School design – who holds the power?

Managing conflict – Risk, Cost and Programme – which wins and who decides?

The power struggle between the various stakeholders during the design phase of a project is always fascinating viewing, but even more so with the latest incarnation of the governments schools building initiative, the Priority Schools Building Programme (PSBP).

Back in the days of the BSF programmes there was the architectural free reign to design anything you wanted as long as it was expensive. The recent times of austerity has brought a new mood and a new direction… function and price over form and fancy.

As an engineer by training, I would say there is a certain logic to this. Designing from the inside out rather than outside in means you focus on what you’re ultimately trying to achieve – the right teaching environment to engage and educate the next generation.

But where is the compromise? Does it achieve it? Who ultimately holds the power in design?

The infamous facilities output specification (FOS) written for the Education Funding Agency (EFA) by various consultancy bodies holds the key… and initially drives you towards M&E.

Daylight, overheating and ventilation have suddenly shot up the pecking order of considerations and complexity – if they’re not thought about early and designed in… you’re destined to fail. You may think that this is leading to a grand announcement that Innovaré is having a change of heart and reinventing itself as an M&E consultant or subcontractor. We’ve done some weird and wacky things in the past, but that would be a step too far!

Traditionally, as a manufacturing sub-contractor we would have just turned up and asked: ‘Where do you want your panels?’  …then looked at the design and sucked air through our teeth and said: ‘It’s going to cost X ’…but the EFA rates don’t allow that so we need to think differently.

We all have a part to play, for as good as a number of the consultant experts in those fields are, they struggle when you put a structural beam across a vent, or design a panel that restricts the daylight path, or don’t provide the fabric performance that’s needed to ensure plant costs are kept to a minimum.

There is also the habitual detachment between what appears to be a good idea and its commercial viability – the need to involve the people who have to physically make it work from both a financial and build-ability perspective has also never been more critical. As an industry, offsite providers are always preached early involvement but have we really meant it or has it been more about our own need for assurances on our forward pipeline of work?

Have we delivered sufficient value to our client base to make it worthwhile for them? Have we understood what it is that’s needed or just what is easiest for us?

Lightweight offsite construction provides part of the answer to the School conundrum by reducing the build programme, providing repeatable and high quality standardised designs which curb costs and exceed the fabric efficiency standards. However to provide the full solution we need to go past that traditional response and innovate on:

• How we include thermal mass for night time purge
• How we provide the internal layout flexibility for future changes
• How we can deliver the adaptable external elevations to maximise daylight, thermal comfort and ventilation based on the buildings geometry and orientation.

That is the challenge… and it’s no small challenge. In the past 12 months we’ve come a long way down this road and have thankfully proved that it is all possible and that it can be delivered within the required rate. The catch is that it does need a different thought process and that it requires the delivery of an even greater level of service. ‘Early involvement’ has to deliver value.

The Facilities Output Specification and EFA baseline rates are tough and have a number of detractors, but if nothing else it provides focus and forces the issues. Silo design will not hit these stringent requirements and the need for a collaborative approach to design good quality school buildings from the inside out has never been more needed.

The process starts with the FOS and requires a high level of involvement from M&E, with the risks around planning and design the architect cannot be discounted, but to hit the commercial rates and tight programmes early involvement of the supply-chain is critical to make it work. To coordinate that efficiently and to maximise the value, the power therefore has to sit with management capability of the enlightened Main Contractor.