The Dodgy Mechanic Problem: Can Homeowners Trust Planning Consultants?

Imagine your car breaks down.

You take it to a mechanic because you need it back on the road. You don’t know what’s wrong with it, and you probably don’t have the time, tools or expertise to work it out yourself.

The mechanic calls you.

“There’s a problem with the transmission. We need to replace a few things. It’s going to take another couple of days.”

What are you supposed to do?

You can ask questions. You can get a second opinion. You can search the internet.

But you’re not a mechanic.

You need your car back.

So, ultimately, you have to trust the person who knows more about the problem than you do.

And this is where the dodgy mechanic problem comes in.

How do you know whether the mechanic is telling you exactly what needs to be done — or whether they’re recommending more work than is actually necessary?

Maybe everything they’re telling you is completely legitimate.

Maybe it isn’t.

The fundamental problem is that you don’t have enough information to know.

The mechanic understands the problem, the terminology, the possible solutions and the amount of work involved.

You don’t.

And you’re under pressure to get your car back.

There is a surprisingly similar dynamic in professional services.

Particularly when a homeowner is trying to navigate the development approval process.

The homeowner who just wants to get their project approved

Imagine you’ve decided you want to build a pool.

You’ve spoken to a few pool companies, looked at different designs, worked out roughly what you can afford and started investigating whether the project is actually possible on your property.

Then you start looking into approvals.

Suddenly, you’re dealing with things you hadn’t really considered:

Planning controls.

Setbacks.

Stormwater.

Trees.

Bushfire requirements.

Landscape requirements.

A DA or CDC.

And potentially a range of consultants, each with their own role in getting the project through the approval process.

So you find a landscape consultant.

You explain what you’re proposing and ask the obvious question:

“How much will the landscape plan cost?”

And the answer might be:

“It depends.”

It might depend on the council.

It might depend on the approval pathway.

It might depend on the site.

It might depend on existing vegetation.

It might depend on what information is available.

It might depend on what council ultimately asks for.

And, to be fair, sometimes it really does depend.

Development approvals aren’t perfectly predictable. Different councils have different requirements, and individual sites can introduce their own complications.

But put yourself in the homeowner’s position.

You don’t know the planning system.

You don’t know what a landscape plan actually needs to contain.

You don’t know which requirements are mandatory and which are recommendations.

You don’t know whether the consultant is proposing the minimum work necessary to satisfy the approval requirements or a more comprehensive service.

And you probably don’t have the time or expertise to work all of that out yourself.

So you start looking for ways to make sense of the information.

You ask ChatGPT to review the planning advice you’ve received.

You paste in the consultant’s scope of work and ask whether it appears reasonable.

You upload the construction estimates and ask whether the allowances seem complete, whether anything important appears to be missing and whether the costs are broadly consistent with the project you’re proposing.

You might even ask ChatGPT to compare the planning requirements with the construction estimates to see whether the two documents actually align.

That doesn’t necessarily mean you expect ChatGPT to replace the professionals.

You’re using it because you’re trying to understand what you’ve been told before committing to significant costs.

You just want to know:

Can I build this thing, what do I need to do and how much is it going to cost me?

This is where the comparison with the mechanic becomes uncomfortable.

The homeowner is in a similar position to the person handing over their car.

They know what they want at the end.

They know they need an expert to get them there.

But they don’t have the technical knowledge to independently assess every recommendation being made along the way.

They may use ChatGPT to ask questions, test assumptions and identify issues they should clarify. But they still have to rely on the relevant professionals for advice and decisions that require technical judgment.

They have to trust the professional.

And that’s not necessarily a problem.

In fact, that’s what professionals are for.

The problem occurs when the client has no practical way of understanding whether the scope of work — and therefore the cost — is reasonable.

The problem isn’t that consultants are dishonest

This is an important distinction.

The argument isn’t that planning consultants, landscape architects, architects, engineers or other professionals are routinely taking advantage of homeowners.

Most professionals are trying to do the right thing.

There are also very legitimate reasons why a consultant might not be able to provide a completely fixed price at the beginning of a project.

The development system contains genuine uncertainty.

Councils have different requirements.

Sites are different.

Projects change.

Clients change their minds.

Council can request additional information.

A consultant cannot control all of those things.

But uncertainty in the project doesn’t necessarily have to mean uncertainty in every professional fee.

That’s the distinction worth exploring.

What does a homeowner actually buy?

Consider the difference between these two proposals:

Landscape architecture services — $150/hour.

And:

Prepare a landscape plan addressing the identified landscape requirements of the proposed development, including one consolidated round of revisions — $500.

The first tells the homeowner what the consultant’s time costs.

The second tells them what they’re actually buying.

Neither approach is inherently right or wrong.

There are projects where an hourly rate is entirely appropriate.

