I believe our goal with this endeavor should be to market CRAN certification as a valuable amenity to our clients, be they developers or private homeowners. I never meant to suggest that we require anyone to pay us for contract administration, merely that, if they want the certification, the home would have to be built per plan. To the extent that we can make the case that this service provides value to the homeowner our ability as architects to insure the builders' fidelity to our details becomes more important.
My experience with contractors is that they much prefer me to approve their payments than to have to negotiate misunderstandings with non-professional (and sometime hysterical) homeowners by themselves.
Specbuilders are another story- they don't want anyone else telling them what to do, but if the developer wants to market his homes as Architect-designed, CRAN Certified, with its own CRAN maintained data base, he'll have to pay.
I think Debra has it right. Owners can simply select the level of information they want to be included in the data base. My only concern is that might dilute the "cachet" of the certification and plaque if, for instance, only the name of the architect is all it has to offer.
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A. Atkinson
A. Gordon Atkinson, Architect
San Francisco CA
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