No, and the whole practice is set up to make that hard to do. We survey before we sketch, and the scheme stage puts two or three real options in front of you rather than one take-it-or-leave-it design. If you can look at a finished Guzzo house and name our style, we have done it wrong.

Across residential work the fee usually lands between 5 and 15 percent of the build cost, depending on whether the architect stops at planning or runs the build. We split it into four priced stages so you can see the number before each one instead of signing up to all of it at once.

For a straightforward like-for-like job, often yes. For anything with a tricky site, a planning risk, or a layout you want to genuinely change, a builder is pricing what you hand them, not working out whether it is the right thing to build. That part is the architect's job, and it is usually where the money is saved.

Nobody can promise that, and an architect who does is guessing. What we can do is put a cost range on the feasibility note before any design work, cost the scheme options while they are still drawings, and send you a monthly note on the spend during the build. Surprises come from silence.

Survey and feasibility is usually a few weeks. Scheme design a few more. Planning is the long pole and it is mostly out of our hands once submitted. We give you a programme at the end of stage 01, with the parts we control and the parts we do not marked separately.

We tell you the odds in writing at stage 01, before you have spent much. If a refusal comes, the planners have to say why, and that answer usually points at a revised scheme. It is a setback, not the end, and we price the resubmission separately.