00the teamWhat each appointment is actually for
Seven roles, and the first thing each one is asked for
A consultant team is not a list of firms. It is a set of obligations, and the useful question about each one is what they owe, by when, and what happens downstream if it is late. Here is the team on a typical residential or mixed-use scheme, with the first deliverable next to each role.
| Role | First deliverable | Who is waiting on it |
|---|---|---|
| Architect | Concept drawings, then the drawings the application is made on. | Everyone. Nothing else can be sized until the scheme has a shape. |
| Cost consultant | An order of cost estimate against those concept drawings. | You, and the funder reading the appraisal. |
| Structural engineer | Frame and foundation options, each with its own cost implication. | The cost consultant, and the architect’s floor-to-floor heights. |
| Civil and drainage | Levels, attenuation strategy and the adoptable runs. | The external works package and the substructure design. |
| Services engineer | Loads, plant space, and what the incoming supply can actually deliver. | The architect’s risers and the programme for supply connections. |
| Principal designer | The design risk register, opened at the first sketch. | Every designer on the team, for the whole job. |
| Principal contractor | A tendered price against a defined scope on a defined date. | You, once the scope has stopped moving. |
Read the third column and you have the order of appointment. Anyone appointed after the people waiting on them is being asked to confirm a decision rather than make one, and the fee is spent twice.
01routingWhy instructions travel one route
One log, and you can read it whenever you like
On a busy scheme the same question gets asked three times in a week by three different people, and answered three slightly different ways. That is how a drawing ends up showing a riser the engineer has already moved. So instructions travel one route: through this office, into one log, out to the person who owes the answer.
You keep every right to speak to any consultant directly, and clients do. What the single route protects is the record, not the conversation. If you agree something on a call, it comes back through the log so that the rest of the team hears the same sentence you did.
The log carries the question, who asked it, who owes the answer, the date it was raised and the date it was closed. Open items are read out at every design meeting in the order they were raised. In short, nothing ages quietly.
02releasesThe information release schedule
The piece clients rarely ask about and always need
The programme says when the frame goes up. The information release schedule says when the frame drawings have to exist for that to be possible. It names the drawing or the specification, the consultant issuing it, the week it is due, and the decision or package it unlocks.
Its value is that it turns a design delay into a visible programme event on the week it happens rather than eleven weeks later. A drawing three weeks late looks like nothing at a design meeting. The same three weeks reappear as a gap in procurement, and by then the argument is about the gap rather than the drawing.
- Who writes it?
- This office writes it, with the consultants who owe the information. It is written once at the start of design and then reissued whenever a date moves, in the same copy, with the movement visible.
- What happens when a release date is missed?
- It is read out at the next design meeting, given a new date by the person who owes it, and the effect on the packages downstream is stated there and then. If the effect reaches the critical path, it enters the change register as a programme item, whatever it cost in money.
- Do I see it?
- Yes. It goes out with the monthly report on any scheme where design is still live, and it is the fastest way to see whether the design is actually keeping up with the programme.
03feesFee variations, and how they reach you
A consultant fee is a cost like any other cost
Consultant fees change during a job. A scheme grows a storey, a survey nobody expected has to be commissioned, an application needs a second round of drawings. That is normal and it is not, by itself, a problem. What causes the problem is a fee variation that arrives as an invoice with no reference attached to it.
So fee variations go into the same change register as everything else, with the same columns. Origin, description, figure, status, and the instruction reference once one exists. They appear in the monthly report next to the works costs, because your budget does not care which column of the industry a pound left through.
Where a variation was caused by an earlier change, the register says so and carries the reference of the parent item. That is how you can tell whether a fee has grown because the scheme grew, or because the brief was never tight enough in the first place. Either way, you see it while it is still a proposal.