But for a relatively straightforward residential service, the second proposition gives the homeowner something the first doesn’t:

a defined scope and a degree of certainty.

And that’s important because the homeowner isn’t really interested in buying ten hours of landscape architecture.

They want a landscape plan.

Fixed fees don’t require consultants to predict the future

A common objection to fixed fees is that development approvals are unpredictable.

That’s true.

But a fixed fee doesn’t have to mean:

“Nothing unexpected will happen.”

It can mean:

“This is what we will do for this amount of money, based on these assumptions.”

A consultant can define:

What’s included.

What’s excluded.

What information the fee assumes will be available.

How many revisions are included.

What happens if the client changes the project.

What happens if Council requests something outside the original scope.

That creates a boundary around the service.

If something genuinely falls outside that boundary, it can be treated as a variation.

That’s very different from allowing the scope — and therefore the bill — to expand without the client really understanding why.

The consultant can control more than the client thinks

A consultant can’t control whether Council approves a project.

They can’t control how long Council takes.

They can’t guarantee that no additional information will ever be requested.

But they can control how they structure their own service.

They can decide whether they’re selling time or a defined outcome.

They can decide whether the client receives a clear scope before work begins.

They can decide whether additional work requires client approval.

They can decide whether their pricing reflects the actual complexity of the service.

And they can explain the difference between:

required

recommended

and

optional.

That distinction can be incredibly valuable to a homeowner.

So how does a homeowner know they’re getting good advice?

They can’t always know.

That’s the uncomfortable answer.

A homeowner can’t become an expert in every professional discipline involved in their project.

They shouldn’t have to.

But they can expect a professional to make the relationship as transparent as reasonably possible.

Before engaging a consultant, it should be reasonable for a homeowner to ask:

What exactly am I paying for?

What will I receive at the end?

What’s included?

What’s excluded?

How many revisions are included?

What assumptions have you made?

What could cause the fee to increase?

If Council asks for something else, what happens?

Will you tell me before undertaking additional billable work?

These aren’t unreasonable questions.

They’re basic questions about the service being purchased.

And a consultant who can answer them clearly is demonstrating something important:

They understand the service they’re selling.

The problem with selling time

Professional services have traditionally been structured around time.

You have an hourly rate.

You work for an hour.

You bill an hour.

If the project takes longer, the client pays more.

Again, there is nothing inherently wrong with this.

But it can create a disconnect between what the consultant is selling and what the client actually wants.

The client doesn’t necessarily want hours.

They want the problem solved.

They want the report.

They want the drawing.

They want the approval documentation.

They want to know what they need to do next.

And when the client is unfamiliar with the development process, an open-ended hourly arrangement can make it difficult to know whether the amount of work being undertaken is proportionate to the problem.

This is where well-designed fixed-fee services can be useful.

Fixed fees can actually be better for consultants too

Fixed fees aren’t simply a way of protecting clients from large bills.

They can also force consultants to become better at defining and delivering their own services.

If you’re going to offer a fixed-fee service, you need to understand:

• what the client actually needs;

• what is genuinely necessary;

• what can be standardised;

• what information you need upfront;

• where projects commonly go outside scope;

• and what should happen when they do.

That encourages efficiency.

The consultant gets paid for delivering the agreed service rather than for accumulating hours.

The client gets greater certainty.

And both parties know where the boundaries are.

Not everything should be fixed fee

There are plenty of projects where fixed fees don’t make sense.

Complex planning matters.

Large public projects.

Major masterplans.

Projects involving extensive negotiations.

Sites with significant unknowns.

Work where the scope genuinely cannot be established at the outset.

In those situations, hourly or staged fees may be entirely appropriate.

The answer isn’t:

Everything should be fixed fee.

It’s:

Where a professional service can reasonably be defined, why shouldn’t the client be given the option of buying it as a defined service?

That is particularly relevant to smaller residential projects.

A different way of buying a landscape plan

This is the thinking behind Fast Landscape Plans.

Not every homeowner who needs a landscape plan is looking for a traditional landscape design service.

Sometimes they simply need a professional landscape plan to accompany a development application, complying development application or similar approval pathway.

They’re not necessarily looking for a complete redesign of their garden.

They’re looking for the documentation required to progress their project.

That’s a much more clearly defined service.

So Fast Landscape Plans is structured around a defined scope, a defined deliverable and a fixed fee.

For eligible projects, the fee is $500.

The homeowner knows what the service is for.

They know what they’re getting.

And they know what it costs before the work starts.

There are still boundaries. If the project changes substantially or requires work outside the defined service, that needs to be dealt with transparently.

But the basic proposition is deliberately simple:

You shouldn’t have to become an expert in landscape architecture or development approvals just to understand what you’re buying.

The development process is complicated enough.

Professional services don’t need to be.

Know what you need.

Know what you’re getting.

Know what it costs.