GIRI Design Guide previews round up
7 Oct 22GIRI's revised Design Guide is set to launch later this year. Here, we round up the key insights from our previews of all the chapters in the updated guide.
A robust approach
A rigorous design process involving key members of the project team should be adopted at the beginning of a project to avoid costly errors. This is the central message of GIRI’s revised Design Guide and the backbone of its recommendations to the industry.
The brief
A well-prepared brief is vital to project success. It minimises design changes and reduces knock-on construction errors and the associated cost increases and delays. But how do you develop an effective brief and what should it cover? The revised GIRI Design Guide, which publishes later this year, provides an outline of the briefing process and practical steps to follow to achieve a well-defined brief that is comprehensive, timely, and collaborative.
Culture
The right working culture can reduce errors and improve the delivery of construction projects because it encourages and rewards behaviours such as collaboration, flexibility, inclusivity, leadership, and good communication. GIRI’s revised Design Guide considers key questions such as what defines a positive working culture, and how can we achieve and sustain one?
Collaboration
Every project benefits from collaboration, and errors are reduced by collaborative working. GIRI’s forthcoming Design Guide sets out how such an environment creates a teamwork attitude to getting things right and outlines practical steps by which collaborative working can be achieved.
Investing in design
Early investment in design can eliminate errors later in the process. Insufficient investment at this stage will increase out-turn costs and can result in adverse technical outcomes, greater costs, and even legal disputes. GIRI’s revised Design Guide highlights the central role that design plays in project success and discusses how to reduce error by appropriate investment of time and fees at this early stage.
Contractor input
All projects benefit from tapping into a contractor’s knowledge of delivery, buildability and construction techniques before design options are closed down to help regulate the quality of designs and reduce errors. The revised GIRI Design Guide addresses the benefits and the obstacles to this approach, and makes recommendations for achieving that early contractor sense check within the constraints of commercial rules.
Planning the design work
Creating and agreeing a project-specific plan of design work and clarifying roles and responsibilities across all disciplines are vital steps. Implemented early in any project, they can help to avoid errors further down the line. GIRI’s revised Design Guide sets out a number of practical steps to assist in this process.
Design gateways
Failure to communicate design intent adequately to specialist designers, contractors and sub-contractors can have major consequences. GIRI’s revised Design Guide makes a number of recommendations to ensure appropriate design information is efficiently supplied in a clear form at each design gateway.
Information
Coherent and well-communicated design information is an integral part of any successful project. GIRI’s revised Design Guide makes recommendations for how to prevent incorrect, irrelevant, or poorly communicated design information leading to errors, including practical guidance on how to establish and implement a rigorous process for the production and communication of design information.
Guiding the design process
Adopting a structured approach for the design process, from start to finish of the project, greatly reduces the risk of design errors. GIRI’s revised Design Guide explains why an individual or team with the authority to make informed decisions should be identified and assigned to manage the design process.
Stakeholder management
Many researchers have cited inadequate stakeholder management as a cause of project failures in construction and other industries. GIRI’s revised Design Guide focuses on how you can identify, map, and prioritise all internal and external stakeholders in a project, and establish a process for effectively managing and communicating with them.
Opening up and closing down
The concept of ‘opening up’ and ‘closing down’ a design enables all creative thinking and key decision-making to be completed in good time ahead of preparation of production information. GIRI’s revised Design Guide explains how this can reduce the necessity for change and hence the opportunity for error and outlines how to do it successfully.
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