When construction projects stall, costs skyrocket, and nerves fray, the culprit is usually found quickly: the Fee Structure for Architects and Engineers (HOAI). It's considered a dusty relic, a bureaucratic hindrance, and an enemy of all innovation. But anyone who knows from their own experience in project and facility management how things really work on German construction sites and in planning offices (okay, caught you) comes to a different conclusion: We're mistaking the thermometer for the illness.
Oh yes, and what's the blog about today? About the problems in the planning industry, the pitfalls of existing buildings, and the question of why abolishing the HOAI wouldn't save us – but only a smart reform would.
When I read debates about the HOAI, I regularly feel like I'm witnessing a favorite German pastime: You put a complex system in a corner, point at it with a serious expression, and exclaim: "There! That's the fault!" And then it stands there, the "HOAI", the Fee Structure for Architects and Engineers, primped like a veteran administrator on a company outing, and is suddenly supposed to be responsible for everything. It's allegedly to blame for slow projects, high construction costs, too much bureaucracy, lack of innovation, and probably also for the chronically clogged coffee machine in the construction office. But it's not that simple. The HOAI needs reform in some areas and is outdated, but it is indeed is not the great final boss of planning and construction.
My impression after years in practice, juggling CAFM systems, technical building equipment, and countless project meetings: Anyone who wants to abolish the HOAI to reduce bureaucracy is just treating the symptoms. The regulation describes services, structures fees, and often serves as contractual orientation. But the real distortions lie much deeper. They lurk in excessively long approval processes, sprawling tendering procedures, overly complex technical regulations, completely inadequately addressed measures for existing buildings, and a culture that still surprisingly likes to treat intellectual planning work as a secondary matter. The dispute over the HOAI is therefore not necessarily wrong, but completely misdirected. People are discussing the visible form edge ("Mr. Meier, best to send it by fax!"), while the pipes in the engine room have long since burst.
The comfortable fallacy of reducing bureaucracy
In complex systems, discussions almost never take place where the greatest friction lies, but rather where one can most elegantly point the finger at it. A written set of rules is, after all, easier to criticize than a federally fragmented approval practice or a project reality where new coordination meetings and construction site disruptions fall from the sky like confetti every week. Looking at the facts, a rather sad picture emerges: abolishing the HOAI would neither speed up approval processes nor eliminate the major cost drivers. The real "big points" for delays are the approval practice, sprawling technical regulations, and tendering procedures, while the idea that there would suddenly be fewer legal disputes without the HOAI is an absolute illusion.
From the perspective of software providers and digitalization experts, it also becomes clear (yes, that's my area) that the real pressure in the industry comes from price wars, bureaucratic hurdles outside the HOAI, and lack of appreciation for planning services arises. Anyone who has experienced projects waiting for approvals, statements, or additional claims for months knows: the bottleneck is not the fee structure. The bottleneck is the question, whether a project can find a reasonable pace through the administrative system at all. And anyone who believes digitalization alone will fix this is greatly mistaken. A digital traffic jam remains a traffic jam, just with a prettier file name and a PDF instead of a binder. It's not the electronic shell that needs reform, but the decluttering of substantive requirements is crucial.
The value of intellectual work: Planning is not a prepayment exercise
Added to this is the second major misconception: the idea that a lower or completely freely negotiated fee automatically leads to cheaper, faster, or better projects. Even older analyses warned that the HOAI was originally established precisely because intellectual planning services are difficult to grasp and, without a comprehensible structure, easily end in contractual chaos and loss of quality. This observation is more relevant today than ever. When the connection between service and remuneration becomes blurred, it's not efficiency that wins, but a lack of transparency.
Unfortunately, many clients see the HOAI merely as a crude fee schedule. In doing so, they deliberately overlook that this schedule actually describes complex services: intellectual work, immense responsibility, technical depth, assumption of risk, and coordination. This is the silent tragicomedy of our industry. Good planning is usually only noticed when it is not works. A perfectly planned and smoothly handed-over energy and facility management concept doesn't create a big show on the construction site, but simply avoids disasters and subsequent operating costs. Communicatively, this is unfortunately about as sexy as well-maintained fire damper documentation. But hours saved in planning will inevitably be repaid on the construction site or in later building operations with a multiple of additional costs.
Furthermore, we must not forget: since the ECJ ruling of 2019 and reform on January 1, 2021 the HOAI is no longer a binding price regulation of the old kind anyway. Today, it primarily serves as a system for orientation and fallback within contractual freedom. So, the HOAI is by no means the iron cage it is often portrayed as. It is a handrail. And one holds onto a handrail - sometimes out of habit, sometimes out of genuine conviction, often simply out of pure professional reason, to avoid falling.
Performance Phase 8 and the fight for liquidity
The debate becomes particularly absurd when one leaves the legal meta-level and delves into the operational reality of planning offices. The HOAI calculates in service shares, partial services, and attributable costs, but a real office lives in months, salaries, rents, software licenses (thanks again), and continuous effort. Especially in service phase 8, site supervision, this difference is sometimes painfully apparent.
