Deciding about Design Quality

In the past few years the image of tender procedures in which Dutch public clients selected an architect has been dominated by distressing newspaper headlines. Architects fear that the current tender culture will harm the quality of our built environment due to a potential lack of diversity, creativity and innovation in architectural design. Clients often allow legal requirements to overrule their actual wishes. The current practice of architect selection by European public clients has its roots in three distinct systems: 1) tendering for services and works, 2) the selective search to identify a suitable architect or design team, and 3) the architectural competition. It is these diverse roots of the selection process that appear to cause conflicts between the legal rationality of procurement and the psychological rationality of public decision making. This PhD research addresses the origin of these problems as currently experienced by public commissioning clients in architect selection and proposes pragmatic implications for future practice. It is therefore of interest for commissioning clients, management consultants, policy makers and legal advisors but also for designers and researchers in the field of architecture and decision making. Based on four empirical cases the author shows that during architect selection the rational legal requirements clash with the psychological process of decision making. Decision makers only start to make sense of the proposed designs once they are confronted with the alternatives. It is therefore almost impossible for clients to design a selection procedure and announce the criteria and weighing factors up front, as required by procurement law. The scientific underpinning of the findings is found in four theoretical perspectives on value judgements in design and the latest decision theories in which emotion, intuition, and expertise play prominent roles. In the conclusions five sensemaking processes are distinguished and several underlying situational characteristics are identified that influence the selection process, such as complexity, uncertainty and decision support. The thesis proposes fifteen factors for a successful design of a tender procedure to select an architect. It also offers recommendations for change of the current Dutch practice

Ways forward in public procurement

This chapter summarizes the topics discussed in this public procurementbook. It subsequently discusses developments and the ways in which publicprocurement is moving forward and has increasingly become a strategic asset for societal change. The move toward more value-driven, smart, life cycle-oriented, and relational ecosystem procurement processes has implications for the public procurement practices of the future, requiring more flexible and adaptive governance, integration of public value, different capabilities and competences, and a rebalancing of the different perspectives on public procurement. This chapter and book finish by explaining the need for change agents to emerge and challenge the reader to become one and bring public procurement into a new era and fully utilize its potential for achieving public value

A PARTICIPAÇÃO DO ARQUITETO NO MODELO DE PROJETO INTEGRADO (IPD): A PRINCIPAL TENDÊNCIA DE MUDANÇA PARA AS EMPRESAS DE PROJETO DE ARQUITETURA?

A indústria da construção está migrando cada vez mais para o modelo de Projeto Integrado (IPD). A maioria das pesquisas sobre IPD foca os contratantes;, contudo, os arquitetos também poderiam melhorar sua posição competitiva e portfólio de projetos, assumindo um papel ativo na inovação de projetos integrados. Com base em uma pesquisa com 110 empresas de projeto de arquitetura holandesas, são descritos os casos de empresas que demonstraram interesse em práticas integradas como parte de sua estratégia competitiva. Os resultados desta pesquisa revelam os fatores críticos que são os motores de mudança no mercado atual e as estratégias organizacionais adotadas pelas empresas de projeto de arquitetura. Particularmente, a busca de um maior controle sobre os processos construtivos e a qualidade do produto tem levado as empresas a pensarem em mudar suas estratégias. Empresas muito pequenas ou muito grandes aparentam especial interesse em competir no mercado de IPD. Os perfis de empresas de projeto que foram encontrados na pesquisa parecem contrastar com as expectativas da literatura sobre a organização desse tipo de empresas, o que poderia ser resultado da sua necessidade de flexibilidade e adaptabilidade, a fim de entregar soluções criativas. No entanto, os resultados indicam que as chances são altas que no futuro uma parte significativa das empresas de projeto de arquitetura atuará no mercado de Projetos Integrados.Proposal: The construction industry is changing more and more towards integrated project delivery. Most of the research about integrated project delivery focuses on contractors. Architects could however also improve their competitive position and project portfolio by taking on an active role in innovative integrated projects. Based on a survey among 110 Dutch architectural design firms the types of offices are described that show interest in integrated practices as part of their competition strategy. The results of this research reveal critical factors that are drivers for change in current marketing and organisational strategies of architectural design firms. Especially more control over construction processes and product quality makes firms think about changing their strategies. Very small and very large firms seemed particularly interested in competing in integrated project delivery. The office profiles that were found in the survey appear to contrast to the expectations from literature about the organisation of these kinds of firms. This could be a result of their need for flexibility and adaptability in order to deliver creative designs. However, the results indicate that the chances are high that in the future a significant part of the architectural design firms will enact in integrated project delivery

Facing NPG implementation problems in municipal organizations:The wickedness of combined value systems

Implementing new value systems in municipal organizations to add societal value is extremely challenging. Value tensions emerge inside public organizations when the traditional (TPA) and market (NPM) value systems are confronted with new collaborative value systems (NPG). A multi-level case study, based on interviews, observations and documents, was conducted in two large Dutch municipalities to analyze implementation challenges that civil servants encounter due to the implementation of NPG. By integrating a governance mechanisms-based approach with a value tension approach, the paper contributes to the understanding of internal hybridity in municipal organizations, and the wickedness of organizing public administration when implementing NPG, by identifying both vertical - formalization, flexibilization, and misalignment in top-down and bottom-up governance - and horizontal - different organizational pillars, professions, and value interpretations - implementation challenges. The paper concludes that in the paradoxical situation of complex policy arenas, values elements of TPA and NPG governance models associated with “doing it right” remained dominant in the trade-offs with new values of NPG modes associated with “doing the right thing”. Value conflicts hinder civil servants in ‘doing the right thing right’.</p