Design Framework updated to reflect the new RIBA Plan of Work

MEP deliverables during old and new Plans of Work

BSRIA’s highly regarded Design Framework guidance has just been published in its fourth edition as BG 06/2014. This version brings the guide up to date in its reference to the latest RIBA Plan of Work. This article summarises some of the key changes that have been made to Design Framework in this latest edition.

Design Framework now aligns with the new project stages, designated 0 to 7 rather than A to L, that were developed as part of the Government’s BIM Task Group work. These stages are more explicit in their support of collaborative working amongst the project team and place more emphasis on handover from construction to operation and on the in use phase. In addition, there is now a new Strategy stage, Stage 0, deliberately to give clients and portfolio managers the chance to consider the proposed project in the wider context of their whole built estate.

Many of the new stages align to old stages, or pairs of old stages. For example Stage 1 maps to the old Stages A and B, Stage 2 covers the old Stage C, and Stage 5 is the equivalent of the old Stages J and K. But there is a significant disconnect between the end of new Stage 3 and old Stage E. Stage 3 is expected to conclude with agreement between the main design disciplines about the volumes allocated to each designer such that these provide feasible system boundaries. The idea for this is that once these volumes are agreed, each discipline can go away and work up its detailed design more or less in isolation. Provided they stay within the boundaries of their agreed volume then all should be well when it comes to spatial co-ordination.

These changes to the overall structure of the Plan of Work have meant changes to the design activities listed in the BSRIA BG 06 pro-formas, and also some changes to the stage deliverables. As can be seen from the table, the first formal deliverables under the new Plan of Work regime have been brought forward to an earlier stage than previously. In BG 06 the exemplar 3-d models to illustrate the new end-of-stage deliverables have been updated and isometrics included. For the Stage 3 deliverable, the 2-d drawing exemplar has also been amended.

A final area of confusion is the way some stage names have changed, and this again has the biggest impact around Stages 3 and 4 in comparison with the old Stages D, E and F. Stage D used to be Design Development, Stage E was Technical Design and Stage F was Production Information. In the new scheme, Stage 3 is Developed Design and Stage 4 is Technical Design.

The new project stages will take some getting used to – BSRIA has presented a webinar on the changes and this can be accessed from the Webinars page on the BSRIA website.

BG 06/2014 – Design Framework for Building Services is now available in hardcopy, PDF, single license or multi-site license.