Whatever you know about designing a home isn't likely much. Really.  Whatever you know about building a home isn't likely much, either.  For sure.  
        Even if you’re an engineer, that engineering knowledge and experience may be helpful for a sliver of a sliver of the enterprise.  This is not about bridges and baseball stadiums.  This is about a home – tougher, it’s about your home.
        So where you are is in-between folks who know way more than you do about the home you're paying out the nose to get designed and built, live in for maybe a major chunk of your time on this earth, sell someday to cash-in.  You know more about groceries than about custom home design and home construction.  That can change, but only if it's in you to get from here to there.
        It’s ok to think of buyers of to-be-builts as being in a wide-open area between forces so beyond control, like floating with the deep river's current just this side of the waterfall and rapids.  Blissful ignorance.  No clue.
        This is on you.  Before The Architect . . . even Julian Beever at streetside knows that it's a dangerous world . . .