Ownership

Taking ownership and accepting responsibility is an issue for all members of the project team and the client body. Permitting ownership is also an important aspect of engagement and enabling stakeholders to feel part of the project process and ultimately comfortable with the project outcomes.

The client team must ensure that the design team provides clear and understandable information to enable it to take ownership of the outcomes through the design process and eventually of the finished building itself. Having the responsibility of actually ‘signing off’ design information whether its briefing documents, drawings or an artistic impression, is a part of taking ownership. It is important for the project to achieve ‘sign off’ at various stages of the design development process to allow the project to move forward. The sign off demonstrates that all parties understand the stage a project has reached, they understand the design, that the design satisfies the criteria set in the brief and that the project as a whole responds to the vision and ambition of the client and stakeholders. The stages for sign off should be established at the outset and contained within the Project Execution Plan but should at least reflect the approval stages required by the LSC in the funding arrangements and the RIBA project work stages.