A client buys a plot on the basis of a conversation with an agent, appoints an architect, and asks for drawings. Four months later the scheme is unaffordable, the access arrangement is unworkable and there is a drainage problem nobody looked for.
Every pound spent on design was spent answering the wrong question.
Why feasibility gets skipped
It produces a document rather than a picture. Clients are excited, they want to see the house, and a report about constraints feels like an obstacle placed between them and the thing they are paying for.
What it actually answers
Whether the thing the client wants can be built on this site, at roughly this cost, within the planning and regulatory position, with the access and services available.
What it costs to skip it
Design fees spent on an unbuildable scheme, a planning refusal that could have been anticipated, a budget that was never realistic, or a site bought on an assumption.
What a study typically covers
Site constraints, planning context and history, access, services, ground conditions where relevant, an indicative massing or layout, and a realistic cost range.
Publish what each level includes
A desktop review, a fuller study with site investigation, and a full pre application position. Clients cannot choose between things they cannot see described.
Publish the fee range
By level and by project type. Vagueness here is why clients skip the stage, and a modest fixed fee is an easy decision compared with an unquantified one.
Frame it as protecting their money
Not as a hurdle. A study that costs a fraction of the design fees and prevents an unbuildable scheme is the best value stage in the whole project, and it should be sold that way.
Publish a worked example
A site where a study changed the approach, and what it saved. It is far more persuasive than a description of the service.
Say when it is not needed
A straightforward extension on a standard property with an obvious budget. Being honest about that earns the client's trust for the projects where it matters.
Explain the cost advice position
What a practice can indicate at this stage and where a cost consultant is needed, which is the honesty that underpins fee stages and what each RIBA stage actually delivers.
Explain what the client receives
Clients cannot buy a stage they cannot picture, and the word report tells them nothing. Listing the actual deliverable, a written assessment, indicative layouts, the planning position and a cost range, makes the fee legible and turns feasibility from an obstacle into something with a visible output.
Say how it feeds into the next stage
Owners worry that a study is money spent outside the project. Explaining that the work carries forward into design, that nothing is repeated and that the concept usually starts from the study's conclusions removes the sense of paying twice before anything is drawn.
Capture the site before quoting
Address, size, current use, ownership position, what the client wants and their budget expectation. Most enquiries arrive with none of it, which is the problem in website quote requests without a brief.
Address the planning worry early
It is usually the client's main fear and it is answerable at this stage, as in planning and permission questions clients ask architects.
Answer when clients are deciding
People research a site in the evening, before they have committed to anything, which is when questions right before buying get asked.
Getting started
Publish feasibility levels, fees and a worked example, then capture the site and the brief at any hour. SpideyChat for architects answers from your published pages, plans are on the pricing page, and the chatbot ROI calculator works through the numbers.