One contract for the design and the building.

Under a traditional contract you hold the consultants and you hold the builder, so the gap between what was drawn and what can be built is yours. Under design and construct that gap moves to the contractor, along with the obligation to deliver a building that meets your brief.

Which means your brief is doing far more work than most clients realise. Under a traditional contract, the drawings define the building. Under design and construct, your brief defines the building, and the drawings are the contractor’s means of satisfying it. A brief that says “high quality finishes” has said nothing enforceable at all.

A vague brief hands the contractor latitude, and different contractors will use it differently. All of them legitimately. We would rather spend a week making the brief specific, because a specific brief is the client’s protection and it also removes the arguments we would otherwise be having in month six.

• Performance, not products, where you canState the outcome. Acoustic separation between these two rooms, this illuminance at this working plane, this many people at this density. Then the contractor is answerable for the result rather than for having installed the named item.
• Products, not performance, where you mustWhere a specific finish, system or manufacturer genuinely matters, name it. Mixing the two deliberately is normal. Mixing them accidentally is where disputes start.
• The things you will not acceptExclusions are as informative as inclusions, and easier to write.
• The standards that apply, and which editionIncluding any client standard, landlord requirement or corporate guideline that sits above the Code.
• Who approves what, and how long they getA brief without a decision timetable transfers a programme risk back to you the first time someone is on leave.
• What happens at handoverCommissioning, training, warranties, as-builts and the data set you want. Write it into the brief and it is priced. Ask for it at completion and it is a variation.

What happens

You appoint the architect and consultants, develop the design to an agreed point, then transfer those appointments to the contractor, who completes the documentation and builds it.

Why institutions prefer it

The design intent is developed by a team answerable to you, at the stage where the important decisions are made. After novation, the contractor owns the outcome.

The point everyone gets wrong

The consultant’s duty changes at novation. From that day their client is the contractor, not you. Clients who keep instructing a novated consultant directly are creating a claim against themselves.

What protects you afterwards

The design that existed at novation, and how tightly it was documented. That drawing set becomes the benchmark for what the contractor has to deliver, so the moment of novation is worth taking seriously.

Our position

We will take a novated team and work with them properly. We will also tell you before you novate if we think the design is not developed far enough for the transfer to protect you.

The design and building practitioner regime in New South Wales requires designs for certain building work to be declared by a registered practitioner, and requires the builder to declare that the work was built to those declared designs. It applies before construction starts, not at completion.

The practical effect on a design and construct contract is significant: design cannot be informally developed on site the way it once was, because the declared design is the reference. It rewards contractors who document properly, and we would rather work under it than around it.