What general design is

The essence

Designing a building takes many disciplines: architecture, structure, mechanical, electrical, fire, energy, and sometimes transport, landscape and acoustics.

There are two routes:

The client coordinates

They contract with each discipline separately and have to pull the work together. That takes professional knowledge and time — a client generally has neither.

General design

One party takes on the whole package: it contracts with the disciplines or has its own team, coordinates them, and stands before the client as one responsible party.

What it covers

• aligning the disciplines and holding the design programme,
• ensuring the consistency of the drawings,
• assembling the documentation for the authority procedures,
• preparing the client’s decisions,
• design input during construction, where that is part of the appointment.

Why it works better

One responsible party

If the services do not fit in the structure, that is not the client’s problem.

Clashes found earlier

The disciplines’ drawings are produced together, not one after another. Contradictions come out at the drawing board.

One programme

The disciplines wait on one another; if nobody organises that, the project moves at the pace of the slowest.

Unambiguous documentation

From one hand, in one system, without contradictions.

The boundaries of responsibility

The general designer does not take over the professional liability of the individual disciplines: every drawing is signed by the qualified designer of that discipline. What they undertake is consistency and coordination.

That has to be recorded precisely in the contract. Boundaries of responsibility.

When it is especially valuable

• for a prefabricated structure, where the design fixes early,
• for a building with complex services,
• under a tight programme,
• where the client has no technical staff of their own.

The point

General design does not mean more drawings but fewer contradictions. Its value lies in the mistakes that never happen.