Building Regulations Plans and Building control

We have been dealing with our Building Regs package for the last 8 months, 4 of which are forward and backward with Building Control.

After the Planning Permission went through and I decided to part company with my architects that done the drawings, I quickly decided to discharge of all the conditions in the PP myself. It took a bit of reading through other people's conditions and downloading a few sample Construction Method Statements, a few days of copy+paste, and I had it done. Easy enough. Unfortunately I did not have the same confidence in myself putting the Building Regs package (or as a consequence from that, the construction plans) together, so I went on a journey to look for another Architect. My first experience with a rather well known, posh (expensive) Architect went not that well, so I decided, after reading a bit on the Buildhub forum, to engage with a local Architectural Technician.  AT are a good solution for mNy people, as they apparently come with a more practical approach and are a bit cheaper(often). This was not the case with mine. These experiences formed my general opinion of the professionals in the building industry as an overpaid bunch without any practical approach.

The AT in question gave me a good impression and came recommended through my planning consultant. 

But throughout the process of putting the (building regs) plans together, I was asked to give details, drawings and guidelines for every little detail, as they had no idea about the Timber Portal Frame I was about to build (contrary to their first statement) and had next to no experience with piled foundations and Block and Beam Floors.

This ended up in me doing the entire house as a 3D in Sketchup, to understand the different aspects of building it and also in order to have a precise plan to work from. 

The draft plans the architect came up with every 5-6weeks where borderline useless. 

I took my model, developed over the 5-6months dealing with the AT to show him details whenever he had a question (and he had loads) and he than translated this to an Autocad file for the use in the Building Regs application (as I am not familiar with Autocad). Little did I know that this is not required. 

This whole process with replying to the AT questions, took around 4 months to start with, as he was slow at times to come up with questions and drawings,  and I often first had to study the topic for a few days in order to be able to answer those questions. 

When we received a final draft, I quickly started the Building Regs application with the Local authority, just to start engaging with the local officer. 

He came around to our site at an early stage and seemed a pretty decent guy. 

After receiving the whole package, the LA took around 2months to work through them and come up with a list of additional questions. 

As my previous experience with the AT was pretty disappointing, I didn't even bother asking him but answered the questions all myself(after researching all the answers) , and send it back to the LA. They where happy with my answers as well as my drawings (with Paint). 2 questions regarding structural details had to be answered by my Structural Engineer, but she was excellent throughout the whole process. 

The conclusion is, I should have trusted my gut feeling at the beginning and not have any more "professionals" messing around with my project.

As I have done most of the Construction drawings myself, I should have saved myself  approx. 3500£ (incl. Vat) for this  "service" of the AT translating my drawings and 3D Sketchups into Autocad. The Building Regs officer turned out to be happy with my drawings as well. 

The Building Control officer was, as all local authorities, overworked and slow to get round looking at our application. But he was brilliant to deal with it still, picking up the phone or emails straight away and happy to find a work around to any issue together  with us.