“There is a case for requiring that peer checks are carried out as a condition of the building approvals process.”Using outsiders to check plans at the early stage of a project can prevent serious mistakes occurring later on

Sometimes you are so close to a project that you cannot objectively tell if your solution is as rational or efficient as it ought to be.

Or perhaps your project is taking you into new territory. You may be perfectly competent, but lack of experience in a particular area means you don’t have much perspective.

Running a fresh pair of eyes over a project can make the difference between a design that merely works and a design that is excellent. And in some circumstances, a review by someone detached from the project can be crucial to spotting errors or weaknesses that translate into problems later.

Peer reviews are considered to be the best way to do this. These are not simple design checks for code or building regulation compliance.

The idea is to get someone who’s not closely involved in a project to examine the design and ask: ‘Why have you done it like this? What would happen if you did it differently?’

They bring their own experience to bear and can share their wisdom, usually gained the hard way.

But a lot of projects are designed by firms that feel that they do not have the resources or, perhaps, the breadth of experience to check designs through for glitches. One of the ongoing challenges the industry faces is preventing late changes.

That means ensuring that the client’s brief is properly pinned down and correctly understood, and that the design has been not only swept clean of errors but optimised before work starts on site.

Unfortunately – disgracefully, even – problems are still all too frequent on projects of all sizes. It is mainly problems arising on big schemes that grab attention. But it is the little projects, often designed by smaller architectural and engineering outfits, that account for the greater share of problems and changes.

Big advantage

Peer review is easier in large companies - there are more people under one roof. And when it comes to billing a client, the large firm’s peer review doesn’t appear as a separate item. Nonetheless, carrying out a review incurs a cost.

So it should be fairly simple for smaller firms to strike up associations, using one-another’s pooled skills and experience to help check the quality of ideas and solutions and get some lateral thinking on projects.

Peer reviews share similarities with value engineering. The same argument for the early involvement of a third party – this time the chosen contractor – applies.

The lessons a contractor has learned through bitter experience can impact on the evolution of a design if applied early enough. Meanwhile, each contractor has their own strengths, preferences and kit.

The contractor’s ideas about how something will be built can be as important as the experience of another designer.

It is in the interests of the industry and, indeed, government to reduce the amount of wastage arising from avoidable errors.

Arguably there is a case for legislation, requiring that peer checks are carried out as a condition of the building approvals process. We need to overcome our industry’s resistance to sharing information and working together.

But clients might be convinced to pay the additional cost of the checks if the industry carried out an audit of the risks identified and avoided through third-party reviews. Putting a price on those could-have-been problems would make a pretty compelling case for the desirability of the review and value engineering processes.

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This article first appeared in Construction News magazine on 26 June 2008