Design management
Design management: reviews, specifications, quality assurance, quality control and value engineering
Design gets done on time when someone owns the stages, the reviews and the open items. We manage design for owners, contractors and consultants.
The problem we solve
Design problems rarely come from one big mistake. They come from stage gates that nobody defined, review comments that never close, specifications that conflict with drawings, and value engineering that arrives after the design is frozen.
On Saudi projects the design team may follow RIBA stages, AIA phases or the employer's own stage names. Without a mapping, everyone says 'design development' and means something different.
What we deliver
- Design stage plan: deliverables per stage, mapped between RIBA and AIA vocabulary and the employer's stages
- Design programme and responsibility matrix
- Design review cycles with a comments register and closure tracking
- Specification writing and reviews, aligned with drawings and the BOQ
- Quality assurance (QA): design quality plan, procedures, ITP approval and audits, set up before the work starts
- Quality control (QC): checking the design work through inspections, review and hold points, tests and non-conformance reports (NCRs)
- Value engineering workshops and option reports, with cost and programme impact described
- Code-compliance reviews against the codes the project names
- Design change control and close-out
How we work
Set the stages
Agree names, deliverables and sign-off for each stage at the start.
Run reviews
Scheduled reviews with a single register of comments, owners and due dates.
Control specifications
One specification set, checked against drawings and the BOQ.
Assure, then control
QA sets the quality plan, procedures and audits before design work starts. QC then checks each deliverable at review, hold and witness points and records NCRs.
Test options
Value engineering is run when it can still change the design, with the cost and programme effect shown.
Close out
Comments closed, changes logged, and the design record handed over.
Articles on this topic
All articlesQA vs QC on site: how the ITP and its hold, witness and review points fit together
Quality assurance and quality control are separate stages. How ISO 9000 defines each, what belongs to QA before work starts, and how QC runs through the ITP's hold, witness and review points.
Read the articleRIBA Plan of Work 2020 vs AIA phases: mapping design stages on Saudi projects
How the eight RIBA 2020 stages and the five AIA B101 phases line up, where they do not, and how to write a stage map for a Saudi project's design team.
Read the articleClash detection that gets fixed: a coordination workflow
A BIM coordination workflow for Saudi projects: set the rules, test the models, group clashes by cause, assign owners and close issues with evidence.
Read the articleFrequently asked questions
Do you design the building?
No. We manage and review design. The designer of record stays responsible for the design and the stamped drawings.
Which codes do you check against?
The ones the project names. We do not assume an edition; the employer's requirements or the authority's instructions decide which codes and versions apply.
Can you run value engineering on a design that is already approved?
Yes, but change is costlier late. We show the saving, the redesign effort and the programme effect before anyone decides.
Do you work with RIBA or AIA?
Both. We use the RIBA Plan of Work 2020 and the AIA phases as a shared vocabulary and map them to your stages.
Talk to us about this service
Tell us the project stage, the design team structure and what is holding the design up.