Design Responsibility Map Preparation Checklist

Start from the idea that who designs an element and who builds it are separate questions, and keep two columns rather than one.

The two lists frequently disagree, and every disagreement between them is somewhere information has to pass between parties.

Note that some elements are designed by whoever supplies them rather than by the lead designer, which is ordinary rather than exceptional.

The published records treat specialist-designed elements as a normal feature of construction, not as a shortfall in anybody's appointment.

Distinguish between an element being specified, meaning named and described, and being designed, meaning worked out for this particular situation.

Specifying and designing are frequently done by different parties, and an element can be specified with nobody having designed it.

Recognise what a gap looks like on paper: an element nobody names as theirs, or two parties each describing it as the other's.

Gaps are rarely announced; they appear as a question that keeps being passed between two people.

Treat the map as your own record of what you have been told rather than as an allocation of responsibility between parties.

Responsibility is allocated through appointments, and an owner's summary cannot move it from one party to another.

Nothing you write in this map changes who is responsible for anything; responsibility follows the appointments, which is a legal matter.

Start below ground with anything in contact with the earth, including what the building sits on and anything retaining a change of level.

Below-ground elements are the ones most likely to involve a specialist the owner has never heard of.

List the structure next, separating the members from the connections between them, since those are frequently designed by different parties.

The library is consistent that a member and the way it is attached are routinely separate design questions.

List the outside of the building as separate items, including the walls, the roof, the openings and anything that keeps water out.

Water exclusion is often a designed system in its own right rather than a property of the wall or roof it sits in.

List the services as items, noting where they pass through a structure, since a route through a structural element is a design output.

A service route through a floor is settled between the structural designer and whoever is running the services, before work starts.

List fitted interior elements, including anything hung from or fixed to a structure, since the fixing may be somebody else's design.

Fixing something to a lining or a decoupled element is a recognised question about the connection rather than about the board.

List everything outside the building as separate items, including surfaces, retaining elements, drainage, boundary structures and anything that has to carry a vehicle.

External works are the part of a project most likely to proceed without anyone having designed it at all.

Ask who designs any engineered component supplied to the project, and whether that design happens before or after it is ordered.

Some components are designed as part of manufacture, which puts their design deadline before the order rather than after.

Ask specifically who designs the connections between structural members, as distinct from whoever sized the members that the connections join together.

Connections are a classic separately designed item, and an owner would have no reason to suspect the split exists.

Ask who is designing any arrangement that keeps water out of a below-ground or buried space, and whether that is a distinct appointment.

Below-ground water exclusion is described in the published material as a specialist design discipline depending on surveyed site conditions.

Below-ground waterproofing design depends on the conditions surveyed on your site; ask who is doing it rather than assuming it is included.

Ask who is designing the temporary arrangements needed while the building is being built, who may change them, and what becomes permanent.

Temporary works are a design subject in their own right, and the library notes that some temporary elements are left in place by default rather than by decision.

Ask who designs any proprietary system supplied as a package, and whether their design covers how it meets the surrounding construction.

A supplier's design usually stops at the edge of their own product, which is exactly where the junction begins.

Ask whether any part of the project is governed by a separate design carried out by somebody else, and how that reaches the rest of the team.

The published material notes that requirements determined by a separately carried out design can take precedence over other records of the same element.

For each pair of adjoining elements on your list, write down the junction between them as an item in its own right.

Writing a junction as an item is what makes it possible to ask who owns it; otherwise it is invisible.

Ask, for each junction, who is designing the junction itself rather than the two things it joins, and record the answer or its absence.

An absent answer is the most valuable output of this exercise and should be recorded as plainly as a positive one.

Pay particular attention to junctions where something has to continue from one element into the next rather than simply meet it.

The published records describe continuity at a corner as the part most often left out of both packages because neither trade regards it as theirs.

Ask who designs and supplies anything that closes a gap at a junction, since these items sit precisely between two scopes.

Closure items are the physical form the gap takes, and they are omitted for the same reason the design is.

Ask whether any drawing of the junction exists, and if not, whether one is expected before work reaches that point.

A junction with no drawing is usually resolved by whoever is holding a tool, which is a design decision made without information.

A junction resolved on site without a drawing is a design decision made by somebody who may not have the information; raise it rather than leaving it.

Keep a short list of junctions nobody has claimed and bring it to every design conversation until each one has a name against it.

Persistence is what closes these, because each conversation tends to address only the junction in front of it.

Ask who reads a specialist's design when it arrives, against what they read it, and whether reviewing it is part of anybody's appointment.

Specialist design frequently arrives and is filed, with nobody appointed to read it against the rest of the project.

Ask what reviewing means in that person's appointment, since the word carries a narrower meaning professionally than in ordinary use.

Owners hear review as checking and professionals mean something more limited, which is worth clarifying once.

Ask who holds the whole set of design information, including the parts produced by specialists, and whether anybody has all of it.

A project where no single party holds the whole set is one where interactions between packages cannot be seen.

Ask who is coordinating between the designers, and whether that role appears in any appointment or has fallen to you by default.

Coordination is a task, and if it appears in no appointment the owner is usually performing it without having agreed to.

If coordination between designers appears to sit with you, say so plainly to each party and take advice on whether that arrangement is workable.

Ask how a specialist's design reaches the other parties who need it, and whether that route exists or is assumed.

Information that reaches only the party who commissioned it is the ordinary mechanism by which a junction goes unnoticed.

Note on the map itself that it records what you were told and does not appoint anybody to anything.

A document that looks like an allocation will be read as one by somebody who was not part of the conversation.

Record who told you each attribution and when, so a later disagreement starts from a conversation rather than from your summary.

Attributions change as a team develops, and the source is what makes an out-of-date entry recognisable.

Send the map to each party and ask them to confirm or correct the lines attributed to them, rather than filing it unchecked.

Confirmation converts your understanding into theirs, which is the only version that matters on site.

Where a gap appears, raise it rather than deciding who ought to cover it, since allocating design work is not an owner's decision.

An owner assigning design work informally creates exactly the ambiguity the map was written to remove.

Keep any question about responsibility or liability separate from the map and take it to your own legal adviser.

Mixing the two makes the practical document harder to use and the legal question harder to answer.

Update the map whenever somebody new is appointed, and ask the new party which lines they now hold and which they do not.

A new appointment rarely covers exactly what everybody assumed it would.

Check the map when a product is substituted, since a different product can carry a different design arrangement with it.

A substitution can move an element from designed-by-the-supplier to designed-by-nobody without anyone noticing.

When the design changes, look for junctions that did not exist before, and add them to the unowned list until somebody claims them.

New junctions created by a change are the least likely to have an owner, because the original allocation predates them.

Read the map through before work begins and again before each package starts, focusing on the lines with nothing written against them.

The moment before a package starts is the last cheap opportunity to find its gaps.

Keep the map with the project papers at completion, since it records who designed what for whoever needs to know later.

Knowing who designed an element is useful years later, when somebody wants to alter it.