Subject: Design Feedback

From: [email-masked] (Colin Pearson)
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 15:58:33 GMT

FEEDBACK MECHANISMS 
FOR IMPROVING BUILDING SERVICES DESIGN

Are clients’ needs being adequately met? 

In the UK, media reports of building services installations,
albeit of a number of high profile buildings, suggest room
for improvement. The industry itself would never deny that
there is always room for improvement, placing the resolution
of design, installation and handover issues high on the
agenda.

A new BSRIA research project, ‘Mechanisms for Design
Feedback’ looks at one aspect, and is aimed at providing a
structured, ultimately contractual, approach to informing
the design process through installation, commissioning and
early occupancy.

If you have any information or opinions on feedback, or the
lack of it, in the construction process please contact me.

Do you agree that:
- There are always good and bad points to consider for any
building services installation, but the designer rarely
knows what worked and what didn’t. 
-Current financial constraints have led to designers ending
their involvement with a project as it goes to tender.
· This has distanced the profession from the most important
aspect of their role - a detailed knowledge of how their
designs have been put into practice, the pitfalls as well as
the benefits.
· This is a stumbling block not only to innovative, headline
designs but ‘bread and butter’ work.
· IncreasingBy reducing the opportunities for learning
through experience has important implications for the
progress and management of a project.
· Feedback to designers, during and after building services
installation, would improve the efficiency of the
construction process and the effectiveness of building
services designs.
· A feedback mechanism is therefore required to ensure that
engineers remian involved and that the lines of
communication remain open.
· The means of achieving and paying for this need to be
developed to a standard that may be readily adopted, ideally
as part of a formal contractual agreement.
· There are successful feedback mechanisms in other
industries and other countries. 

The project is supported through the Department of the
Environment’s Partners in Technology programme, with
commercial and industrial partners now being sought. It is
valued at £144,000, and receives 50% of its funding from the
Construction Directorate of the UK Department of the
Environment. Participants therefore receive the results of
high quality research at low cost, as well as a wide range
of additonal benefits.

Replies or requests for more information to Colin Pearson or
Aleksandra Bury at BSRIA on +44 01344-426511.

or look at my web page.
Colin Pearson
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/CCPearson