Once we had decided on our engineer, architect and builder things started to move forward relatively quickly. Everything here takes far longer than you expect, mainly because of the bureaucracy involved. We met the architect and engineer recommended by our useful friends and over the course of a couple of weeks had some plans underway. The process is quite drawn out – first we met them both (separately, but the process is the same) at their offices in the new town to say that we were interested in their services, then we made another appointment to meet them at our house and explain what we wanted to do, then there was another meeting to get a quote for their services based on what they’d seen, then we had another meeting to let them know that we’d decided to employ them, then another meeting back at the house to discuss things further (and in the architect’s case to get some sketches and measurements) and so on.
At the moment we’ve managed to obtain the all-important ‘attestation de stabilite’ from our engineer, which after all the hype is simply a standard letter where he fills in your name and address and says the house won’t fall down. This letter, which you need to obtain your building permit, costs 3000dh/300 Euro. Ironically though, they can’t really tell the proper stability of the house until building work actually starts – once you start removing the plaster from the walls you can see where the cracks are and how bad (or good hopefully!) it really is. Our contract with the engineer also includes him making regular visits to the house during the build to check that things are being done correctly for the structure, and drawing up plans for the electricity and plumbing – but that comes later.
What we need the architect for is to draw up fairly straightforward plans and put together all the paperwork required to get the correct building permit. In order to do that he needs certified copies of our passports, copies of the house papers (known as the melkia), the plans from the topographer, the attestation de stabilite from the engineer and (this was the first we’d heard of it) something called an attestation fiscale.
We had already obtained the topography plans (surprisingly cheap and painless), the certified copies of the documents and the attestation from the engineer and happily handed them over at another meeting with our architect, thinking that we were almost done with the paperwork. After reading the attestation de stabilite though, it seemed there was a problem. “All this says is that the engineer will visit the house during the building work, it doesn’t say the house is stable,” he informed us.
Hmmm. We rang the engineer who was also perplexed (“but the document says it’s an attestation de stabilite” he insisted), but after getting him to speak directly to the architect they agreed on what had to be done.
We then arranged yet another meeting with the engineer and had to go back and get a new piece of paper with an extra sentence added, explicitly stating the house wouldn’t collapse.
Then there was the mysterious attestation fiscale (tax forms). “You just need to go down the road and get a form and sign it,” said the architect. Sounds simple right?
The office was closed at that moment as our meeting had been at the end of the day so we arranged to come back the next day, meet the architect and he would take us through it. He wasn’t there when we next turned up however, so his assistant drew us a map and off we went. After finally finding the right place we were confronted by two rooms, multiple desks, Arabic signs and crowds of people milling about in a disorganised queue. We loitered for a few minutes before Vince simply interrupted one of the paper pushers and asked where we could get the correct forms. Thank God we hadn’t ‘queued’ as the forms were not collected from their office, you had to get them from the tele-boutique (phone shop) across the road. Once we got there the only reason we could deduce for this randomness was that the shop had a photocopier so perhaps the office had sub-contracted out their forms. Anyway, we got the papers and headed back to the architect’s. He had arrived in the meantime and filled out the details for us (as the forms were in Arabic script and therefore unintelligible). He then offered to take us to a totally different office where the forms now had to be stamped. We had just got out the door when he said “you do have your passports don’t you?” Ah, no, no-one had mentioned that. “You have our certified copies, won’t they do?” I suggested. He thought it might be ok so we retrieved the copies and headed to this other municipal building. A couple of floors up was a similar scene to the previous place – lots of random desks and semi-queues. We waited for nearly 20 minutes only to be told (predictably) that we needed our original passports and the copies that had been certified in another of their municipal offices wouldn’t do.
We came back the next day, but the office was closed. And the next. After the weekend we finally had the forms stamped and headed back to the first office where we’d been originally sent to get the forms in the first place. Finally we were ready to get the elusive attestation fiscale. But no. We queued and were then informed that we needed to bring copies of the house papers as well. Which were back at home in the medina of course. (Every time we have to go to and from the Ville Nouvelle – where all the administration takes place – it takes around 45 minutes. The drive is only ten minutes but you then have to park on the medina outskirts and walk for a good ten minutes dodging pedestrians, donkeys and wheeled carts to get to the house, retrieve what you need and then repeat the process in reverse.)
We gave up for the day as we couldn’t face anymore. The next day we returned with all the documents and finally lodged the papers to obtain the attestation fiscale. It had only taken us a week and a half. Vince resolved “in future I’m going to carry around our whole filing cabinet just in case…”
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