Build a Home

Developing A Complete Set Of Plans

Architectural plans are the central medium for communication in homebuilding projects. Architects use them to work through the design approach with their clients. Lenders use them to assess the value of your home you’re asking them to finance. Local building department officials review plans before issuing a permit to make sure they conform to code and zoning rules. Contractors and subcontractors use the information in architectural plans to work up bids for labor and materials. Workers n the job uses them as a virtual instruction manual. And while you hope it doesn’t come to this, your lawyer may need to argue based on the plans that one or more of the professionals on the job didn’t live up to his part of the bargain. In other words, architectural plans are a record of what is to be built and how it’s to be built.

Therefore, it’s to everyone’s advantage that plans be complete and highly detailed. But at best, even the most thorough plans are a bit abstract since they use a two-dimensional format to represent three-dimensional objects with a set of visual symbols. It is essential as an owner-builder that you understand the symbolic language of architectural plans.