An office doesn't pay its site managers in "72 percent advanced construction site coordination," but punctually at the end of the month in euros. If the construction time of a project extends from 18 months to three years for reasons for which the planner is not responsible, the effort for meetings, minutes, conflict resolution, and documentation increases massively. While time is not directly equivalent to performance, it is the most reliable indicator of continuously incurred operating costs. Therefore, flexible payment plans and construction time couplings as a supplement to the HOAI are indispensable today.
It is a fatal misconception to view fees merely as reward for completed stages to finance. Planners must lasting readiness to perform financing. Presence on the construction site and responsiveness to unforeseen disruptions cost money every single day. Anyone who thins out planning coordination for cost-saving reasons during a construction delay is saving precisely on problem-solving competence. This is like sending home the people with the water buckets first during a sinking ship for cost reasons.
Building on existing structures: Where the system reaches its limits
The imbalance becomes even more dramatic when we move away from new construction and turn to building in existing structures – the absolute megatrend of our time. The HOAI structure is historically strongly oriented towards new buildings and will not adequately address the highly complex, fragmented, and often unpredictable requirements renovation, revitalization, and monument preservation often no longer adequately. There is a lack of sufficient consideration for existing building fabric, the fixation on cost calculation is problematic, and the surcharges for repairs are often too low.
From my own experience dealing with existing buildings, I can only underline this: Anyone working with existing structures is constantly working with surprises. Hidden pollutants, damaged structures, incomplete as-built documentation from the 1980s – this is the daily reality. A tiny structural measure can trigger enormous investigation and coordination work. The preservation of a historic facade element or the fire protection upgrade of an old utility shaft brings hardly any billable costs (colloquially "new construction volume") but requires a massive amount of thought, expertise, and possibly even risk-taking. A fee system that rigidly adheres to construction costs simply does not fairly reflect this intellectual and planning effort.
New construction ticks according to plan; existing structures tick according to findings.
The HOAI amendment 2026: Sustainability, BIM, and fair fee scales
So what to do? The answer is not abolition, but modernization. This is precisely the core of the current reform debates, which are working towards an amendment of the HOAI in 2026. There are a variety of immediately implementable simplification proposals that would retain the HOAI as a working tool but make it more practical. Three crucial areas of action are emerging: sustainability, digitalization (BIM), and the adjustment of outdated fee tables.
Firstly, the topic of sustainability must be fundamentally integrated. Resource conservation, life cycle considerations, and climate protection are no longer exotic special requests today, but the foundation of all planning. Expert opinions suggest finally including sustainability as a regular planning objective in the basic services, while specific certifications (such as DGNB or LEED) remain as special services.
Secondly, building in existing structures must be upgraded. Although experts do not expect a completely independent service category for "existing structures" – the HOAI will likely remain predominantly focused on new construction – regulations for co-processed building fabric and renovation surcharges are to be revised. There are concrete considerations for simplified calculation factors or flat-rate increases that would finally realistically remunerate the additional effort involved in renovations.
Third: Building Information Modeling (BIM). Anyone planning and building today knows that the digital twin is the key to efficient subsequent building operation (CAFM). However, BIM has often been a gray area in terms of fees. A method-neutral clarification of service descriptions and a newly defined "standard BIM process" as an appendix to the HOAI should provide clarity here. The digital planning method is no longer a pipe dream, but a harsh reality. If services are recorded more systematically, architects and engineers can finally charge fairly for the enormous amount of data generated. which later benefits facility management and thus lower operating costs, which later benefits facility management and thus lower operating costs
Fourth, we cannot avoid the fee schedules themselves. The table values have not been adjusted since 2013. They completely ignore years of price increases, exploding personnel and software costs, as well as the massively increased planning effort due to new standards. A framework for orientation inevitably loses its acceptance if it financially pretends that we are still living in 2013. Significant increases, especially for smaller project sizes, are therefore essential.
Outlook: The planning industry of the coming years
If I bundle these developments, I see no radical revolution for the coming years, but a phase of tough but absolutely necessary shifts. The HOAI will not die. It will continue to move away from dogmatic price law and transform into a hopefully highly relevant (sic!) structural and quality instrument.
At the same time, the industry itself will have to move. Planners and engineers must articulate the value of their own services much more clearly and defend it more confidently. This self-description as demanding, intellectual work is not a rhetorical luxury, but a pure survival strategy. Those who cannot communicate their own value will be mercilessly degraded by the market to a cost item that can be cut at will. And who would know this better than the countless engineering firms in self-exploitation mode ("No, why, 60 hours a week for my husband and me is normal?".
The HOAI is the unloved problem child that should be put out on the street and it is a proven, albeit aging, tool. Some want to throw the construct away out of frustration, others polish it out of pure nostalgia. Both are wrong. We need to take this tool apart, sharpen the dull blades, scrape off the rust regarding existing buildings, and equip it with digital interfaces for BIM and sustainability. Because existing buildings and their management count.
And if this actually succeeds with the amendment in 2026, we will end up with a system that does justice to the reality on construction sites and in planning offices again.
And if not?
Then in five years, we will be having exactly the same debate – just with new buzzwords and even fewer skilled workers willing to put up with this madness.
In any case, I'm out.
