Scout Motor Company

I hired these architects to put an addition on my house and redo the kitchen and baths. They were incredibly easy to work with. During stressful periods working with review agencies, they were incredibly supportive and worked well with the reviewers and expediters to get our project reviewed quickly. They worked well with the contractor to make sure the work was done well. Many times they had to make the contractor redo work that was done incorrectly. We love the design; it's changed our life forever. I would highly recommend them to anyone. They are very creative!

Gregory Rubbo and his wife Rauzia Ally Ruhanan are the owners of a company called Scout Motor Company. On April 7, 2014 they submitted one of three fixed price proposals to demolish my two unit townhouse in the Logan Circle neighborhood of Washington DC, and design a replacement three unit structure. While their proposal was not the cheapest (it was the second highest of the three proposals received), I accepted their offer based on their claim that they could expedite DC permit approvals due to Rauzia being, at that time, on the DC Historic Preservation Board. Included with the proposal was a deadline that the design would be completed and submitted to the city for permitting no later than the end of October 2014. At that time, the overall cost was estimated to be near $38K which included architectural design costs of $30K, estimated structural $3K, mechanical $3K & civil engineer $2K. Per the proposal, they were responsible for hiring and coordinating all engineers to complete the design requirements needed for permitting & building. Three & a half years after signing the initial six month contract, the completion of the project is still nowhere in sight. Deadlines have come and gone repeatedly, with little care or concern to financial and emotional impacts on me. As of this review date, I spent over $65K on an incomplete design, more than double the initial estimate. Over the past three and a half years Gregory Rubbo has completed only the floor plan and elevation. He did not hire, nor coordinate the engineers needed in order to complete the design requirements. In order to keep the project on track, I ultimately found and hired the respective mechanical, civil and structural engineers. Greg promised to work with them diligently in order to complete the design quickly. The opposite happened. He did not submit the necessary information to any engineers nor review their work. Due to the lack of coordination with Greg, and the amount of time involved, their fees exceeded $20K which I was forced to pay due to his negligence. Ultimately their flawed designs were submitted to the city for licensing ‘as is,’ due to the lack of Greg’s review & absence of oversight. Repeated efforts to replace Gregory failed due to his refusal to hand over the architectural drawings in CAD format. By so doing, it was impossible to reassign the contract to another architect. This was extremely stressful as restarting the project from scratch would have been very expensive. I was therefore left in an unfortunate situation whereby I couldn’t terminate the contract due to lack of compliance, nor could I reassign the work. Adding to the stress, Gregory and Rauzia repeatedly alternated good cop/bad cop roles, misled and obfuscated in order to cover up their breach of the contract terms. At the end of the day, none of the builders and general contractors I contacted could submit cost proposals due to incomplete architectural permit drawings. One builder even told me the architectural permit drawings submitted were the worst he had ever seen. Based on the experiences highlighted above, I would highly recommend against hiring the Scout Motor Company.