Bexhill High School, East Sussex

Bexhill High School was built as part of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) Programme, funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF). It had been chosen by East Sussex County Council as their One School Pathfinder project. Designers and constructors worked as an integrated team with Bexhill High School and East Sussex County Council in three Design Quality Indicator (DQI) workshops to develop a common understanding of the goals and needs of the users. The new school will open in November 2010.

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Holding the DQI briefing workshop
The one-day briefing workshop took place on 9th July 2007 in a local hotel. It was attended by fifteen delegates including pupils, teachers, governors, the head teacher, the programme manager and representatives of East Sussex County Council including IT and maintenance specialists. The structure of the briefing workshop was:

• The team broke into groups of five delegates
• Each group discussed and determined their opinion of the weightings of DQI questionnaire statements in a single topic area
• Groups fed back their opinions in full session to compare views and to agree a consensus team weighting for each questionnaire statement in that topic area
• The team then moved on to the next topic area

Evaluating the proposed designs
The architect and constructor were appointed after the DQI briefing workshop, on 16 July 2007. Since then, two mid-design stage workshops have taken place in the same hotel in order to evaluate the design solutions presented by the design team.

The first mid-design workshop was held on 6th February 2008. Twenty-five delegates attended – these were the same representatives as at the briefing workshop plus the designers, specialist consultants (e.g. representing services, structure and sustainability), cost managers and constructor.

The second mid-design review workshop was held on 23rd February 2009, attended by twenty-six stakeholders with a similar mix as for the first mid-design review.

Michael Conn, the head teacher, in his review at the end of the second mid-design workshop stressed the importance of DQI to the whole design process and of DQI facilitation from outside the project team.

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Using the DQI tool gave the school community (teachers, pupils, governors, East Sussex County Council and representatives of other stakeholder organisations) the opportunity to input into the project brief, and contribute to developing a design that suits their needs. In the briefing workshop and mid-design reviews, the school has been made aware of the financial, time and regulatory pressures on the design and construction team and the school’s expectations have been managed through proactive dialogue.

The design team (architects, engineers and surveyors) has benefited from discussing and clarifying the priorities of the school against the structured set of DQI statements reviewed in the briefing and mid-design workshops. Potential misunderstandings have been reduced through formal and informal face-to-face presentation and discussion in the workshops. This should lead to a reduction in the level of rework in design.

Engaging the constructor and specialist suppliers / subcontractors in the DQI process allowed them to gain an early understanding of the needs of the school and design team. Presentations and discussion, structured on the topics and statements of the DQI questionnaire, have (as for the consultants) provided clarification and should have reduced the amount of variation and rework that tends to arise on site with briefs that have not been as comprehensively thought through by the wider team.

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