Architectural Services

On our first visit, it is always good to know what type of budget you have and any maximum budget that you have in mind, where we can then do our best to work within that budget for any future designs or advise on what is realistic for the full build. We will also take various photos of your property and some measurements of the immediate areas where the proposed extension or alterations are to take place.

After our initial visit, we will then draft up proposals for you and alter as required to suit your overall preferences on design and layout. Once a design has been agreed upon, we can then draft up a detailed written quotation for the complete works.

Once the design and costs have been agreed, we can then finalise the drawings, with the addition of the necessary additional details and then we submit these drawings to the council for Planning Permission and Building Warrant. As part of this process, we engage a Structural Engineer, which will normally be required as part of the design process for the overall structural works and on the rare occasion, engage the services of other third parties as required. At Monarch we have the ability in-house to carry out an accurate costing for your project before this has been submitted to the council where you can ensure that the build is affordable and within budget, although we always recommend having a contingency, to cover unknown or unexpected works or additional works that you may wish to be carried out while we are on site.

When you use our Design and Build Service, this allows us to schedule your works into our Build Programme, you will have a decent guideline on proposed start dates on site, even before the drawings have been submitted to the council, where traditionally, when you go through an Architectural Design service only, you have the frustration of waiting for the drawings to be passed for Planning and Building Warrant, before you can even source a cost for the project where you will normally save as a minimum, 2 months of delays, where as an average guideline, we are normally on site to start the works within 3 to 6 months of you proceeding with the initial drawing service subject to work levels when order proceeds. We can carry out the works all the way through from the initial drawings through to the floor coverings and decoration.

As the Construction Directors of the business are tradesmen, who have originally built a variety of Extensions from the ground up, we have a vast knowledge on how to design extensions which work and flow excellently for our customers and where sometimes, due to our experience, simple little design changes can save our clients many thousands on the build process.

We find that our workload can be very varied, where we can carry out simple design work for removal of a load bearing partition along with the install of a load bearing steel beam through to full-blown extensions along with re-arranging layouts within the property and forming new large external structural openings as required.

With our experience, we have successfully designed and built House extensions from small scale through to large contemporary builds, whether on a Modern house, Granite terraced properties and Farmhouses and we were responsible for the construction of one of the first Passive Houses in Scotland.