How to start with an architect.

So the first work was survey and reading. Measuring what stood, then going through the list entry and the building's own planning file, is what turns a want into a scope.

It settled something nobody expects at the enquiry. The internal alterations needed listed building consent. The one visible change to the street, a new fascia sign, needed a second consent of its own.

Both were granted in January 2020. The unsafe stair came out, a new one went in, and the first and second floors opened to customers, so display, staff and storage now spread over four floors instead of two. The work was certified complete in October 2021.

Rickett Architects was the architect for all of it, from the July 2019 survey to Building Regulations sign-off, alongside a separate structural engineer and an approved inspector.

One appointment covered concept, both consent applications, the working drawings and the administration of Building Regulations. It is perfectly possible to appoint stage by stage instead, and plenty of clients do. The cost of it is that the building has to be explained again each time, and each new commission needs its own terms agreed before work starts, even where the parties have worked together before.

The listing shaped the order of work more than the design did. Number 82 is listed as part of a group of three former houses, and the front carries a rare mid-nineteenth-century frieze. What that means in practice is that the constraints came out of a file before a line was drawn, rather than out of a refusal afterwards.

What those terms should cover is published and worth reading before you sign anything: who the contracting parties are, the scope of the services, the fee or the method of calculating it, what each side is responsible for, any limits on liability, how a dispute is resolved and how the agreement is ended, and the name of the architect in control and management of the work.

Then, before any of it, the survey. An estate agent's floor plan is not a survey, and a scheme drawn on one gets drawn again. Measuring what actually stands is the first real cost on almost every job, and it belongs before the design rather than after it.

The published list runs longer than the version above. It also asks for confirmation that professional indemnity insurance is held, that a complaints procedure exists and is available on request, and how data will be handled. A new commission needs new terms even where the same two parties have contracted before, and any change to them is recorded in writing as well. One line in the guidance is there entirely for the client's benefit: no architect may seek an agreement that would stop someone raising a concern about their conduct or competence with the regulator.

The six standards in the Code are not optional, and an architect is accountable for meeting all of them at all times. What the numbered items underneath each one describe is how the regulator says a standard is met, so a practice working another way has to be able to justify how it still meets the standard. For a client the practical reading is simple. Written terms before work starts are the norm the profession is measured against, and their absence is worth asking about.

One thing the appointment does not do is settle the whole project. A scope that stops at planning stops there, and the stages after it are agreed separately if and when you want them. Section 20 of the Architects Act 1997 restricts who may practise or carry on business under a title containing the word architect, and the terms of engagement name the architect responsible and confirm the register they are on.