's comment may have overstated the case, but the notion that clients benefit from keeping design and construction professionals at arms length (or greater) during design is just plain silly. Promoting a design-bid-build approach has, however, served the financial interests of residential architects for some time.

It's 2020. You'll be best served by selecting an experienced home builder (and his team of trades) early on to provide real-world cost data to inform the design. Otherwise you're likely to end up with an expensive set of plans that doesn't get built--but you won't know that until after the bids are in and until after your architect has deposited your final design payment in their account.

Design-bid-build often becomes design-bid-bust. Caveat Emptor.

Of course professionals have biases! Im biased towards using the contractor that I’ve used before who gets the job done correctly, and more or less on time. I’m biased against using contractors that I’m unfamiliar with on large jobs without trying them out on smaller jobs first. Im biased against the lowest bidder, as they are usually the clueless ones that will cost the most. Im biased against taking on clients who want all the help in the world, but can’t let go in order to receive that help.

Think about the giant leap into the unknown that you are taking here. It requires a huge amount of trust in hundreds of strangers. Not just your architect and builder. If you want a mostly known quantity, you should buy existing. The thing to really take to heart is that good people know other good people, and they enjoy working with those good people. No one likes working with someone who slacks on their job. It has a ripple effect all down the line.

Construction is a series of interdependencies. You have to be able to rely on the fact that the surveyor staked out the foundation correctly, and that the form builder followed those lines, and the concrete placers filled the forms and got out the air. Everything builds on the layer before. The original layer to it all is the design itself. A good design makes things easy for the builder where appropriate, and challenges them where appropriate. It involves a lot of ripples in a pond. No one wants to work with a guy who sets up counter ripples.

So yes, the architect is going to have a favorite builder who “gets” it better, and who just seems to bring more to the job than the resume or quote would suggest. That’s VALUE. That’s a different animal than COST. If all you’re interested in is achieving a low cost job, and bids are your only metric, and you’re not wanting a home with a high internal value to you, then custom building isn’t the route for you. You’d be looking to do some type of flip if that were your metrics.

You cannot achieve the economy of a tract build in any type of custom. Why would you want to! You want better. Better can be intangible. It always involves trusting that you’ve put together a good team to bring you something more than the dry sum of the parts.

I am way out of my league here, but I do know that running a business that is adequately insured costs money, and keeping good workers who take the time and have the skills to do a beautiful job costs money, and using quality materials costs money. So I would go with the architects “favorite” so you know what you are getting for what you pay.

Speaking of bias... The OP didn't mention costs anywhere. Goal misalignment is a huge problem in general and increases as information asymmetry increases, in building a home this can represent a serious amount of wasted money.

Goal alignment is something I flirted with researching in grad school and it is incredibly interesting. We spend hundreds of billions of dollars every year just to mitigate the damage at the highest levels. It isn't bad actors who are causing the problems, it is good people doing what they think is right.

Here is the problem in a nutshell - suppose I have a contractor I prefer working with because he gets most things right and comes in on time almost always even though he charges more. I have a bias towards that contractor because he saves me headaches and allows me to move on to the next job faster. However, that assumes that the value I get from that contractor aligns with the value the customer want. If the customer wants lower costs, doesn't mind waiting and doesn't care about my headaches, then we are misaligned. I am likely to ignore what the customer wants because it isn't good for me, but I will find a way to rationalize the benefit to the customer.

Let's go back to the OP's original example. Suppose an architect can choose between two contractors and end up with substantially the same result. However, one of the contractors represents a lot of problems, work done wrong and then corrected, delays, etc., but he charges less. Suppose contractor two is fast and efficient and makes few mistakes. Would it be wrong for the architect to save the client from himself by collaborating with the preferred contractor to help him get the job? Yes it absolutely would be. Can we see a rationalization available that might lead an architect to do just that? Yes, we absolutely can.

Life's just not fair.

^^^

Sometimes rationalizations for bad actions are hard to spot other times they just jump right out at you.

A good job is one done right the first time. A bad job is one that has to be done over. Pretty simple.

So do you want a general contractor who typically produces good jobs or bad jobs?

Virgil, what's your point as it relates to this thread?

Just a comment in regard to the conversation about types of contractors.

People are attracted to simplicity, so there is a natural tendency to want to break the world down into simple either/or statements. However, it SIMPLY isn't true. Moreover your statement doesn't even stand up to even the most basic scrutiny, a home run after two strikes is still a home run and an architect who takes several tries to come up with a plan that is perfect for the homeowner, still came up with a perfect plan. He isn't a bad architect because he has to redo the design.

I don't want to get into a big back and forth over this, maybe you are willing to pay double or triple for someone who always does the job right the first time, or maybe you realize a home run is a home run and you don't one single crap about the architect having to revise several times.

----

But if you insist on the conversation, a good contractor is one who produces the result I want at an opportunity cost that is acceptable to me.

And what if the result you want can't be achieved at a price acceptable to you.

You can't achieve a Porsche for the price of a Yugo...

And besides quality and price, there's time which must also be factored in.

It all goes back to the three key points: Fast, Good, Cheap. You can pick any two, but you'll never get all three at once.

Time is certainly a factor, and so is build quality. I would be prepared to pay more for a contractor who doesn't make mistakes that have to be corrected during the build process, because I'd have a reasonable level of confidence that I wouldn't be finding hidden mistakes after I moved in. A sloppy builder, not so much. Peace of mind has value too.

The entire idea of what makes a good versus bad contractor is a straw man argument. It doesn't matter what makes a good versus a bad contractor, the problem is that you can't separate your bias from the interaction. We know this is factual and we also know that a significant portion of our entire GDP is wasted on goal misalignment. Imagine if your house were 20% cheaper than it was. Imagine if every service you hired was 20% cheaper, or investment you made was 20% more profitable. That approximates the waste we have due to goal misalignment.

Goal misalignment is the source of significant inefficiencies and it is something we see in the construction industry. Cost plus contracts, guaranteed maximum price and shared savings are three things that are combined just to eliminate goal misalignment. These are all attempts to find some compensation scheme to get your contractor to act in your benefit rather than their own and they only work because you are willing to pay enough money to make more profit doing what you want than what they want.

There is so much research on the cost of bias and goal misalignment that it is incredible. That is why I didn't stick to it, why research something that is already so well documented? I am really not trying to be rude, but I just don't have a lot of interest in arguing about something that it taught in middle and high school. There are plenty of videos for those not into reading and a mountain of research for those who are into some scholarly mumbo jumbo.

Good luck

Do your own research. My architect recommended a few builders. I decided to send it for bid to one that had not been in her list, based on recommendations from other people I knew. And I also decided not to get a bid from one she did recommend, based on things I had heard about them. In the end, I am going with one that was one of her initial recommendations - but that was my choice.

You can start with your architect's recommendations - but still go out and talk to the builder, talk to their references, tour some houses they've built, look at reviews, ask people around town what their reputation is, etc.