Managing the Brief for Better Design

Alastair Blyth, John Worthington

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781135156701
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

Briefing is not just presenting a set of documents to the design team; it is a process of developing a deep understanding about client needs. This book provides both inspiration to clients and a framework for practitioners. The coverage extends beyond new build, covering briefing for services and fit-outs. Written by an experienced and well-known team of authors, this new edition clearly explains how important the briefing process is to both the construction industry, in delivering well-designed buildings, and to their clients in achieving them. The text is illustrated by excellent examples of effective practice, drawn from DEGW experience, as well as five model briefs and invaluable process charts.

PART 1
Briefing explained

Part 1 describes a process (briefing) and a product (the brief). The initial two chapters set the context of briefing with a summary of critical issues and key factors to address in achieving success.

The briefing process is subdivided into three distinct stages. Pre-project stage, when the client’s needs are identified, options assessed, and a Strategic Brief prepared. The Project stage, when the chosen design team validates and acknowledges the client’s expectations, and sets out the requirements, and performance criteria in the terminology of building. The Post-project stage, on project completion and after move-in when the process, product and performance in meeting the users expectations are evaluated.

Subsequent chapters provide detailed guidance on identifying needs; briefing for growth and change; communicating expectations, both within the design teams, and from client to design teams; achieving effective feedback; and managing the process.

CHAPTER 1
The nature of briefing

Briefing has become increasingly important as users of buildings have become more demanding, accommodation more critical to business success and clients have increasingly found that the buildings they procure are often inappropriate for their needs. In this era of rapid change, upfront briefing is recognised as a means of achieving greater clarity and more predictability. For clients, an assurance that their buildings can respond to change in a reasonably predictable way is important, whether it is to enable individual staff to change from working in individual offices to working in groups, or to enable the organisation to lease part of the building to someone else.

Government reviews into the construction industry in 1994, 1998 and 2001 placed briefing high on the priority list for improvement.¹ They all argued that not only was a good brief vital to a successful outcome but so too is the briefing process. Since those reviews, procurement approaches have evolved with an increasing use of public-private partnerships which demand rigorous planning and robust briefing before the private sector partner makes the financial commitment.

This chapter explores how good briefing supports project outcomes and identifies the critical issues for managing the process to achieve briefing success.

Briefing is a process

In the context of this book, briefing is taken to mean an evolutionary process of understanding an organisation’s needs and resources, and matching these to its objectives and its mission. The distinction between this and a brief is that the brief is a product of the process; it formalises the decisions and actions to be taken, and may be produced at key stages of the process.

The process of briefing involves problem formulation and problem solving as well as managing change to implement the solution. The solution may be to construct something, but it need not be so. During this iterative process ideas evolve, are analysed, tested and refined into specific sets of requirements. Briefing may ask, what solution would meet a specific problem? But it can also ask, does this existing solution, for example this building, meet current needs?

Another view of briefing is that it is a short meeting at which someone is given an instruction (the brief) and some background on a project and asked to deliver a solution.

This approach assumes that the solution has been correctly identified, and that there is no other more appropriate solution. The dangers with this approach are that assumptions may have been made but not explored or challenged, leading to expensive changes later in the project. For example, assumptions about how the client organisation carries out its work processes, or whether it should continue to work in the same way. Or, that the client has a greater knowledge and understanding of, for example, construction and the implications of what will be built, than he really does. The process of briefing involves a partnership which levers the client’s expertise, which is about their business, and the expertise of the designers and contractors to provide a delivery service that will support their business needs.

In a construction context where the timeframes can be relatively long, the client’s needs may change during the lifetime of a project and these may require changes in the project itself. Therefore, limiting the process in this way does not allow options to be kept open so that changing circumstances can be reflected in the project. Instead, clients can be harried into decisions, with warnings by the designers or suppliers that making changes will be costly and delay completion of the project.

The briefing process is articulated in Chapter 2 and whilst in itself this process does not guarantee success, it does provide a framework and sequence for making appropriate and timely decisions.

Briefing the intangible

Briefing is more than identifying a schedule of accommodation. It looks to unearth how an organisation functions and carries out its activities. Successful briefing is as much about identifying and communicating these intangible needs, as it is about specifying the quantifiable.

Briefing as a process for managing responsibility and expectations

A well-thought-out briefing process can provide a mechanism for apportioning responsibility and control to the most appropriate people. Without such a mechanism, control over a problem can be lost to someone else who has a different agenda or vested interest in a particular solution. For example, a criticism of construction has been that clients lose control because briefing is often perceived as a one-stop event with only one solution promoted by a construction industry with an attitude that ‘knows best’. In this scenario not enough time is spent in the beginning identifying the issues surrounding the project; it seems easier to hand over the problem to someone who has a ready-to-fit solution. This can be made worse by adopting contractual routes which, in effect, deny clients and users much of a say in what goes on.

The nature of the project is perceived quite differently by the client organisation and the design and construction team. The client organisation is focused on the success of its business. A big supermarket chain will see itself as a grocer. Its business is about satisfying customer needs. Buildings are one of the resources along with staff and information technology. For them a building project is part of its overall business project.

For the designers and builders, building is very often perceived as one of a series of projects to be delivered on time and within budget.

Perspectives vary within the client organisation too. Management is concerned with long-term flexibility, whilst from the individual user’s point of view the built environment must respond immediately to changing need whether it is being able to turn the lights on, or at a more complex level, responding to organisational change. Facility managers are very often interested in the financial performance of the building in terms of cost in use and energy consumption. Developers and managing agents are interested in rental values and the market perception of a building.

Already one can see how complex the web of expectations can become, without including specific specialist requirements or the broader interests of customers and the local community.

During the briefing process these issues can be identified and, where relevant, fed into the project.

The influence of different paradigms and perspectives

The early stages of identifying needs, alternatives and establishing the decision to build is inevitably a ‘fuzzy’ process. At the early stage of problem definition, a mismatch has been identified, but neither the scope, the solutions nor the resources required are clearly articulated.

Dr Roy Woodhead in his doctorate thesis identified the origins of a proposal to build and explore its evolution to a point where it could be called a project.² The research found that at the pre-project stage the decision to build is subjected to a wide range of different viewpoints, reflecting the interests, experience and discipline cultures ...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Contributors
• Foreword to first edition
• Foreword to second edition
• Introduction
• PART 1 Briefing explained
• PART 2 Learning from experience
• PART 3 The process in practice
• Further reading
• Index