What you are actually buying at each stage
A fee proposal for a family house usually shows three or four lines whose names mean nothing on their own: study, permit documentation, implementation project, author supervision. The question I hear most often across the table is not „what does it cost“, but „what do I get for it, and what happens if I delete one of those lines“. That is what this article answers.
Project documentation is not one document that slowly gets thicker. It is a ladder of stages, and each rung has a different addressee. The architectural study is for you. The permit documentation is for the authority. The implementation project is for the contractor. The as-built documentation is for the authority and for you ten years later. Remember the order of addressees and most questions about project scope answer themselves. Design phases are not an administrative formality but a division of work by who will read the drawings.
The architectural study: you are buying a decision, not documentation
The study contains floor plans of every storey, schematic sections, elevations, the siting of the house on the plot including orientation to the compass, an area schedule and usually massing visualisations. It often comes in two alternatives. What it does not contain: final build-ups, structural design, services drawings, details or any schedule of quantities.
The addressee is the client. The study serves one decision: whether this is the house you want to build. Secondarily it is the first basis for a serious conversation about the scale of the investment, although an indicative cost estimate drawn from it is only ever an order-of-magnitude figure.
Stop here and you have a tested concept and nothing else. A study will not get you to the building office or onto site. That is no reason to skip it: skipping the study means the plan gets seriously interrogated for the first time inside the permit documentation, where every change costs several times more work.
Siting the building: what happened to the zoning documentation
Until the end of March 2025 there were two separate proceedings and two documentation stages for them: zoning documentation first, and permit documentation only afterwards. Act no. 25/2025 Z. z., in force since 1 April 2025, merged both proceedings into a single building intent proceeding.
The siting content did not disappear. Setbacks, connections to road and utility infrastructure, the wider-context site plan and compliance with the planning documentation under act no. 200/2022 Z. z. still have to be demonstrated, only now within a single submission. A standalone zoning stage today appears mainly on schemes started under the old legislation. For the client one thing follows: this work did not get cheaper, it moved.
Permit documentation: the first stage written for someone else
Building permit documentation contains the covering and summary technical reports, a site layout with setbacks and utility connections, dimensioned plans, sections and elevations, the build-ups of the principal elements, services drawings at concept level, the fire safety solution, the energy assessment of the building and the statements of the consulted authorities.
The addressee is the building office. The level of detail is therefore not set by the bricklayer but by what the authority has to judge: whether the house fits the plot, whether it restricts the neighbours, whether it meets fire, hygiene and energy performance requirements. Everything else is outside its purpose, and that is fine.
Stop here and you hold a final building intent decision and a house defined exactly as far as the authority's interest reaches. At that same boundary, so does anything that can be priced reliably.
The implementation project: the documentation you actually build from
The implementation project is not a more detailed version of the permit set, it is a different document for a different reader. It adds construction details at roughly 1:10 to 1:5 (parapet, plinth and waterproofing junction, window reveal and installation, roof penetrations, terrace junction), schedules of windows, doors, metalwork, ironmongery and joinery, exact build-ups for every element, setting-out plans, technical specifications of materials and finishes, coordination drawings of the services and the basis for the bill of quantities.
The addressee is the contractor and the quantity surveyor. It is the only stage at which two different builders are costing the same house.
Stop short of it and the decisions nobody drew will be taken for you: on site, and in whatever way is quickest. The waterproofing junction detail does not vanish because nobody drew it. It simply gets designed by the person holding the angle grinder.
The stages at a glance: content, addressee, share of the fee
The last column is deliberately qualitative. The actual figure depends on the fee model and on the complexity of the brief, but the ratio between the phases tends to be steadier than their absolute size.
| Stage | What it contains | Who it is for | Share of the fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Architectural study | Plans, sections, elevations, siting, visualisations | The client | A smaller part of the whole |
| Siting content | Wider-context site plan, setbacks, utility connections | The authority and consultees | Now merged into the permit phase |
| Permit documentation | Technical reports, dimensioned drawings, services concept, fire, energy | Building office, bank on a mortgage | A significant part of the whole |
| Implementation project | Details, element schedules, build-ups, specifications, coordination | Contractor and quantity surveyor | Usually the single largest item |
| As-built documentation | Recorded changes, real routes of the services | The authority at handover, later owners | A small item at the end |
The most expensive mistake: tendering on permit documentation
This is where clients lose the most money, and almost always in the belief that they are saving it. The logic looks sound: the permit is granted, so why not send the same drawings to five firms and take the lowest price.
Except that permit documentation carries no details, no specifications and no element schedules. Each of those five estimators fills the gaps with whatever he is used to installing. One prices triple glazing, the next double. One a ventilated facade, the next external insulation. Five bids are then not five prices for one house but five prices for five different houses, and the lowest is usually the one that assumed the least.
The difference is not forgiven, only deferred. It resurfaces during construction as a variation, at the moment when the contract is signed, the ground is open and your negotiating position is nil. A contractor tender only means something once every bidder is pricing the same items and their budgets can be compared line by line.
| Level of documentation | What a contractor can price reliably | What he has to assume |
|---|---|---|
| Architectural study | The rough size and shape of the house | Practically the whole structure, materials and systems |
| Permit documentation | Volumes, principal structure, areas | Finishes, details, elements, the standard of the openings |
| Implementation project | Structure, details, elements and specifications | Work organisation and his own overheads |
| Implementation project with a bill of quantities | All of the above, in the same items as his competitors | Nothing material about the technical solution |
The specialist disciplines: who draws them and who holds them together
Behind the word „services“ sit structure, plumbing and drainage, heating, electrical installation, mechanical ventilation and heat recovery, fire safety and the energy assessment, and on some plots geology or land survey too. They do not all arrive at once. In the study they are usually absent, at most a structural consultation on long spans. In the permit documentation they appear at concept level: sizes of the main members, the heating principle, how rainwater leaves the plot. In the implementation project they are drawn out into routes, sizes and penetrations.
The key question is not who draws them but who coordinates them. Coordination means the ventilation duct does not run through a downstand beam, the consumer unit is not behind a door leaf and the underfloor heating fits the build-up that was drawn. If nobody is named for that job in a contract, the site takes it over, which again means whoever happens to be standing there. On a family house the architect or lead designer normally holds it, and it is work nobody sees until it is done badly.
Can the implementation project be skipped?
It can, and in Slovakia it often is. Answering „never do that“ would be dishonest, so here is exactly what it costs you.
- You stop comparing bids. Without one common brief, all you can compare is the total for five different houses.
- The contractor designs the details, normally his own standard ones, safe for him. Sometimes that is enough, sometimes it means the house looks different from the one that was designed.
- Changes are settled by variation orders. The price of a change during construction is not negotiated on the market but with the single firm already on site.
- Author supervision turns from checking into designing in the field, which is dearer and worse than drawing in the office.
- You have nothing to claim against. When it leaks two years later, the document that would show what the contractor was supposed to do is missing.
When it nonetheless makes sense: a simple house with no atypical details, a turnkey contractor with his own design office and proven build-ups, and a client who knowingly accepts standard solutions. If even one of those three conditions fails, the saving on the project comes back during construction with interest.
As-built documentation: the last stage
The as-built documentation is the implementation project corrected for what actually happened on site: rerouted services, changed build-ups, substituted products, moved penetrations. It is produced as the work proceeds, not retrospectively the evening before handover, because the route of a buried pipe cannot be recovered afterwards.
Its addressee is the building office at handover, and then you. It is the document you open five years later when hanging a kitchen or hunting the cause of a damp patch. If it does not exist, a metal detector and guesswork take its place.