ROMAN DESIGN

The project was an utter failure. Mr. Roman failed to manage the project timeline or stay close to the specified budget. His design work was uninspired and contained numerous problems from both a construction and livability standpoint. He ended up quitting the project after leaving my wife a rude, unprofessional voice mail, not following through on a promise to apologize to her, and reneging on a commitment to perform additional services to end the project on a better note. He billed us $5000 -- as much as other architects charge to design an entire house -- and failed to deliver a final design that was anywhere close to our budget or project timeline. We began work in April 2010 with the understanding that we wanted to begin construction in May 2011. We went through dozens of design drawing iterations over a 10 month period. The innovative ideas raised to resolve various design challenges came from us, not from him. At the outset, he agreed to inform us when we were getting close to exhausting our retainer. He did not do so; when we asked how close we were to using up the retainer, he presented us with a $3500 bill for services in excess of what the retainer covered. After 10 months of design iterations, we went out for bids to 5 contractors. The bids came in 50% to 120% above the budget target. All the bidders indicated the design had major flaws (bedrooms that were too small to accommodate a bed, dresser, and desk, for example) and expensive and problematic design aspects (excessive structural steel, excessive demolition work, etc.). When we inquired as to the status of his efforts to re-design the project to reduce cost, he responded by berating my wife; by the end of the message, he was literally shouting into the phone and threatening to stop work on the project. I contacted him to request a further conversation; he called back 2 days later. During the conversation, we mutually agreed that it did not make sense for him to continue as our designer; in addition, he committed to 1) contact my wife to apologize for what he acknowledged was his unprofessional behavior the previous week, and 2) translate the final design into architectural drawings using the CAD software and files he already had, at no additional cost, to facilitate bringing the project to a more satisfactory conclusion. We expressed interest in that offer. Two days later, he reneged on that offer via a terse email 2 days later and did not respond to further efforts to communicate. He has not made any effort to follow through on the promised apology. I believe you can get more esthetically pleasing, cost-effective architectural designs in less time and with less conflict from other architects than Mr. Roman.