What happens if the Fee Structure for Architects and Engineers (HOAI) is abolished? Eike Becker on competence, balance and polar bears.

This Friday was sunny and warm. One of the afternoons in Berlin when the city seemed a little greener, airier and more relaxed than in the days before. From the top floor of the recently completed building shell, I and the other guests at the topping-out ceremony had a view over the whole city. To the east were the high-rise buildings on Alex, to the west those around Breitscheidplatz. Everything looked orderly and well put together from here.

After the topping-out ceremony, the mood is already exuberant when a lawyer joins us at the table. “Well, I guess that’s it for the HOAI in September!” he opens the conversation aggressively. “Then the fee structure for architects and engineers will be history.” His gloating caught me off guard. Wow, I could physically hear the cracking and popping as the ice broke away from under my feet. I felt like a polar bear drifting out to sea on a lonely floe. All of a sudden, I was back in reality.

The lawsuit against the Federal Republic of Germany before the European Court of Justice regarding the fee structure for architects and engineers has been going on for years. It’s about liberalizing the market, the planner market. Of course, the old aunt HOAI should be adapted to the changed conditions of here and now anyway. It does not properly reflect major changes such as BIM or phase zero. And fees for larger construction projects are already freely negotiable today. But I cannot imagine a complete abolition of the binding minimum and maximum rates for fees on my ice floe. Far too often, invoking this patron saint of all architects and engineers has strengthened our weak negotiating position in contract talks and given us a reasonably adequate fee.

Is this now to be a thing of the past? I am reminded of the hordes of ravenous polar bears that were filmed this winter rummaging for food in the garbage cans of a bleak Siberian town on the edge of the Arctic Circle. In the legal proceedings before the European Court of Justice, the Advocate General – a kind of Joan of Arc for the unleashed market – considers the binding nature of the minimum and maximum rates of the HOAI to be incompatible with EU law. He recommends abolishing them completely and exposing all planning services to free competition.

The supposedly cheaper architect from the Netherlands (0.6 architects per 1000 inhabitants, no binding fee scale) or the urban planner from Romania (0.4 architects per 1000 inhabitants, no binding fee scale) should also be allowed to offer their services more cheaply in Germany (1.3 architects per 1000 inhabitants, with a binding fee scale). Smaller domestic architectural firms with lower costs should also be able to gain a competitive advantage in order to establish themselves on the market. That’s the theory.

Planning on the side of the corporations

A plausible position at first glance. And yet a colossal misinterpretation of the actual situation and a frontal attack on the local building culture in terms of economic policy. After all, what measurable value does a successful building or a good city have? Culture and quality of life are highly attractive, but can hardly be calculated in market terms. What is certain is that architects and planners play a decisive role in how good our built world is. The responsibility of architects therefore goes beyond the actual contractual relationship with their client. They are also committed to the common good.

This is why the HOAI, together with other measures such as professional regulations, compulsory further training and proof of qualifications, aims to regulate and ensure the quality of planning for society. The same applies to the services of other liberal professions, such as doctors, lawyers or tax consultants. Patients and clients pay an appropriate fee for a service on which they must rely because they can only assess its quality to a limited extent themselves.

If the European Commission gets its way, fees will fall for the most part. Offices will employ fewer staff and pay lower salaries. As a result, they will gain fewer qualified employees and lose knowledge and influence. A downward spiral will set in. Smaller architecture firms will find it harder to find their economic footing. Larger offices will try to simplify planning according to economic criteria. Planning will then migrate more to the corporate side. All in all, the planning landscape will become poorer.

The polar bear is drifting towards extinction

What this looks like can be seen in the USA and England. There are almost no small or medium-sized offices there, around half as many architects as in Germany and, as a result, significantly less planning quality and culture across the board. There is already less knowledge about successful cities, fewer institutes conducting urban research, fewer professorships, fewer media interested in building culture, fewer urban planners, conservationists, architecture galleries and museums defining and demanding quality, fewer approval authorities and, as a result, less urban quality of life and less sustainability. The will for and knowledge of building culture and the good life is simply less widespread there.

In many European countries, architects and engineers have already given up much of their expertise. They just deliver a set of plans. The client then looks for a contractor, who plans, builds and finishes. In Germany today, the architect is still responsible for the finished work, the tendering process, construction supervision and ultimately for the entire building. So local offices still need a lot of expertise and knowledge to be successful.

Without competent planners who steer, direct, regulate, define, protect, renew, invent, adapt and manage, no planning can succeed. And without planning, there can be no successful city and no good, fair life for many. Successful cities are based on powerful, regulatory interventions. The liberalized market can do a lot here and there. But the unregulated forces of the market alone have never built a good city. Climate protection is also not possible without powerful regulation. The polar bear on its floe may be free, but it is inevitably drifting south towards its doom.

Supporters of building culture in need of protection

We need a more stringent policy that represents the interests of the community and creates the necessary development opportunities for Baukultur.

I am interested in a fair and sensible balance between those who are responsible for planning and building our cities: The private contractors, the planners, the public institutions and the citizens.

Architects can unite these conflicting forces and thus fulfill an important function within a divergent structure.

To a large extent, they do the groundwork for the foundations of our society and make a significant contribution to economic, social and ecological success in Germany. In this interplay of forces, planners are in need of protection. After all, they are to a large extent the bearers of building culture.