A valuable tool for optimising design

n 2013, Paul Mercer, a director at Tangram Architects, and a small group of colleagues, were commissioned to reformat the Design Quality Indicators (DQI) assessment tool for its specific use in the design of healthcare buildings – leading to the launch of the new DQI for Health in February 2014. Here the architect, IHEEM Fellow, and member of the Institute’s Architecture and Design of the Built Environment Technical Platform, discusses the development of the Design Quality Indicators for Health (DQIfH) tool, gives an update on ‘take-up’, and explains how ‘the role that DQI can play in a capital investment proposal for an estate development cannot be understated’.

So, you’ve spent ages working out how to commission a design team – you may have a framework or rely on a procurement process – and one morning, the design team turns up in your office, all smiles and handshakes. These people doubtless have the skills and experience you need – but do they fully understand what you need: you – the client, that is? Can I be very bold and ask a further pertinent question – do you, the client, know what you need? 

Let us cut to the chase. Is there a wellwritten, comprehensive, and widely adopted brief for the scheme? Has that brief been tested by the vast array of users and stakeholders who invariably get mixed up in any capital scheme? For the purposes of this article, I am going to assume that the answer is ‘yes’ – there is a brief, and everyone who needs to do so has subscribed to it. This may be an unusual scenario, I know, but please bear with me.