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 is today's blog about? 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 corner a complex system, 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 The HOAI needs reform in some areas and is outdated, but it is indeed not the great final boss of planning and construction.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 procurement 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 edge of the form ("Mr. Meier, best to send it directly by fax!") while the pipes in the engine room have long since burst.
The Convenient Error of Bureaucracy Reduction
In complex systems, discussions almost never take place where the greatest friction lies, but rather where one can most elegantly point the finger. 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, excessive technical regulations, and procurement 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 beyond the HOAI, and lack of appreciation for planning services arises. Anyone who has experienced projects waiting for approvals, statements, or additional demands 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 that 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 file folder. 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 Rehearsal for Prepayment
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 as a system precisely because intellectual planning services are difficult to grasp and, without a comprehensible structure, can 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 is not efficiency that wins, but 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, professional depth, assumption of risk, and coordination. This is the silent tragicomedy of our industry. Good planning usually only becomes noticeable when it 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 saved planning hours will inevitably be compensated on the construction site or in later building operations with manifold additional costs.
Furthermore, we must not forget: since the ECJ ruling of 2019 and the 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. Thus, 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 common sense, to avoid falling.
Service Phase 8 and the Battle 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 shares of services, partial services, and creditable costs, but a real office lives on months, salaries, rent, software licenses (thanks again), and continuous effort. Especially in service phase 8, site supervision, this difference sometimes painfully widens.
An office doesn't pay its construction managers in "72 percent advanced site coordination," but punctually at the end of the month in Euros. If the construction period of a project extends from 18 months to three years for reasons not attributable to the planner, the effort for meetings, minutes, conflict resolution, and documentation increases massively. While time is not one-to-one identical 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 consider remuneration merely as reward for completed stages . Planners must finance a permanent readiness to perform . 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 an extended construction period is saving precisely on problem-solving competence. It's like sending home the people with the water buckets first on a sinking ship for cost reasons.
Building in 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 often no longer adequately addresses the highly complex, fragmented, and often unpredictable requirements demands of renovation, revitalization, and monument preservation. There is a lack of sufficient consideration for existing building fabric, the focus on cost calculation is problematic, and the surcharges for repairs are often too low.
From my own experience in 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 80s – this is the daily reality. A tiny structural measure can trigger enormous investigation and coordination work. The preservation of a historical facade element or the fire protection upgrade of an old utility shaft brings hardly any creditable costs (colloquially "new construction volume") with it, but requires a massive amount of intellectual effort, expertise, and possibly even risk-taking. A remuneration 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 Schedules
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 HOAI amendment in 2026. There are a multitude of simplification proposals that can be implemented immediately, which 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 schedules.
Firstly, the topic of sustainability must be fundamentally integrated. Resource conservation, lifecycle considerations, and climate protection are no longer exotic special requests today, but the foundation of all planning. Expert reports suggest finally including sustainability as a regular planning objective in basic services, while specific certifications (such as DGNB or LEED) remain special services.
Secondly, work on existing buildings must be upgraded. Although experts do not expect a completely independent service category for 'existing buildings' – the HOAI will likely remain focused on new construction, like it or not – regulations regarding existing building fabric to be incorporated and surcharges for renovations are to be revised. There are concrete considerations for simplified calculation factors or flat-rate increases that will finally realistically remunerate the additional effort involved in renovations.
Thirdly: 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 the service descriptions and a newly defined 'standard BIM process' as an appendix to the HOAI are intended to 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 capture the enormous data structure, which later benefits facility management and thus lower operating costs, and finally bill it fairly.
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 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 and more confidently defend the value of their own services much more clearly. 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 an arbitrarily reducible cost item. 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, isn't it?").
The HOAI is the unloved problem child that should be put out on the street and it is a proven, albeit aged, 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 2026 amendment, we will end up with a system that reflects 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.
I'll be out then, anyway.
