Our head of R&D, Juriaan van Meel, was in Leuven (Belgium) to give a lecture for the post-grad course on real estate development of the KU Leuven.
The topic was briefing and requirements management.
Juriaan started his lecture with a heuristic from a recent paper by prof. Bent Flyvbjerg about ‘masterbuilder heuristics’:
“Projects don’t go wrong, they start wrong.”
This heuristic refers to the idea that decisions made at the outset of projects are often rushed and substandard. The takeaway? A good project start is a slow start—one that allows time for careful thinking before execution. As Flybjerg’s article puts it: thinking is cheap, whereas action is expensive.
In his lecture, Juriaan expanded this idea to the topic of briefing: if you want a project to succeed, you must first carefully define your ambitions, needs, and requirements.
What should the project achieve?
What should it ‘do’ for the client and future users?
What are the critical requirements for success?
In other words, a project should start with the development of a clear and well-thought-out design brief before you rush into design and construction.
We would like to thank Door Grégoir, Charlotte Vercruysse and Herman Vande Putte for inviting us to contribute to their excellent Real Estate Management course at KU Leuven!
More information about the course can be found here.