How long designing a residence takes.

From the first conversation to a complete set of drawings you can build from takes us about nine months. The work splits into three stages of roughly three months each.

Stage one: concept, about 3 months

Massing, plans, site layout, how the house sits with the sun, the view and the neighbours. Several attempts, conversations, revisions. These are the most important three months of the whole process, because here a change costs hours of drawing. Three stages later the same change costs weeks.

The stage ends with an approved concept. From that point, what gets built is settled.

Stage two: permit design, about 3 months

Site development plan, architectural design, approvals from utility providers, assembling the attachments and filing the application. Those three months are our work; the authority's time runs separately. By statute the office has 65 days to issue a decision, in practice sometimes less, sometimes more, and where there is no zoning plan, a planning decision procedure comes first.

Stage three: technical and detailed design, about 3 months

Structure, electrical, plumbing, ventilation and heating, plus detailed drawings. This stage often runs in parallel with waiting for the permit, so nine months is frequently shorter in practice than it looks on paper.

What stretches the schedule

• Changing your mind after the concept is approved. Sets the process back a full stage. By far the most common reason for delay.
• No local zoning plan. A planning decision is a separate procedure, added before stage two.
• A site with history: heritage protection, protected trees, a high water table, difficult access.
• Utility approvals, if the connections are not already in place.

What shortens it

Coming to us with the plot before buying it. Then we know from day one what may be built on it, and no month is lost discovering that it cannot.

The second thing is decisiveness. A project moves at the speed of the client's answers: and on a house this size there are several hundred decisions.

Who runs it

Through all nine months one person leads the project, the same one you met at the first meeting. Authorities, approvals and dealing with the contractor are on us.

What usually runs late is not the design but the decisions. A house whose owner knows what they want is finished a quarter sooner.

Sources

You can check the legal position yourself: the links go to the acts in the official Polish register and to Statistics Poland, not to somebody's summary.

• Polish Construction Law. Act of 7 July 1994

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