A repeated concern with the Design Intent Gap is that the reasoning behind design decisions becomes separated from the people who subsequently document, estimate, procure, fabricate, and construct the project. One person described design intent being lost even in the handoff from a design team to a production team within the same firm. Others emphasized alignment of expectations and maintaining the “why” throughout the project.
What information about design intent does each of us need in order to do our job well?
Where in today’s project delivery process does that information most often get lost, misunderstood, or never communicated?
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you mean, “because we’ve always done it that way” is not good enough?
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Because the way we have always done it is working so well. We eliminated VE. RFIs don’t exist. Substitution requests never occur. And designers always get exactly what was intended.
As specifier, I believe the important information is the performance requirements - what must the system do and how does it perform the function? This is everything determined by calculation or testing. This becomes a primary consideration for evaluating alternatives. If performance cannot be met, can an alternative be considered equivalent?
Design requirements must be considered too - what does the system look like? This is everything determined by observation: size, texture, color and the like. The aesthetics are important, but must be balanced against performance.
Most times why the requirements are important to the project is the most important aspect. The owner or designer establishes priorities for decision-making. Understanding the priorities is essential.
I believe this information begins to be lost when compromises start. Proponents may be proposing a new or alternative solution and making arguments that are different than the original criteria that drove the original decision. But, no one remembers because the original criteria and decision are not fully documented.
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Cost kills requirements every time.
In an ideal, well-executed, BIM-based design/project delivery process, the design team knows upfront what costs are associated with materials, elements, and systems that meet project requirements. But this nut has been so hard for me and my colleagues to crack over the last 20 years because people who have the cost information don’t want to share it unless they are guaranteed to be the supplier. And the designers don’t want to spend the time, or taken on possible liability, to include it on their own through intensive research. This protectionism is nothing new and will stand in the way of true progress being made.
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I agree that knowing costs and performing an analysis when and as decisions are made is paramount to success.
That is why I advocate that estimators and specifiers should come as a matched set at the start of the project. The estimator should validate that the project scope and owner budget are aligned before design starts. The specifier can document the project requirements. Then design decisions can be measured against cost, performance, and other essential criteria to keep the project in balance throughout design.
It is a different mindset. A different approach that relies on team collaboration, continuous estimating, and progressive design intent documentation.