Our co-founder Juriaan van Meel gave a lecture about construction briefing at Leuven University, on their post-graduate course on real estate. He discussed the purpose of briefing, the relation between briefing and design, and different kinds of briefs (the strategic, functional and technical brief).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
He ended his presentation with this cartoon about client behaviour. The source of the cartoon is unclear unfortunately (anyone?) but it very well illustrates the importance of being a \u2018good\u2019 construction client. As Juriaan explained in his lecture, this means, amongst other things, that you are clear about what you want from a project. What are your ambitions on matters such as sustainability and architectural expression? What are you functional needs and requirements? What are must-have\u2019s and nice-to-have\u2019s? Simple questions, but often not properly answered.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
That said, Juriaan also pointed out that it is just as important that design teams take the brief seriously. When provided with a brief, they should make a careful ‘requirement analysis’, flag requirements that are unclear, come up with suggestions for improvement, and discuss these with the client\u2014thereby creating shared understanding of the project’s scope, ambitions and possibilities.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n