Architect, contractor, draftsman: who does what.

In Kerala the three words get used loosely, and the confusion is expensive. A family says they “have an architect” and mean a draftsman. The cards below are the short version; the rest of the piece is why it matters.

The draftsman draws what you tell him

A draftsman produces the drawings a building permit needs: plans, elevations, the paperwork set. Done well it is careful work, and for a simple, conventional building on an easy plot it may be all the drawing you need.

What a draftsman does not sell is design thinking. Nobody is studying how your plot faces the sun, questioning whether the kitchen should really be where you said, or detailing how the staircase meets the light. You get your instructions, drawn. If your instructions were good, so is the house.

A draftsman will draw the pooja room on the west wall if you ask. He will draw it very neatly.

The contractor builds, and sells you the building work

A contractor’s trade is construction: labour, materials, programme. A good one is worth a great deal, and a good house is impossible without one. The one thing a contractor should never be handed is an unfinished design. When drawings arrive half-finished, the gaps get filled on site, by whoever is standing there, at the speed of a wall going up.

A window moved because the block-work suited it. A beam made deeper because the drawing was missing. A ceiling lowered to hide a pipe nobody had planned for. Nobody is at fault. Construction was asked to answer design questions, and it answered at its own speed.

A wall goes up faster than a decision can be thought through. So make the decisions before the wall.

The architect designs, and sees the design through

An architect’s job is to study your site and your life, design the building around both, produce drawings detailed enough to build from, and then review the construction against those drawings. The value is in the order: every decision is made on paper, where changing it costs a redraw, before it is made in brick, where changing it costs a demolition.

When a change is proposed on site, the architect’s job is to check it against the design, so the house you approved is the house you get. That is part of what you are paying for.

How the three work together

The names matter less than the sequence. The useful question about any arrangement is: are the drawings complete before construction starts, and is someone checking the built work against them?

Who do you actually need?

If you want a standard building on an easy plot and you know exactly what you want, a draftsman and a contractor may serve you well. Plenty of decent houses have been built that way.

If your plot is tight, sloped or oddly faced; if the house must work hard for its area; if you are building from abroad and cannot watch the site yourself; or if this is the one house you intend to build in your life, you want the design resolved in full before construction, and someone reviewing the site against the drawings while it is built.

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