Design decides the cost long before construction does
By the time a design reaches site it has already determined what the project will cost, how long it will take and what can be built efficiently. Design management is the discipline of directing those decisions while they remain decisions.
Where design meets the commercial position
Design development is not neutral. Managed against the requirement, a design develops toward the budget it was priced against and the programme it must be delivered within. Left to progress on its own terms, it develops toward technical elegance and conservative assumption.
The consequences appear elsewhere: a specification refined beyond what was tendered, a late change that becomes an acceleration cost, a detail resolved without regard to how it will be constructed. The commercial function usually encounters these as claims. Design management is the point at which they are still choices.
How we approach it
Design management against the requirement
We manage design development and design consultants against the Owner’s Project Requirements, the budget and the programme — establishing what has been committed, tracking development against it, and identifying divergence while it can still be corrected. Consultant scopes, deliverable schedules and design programmes are managed to the dates that construction and procurement actually require.
Design change management
Design change is identified, assessed and controlled at the point it arises. Each change is tested against three questions: whether it is required, what it costs, and what it does to the programme. Design change is reported through the same registers as commercial and programme change, so that a design decision is visible in the forecast rather than discovered in it.
Engineering management and interface control
Technical delivery oversight across disciplines, and management of the interfaces between them — civil, structural, mechanical, electrical, controls and systems. Most design failures are interface failures: a services route that does not fit the structure, a systems requirement that arrives after the builder’s work is complete, an assumption made by one discipline that another has not adopted. We manage those interfaces as a discipline in themselves rather than as a coordination afterthought.
Design assurance, maturity and constructability
Independent review of whether a design is sufficiently developed for what is being asked of it — whether that is a procurement, a price, a commitment or a construction start. Assessment of design maturity against the decision it must support. Constructability and compliance review, and the identification of details that will be expensive or impractical to build before they are issued for construction.
Secondment of design and engineering personnel
Design managers, engineering managers and design engineers placed into project teams, together with subject matter experts across civil, structural, mechanical and electrical disciplines. Placed to hold the position, not to observe it.
Who we act for
Principals and delivery partners protecting a brief and a budget through design development. Contractors and joint ventures managing design under a design and construct or guaranteed maximum price obligation. Subcontractors carrying design responsibility for their package.
Discuss an engagement
An initial conversation carries no obligation. Where StratMonk is not the appropriate fit, we will say so.
Start a conversation
Describe the circumstances and we will advise on the appropriate approach.