News

RICS Building Surveying Facility Journal Issue 12 October/November 2004

Design Quality put to the test

The Design Quality Indicator (DQI) is a pioneering process, developed by the Construction Industry Council, to evaluate the design quality of buildings. The development of the DQI tool has been led by CIC with sponsorship from the DTI, CABE, and supported by OGC. It focuses on the essential objective of design - the quality of the end product - which can only be achieved when all requirements of a building are identified and then met by the design.

When can the DQI be used?

The DQI can be applied to most types of building and works by looking at a buildings Functionality, Build Quality and Impact. Broad stakeholder involvement is fundamental to the process: designers, surveyors, contractors and developers provide input along with users, building managers and clients.

The tool is used at the briefing stage to establish shared aspirations for the project, and is then used throughout design and post occupancy to track how well the design and building are achieving these objectives. It is delivered in the form of a web based toolkit consisting of a questionnaire with 97 statements that respondents score against a 6 point scale, from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’ or ‘don’t know’ or ‘not applicable’. The statements automatically adjust to the particular phase of the project that is being assessed.

Who manages the process?

A host organisation within each project is required to manage and apply the DQI. Surveyors and project managers are well placed to do this and are the most frequent users of the tool. Davis Langdon was a trailblazer of the DQI process and have applied the tool to a number of recent projects. The latest assessment hosted by Davis Langdon was at the briefing stage of specialist medical project. The outcome of this DQI process was used to supplement the design brief and inform the design team in the development of the early design solutions.

How does it work?

The use of the DQI tool was a client requirement and the process was facilitated by Maria Kliniotou of Davis Langdon. To begin the process Maria invited all stakeholders to a workshop. The invitation was accompanied by a copy of the DQI questionnaire, giving all participants the opportunity to consider the statements before the workshop. The workshop was attended by the representatives of the different end user groups, the consultant architect and engineer, and the project sponsor.

To identify the most important requirements, Maria facilitated the workshop so that respondents were given a maximum of nine opportunities to answer ‘strongly agree’ throughout the questionnaire. This enabled the group to concentrate more closely on exactly what they regarded as the crucial requirements of the building.

Questionnaires were completed off-line and the results were uploaded later. During the workshop the participants shared their key dislikes and likes for the building. Dislikes included noise, over-crowding and magnolia coloured work spaces, key likes included natural lighting, glazed walls and functional spaces.

In a second workshop Maria presented the results and the process of prioritisation was then taken a step further when participants selected their five most important statements and five least important statements from those identified in the previous workshop.

Due to the nature of the building, future users strongly emphasised the importance of a functional internal space, whereby the architecture of the space does not overlook its function. This is evident in the results of the workshop with functionality proving the most important factor at 47%, while build quality scored 33% and impact 20%.

What happens next?

The results were compiled by Davis Langdon, uploaded and formulated into a final output which has been used by the design team to inform design solutions and communicate the design priorities to all involved in the process. Davis Langdon intends to reapply the DQI during key milestone design stages of the building.