The Evolution of the Design Manager in Australia

My first memories of the building industry were as a young architectural draftsperson who  worked for architects who seemed to do it all – design, coordinate consultants,  mitigate all approvals,  fire ratings and solutions, tendering and then stepping into the construction and overseeing the construction documentation and any changes that were requested from a client or builder and then oversee progress payments and all final sign-offs.  Architects basically served as the eyes and ears of the client. 

I had a flair for construction and often found myself as the site architect handling all the document control and any onsite issues.  I was a young freelance drafty punching way above my experience but there was no one who worked harder and longer hours.  Even though I was young – I put the time into learning everything I could about everything design and building.   I was lucky enough to have worked with some incredibly talented professionals who basically took pity on me and trained me well.   

I loved the artistic side with manual drafting with pencils, ink pens, and watercolor plus I gain good exposure to the building process talked to every trade professional I could.  Over time ink pens gave way for AutoCAD, so this was the start of the love-hate relationship with computers.  Design development, solving problems on the fly and construction documentation was my thing. 

Ten years into my career I stepped away from the commercial building sector into a custom residential building which became my focus for the next decade.  The face of the design process in the commercial sector changed significantly. 

I can’t put my finger on any one thing but in Australia, we were watching a lot of TV and saw shows that had people entering lawsuits against one person or the other on American television shows.  By the nineties – Australia was second in the world in litigation following California USA.  So corporate Australia, the government, insurance companies, all started to close their risk to potential lawsuits. Naturally, Australia started to regulate and legislate. 

Around the same time – the industry was also pushing back against red tape and government bureaucracy with the council approvals process. To stop this red tape – the government legislated again. I still laugh about that irony.  In the attempt to be transparent, the government legislation now gave clients the option of using a private certifier or councils to speed up the approval process. The term “Private Certifying Authority” was born.  Now, this created the new industry and suddenly the PCA  had to navigate the logistics getting licenses and dealing with private insurances for “Professional Indemnity Insurance” to able to trade.   The government bureaucrats were creating rules in the background and as a result, the building consultant seemed to splinter into specialists in Fire, PCA, and BCA consultants. I gather this was a result of insurance underwriters’ restrictions.  Insurance underwriters also drove the evolution of architects.  If you want to trade as a business, you need to get insurance, now to save cost you can avoid high-risk projects or special in low-risk projects.   

Architects have now let go of many of their traditional domain to reduce risk.  There may have been other reasons for this but when I rejoined the design ranks in commercial architecture – architects had become a shadow of their once selves.  (The industry had changed and I had also gravitated to the dark side  –  from that point onward I was predominately a builder).  

Then global warming came into play and the government legislated again.  Then the “Discrimination Act” was passed into law etc, etc… If someone stubbed a toe – some laws, regulations, codes,  was gazetted. 

The consultants were changing as well to adapt to their own legislative and risk mitigation challenges.  My observations over this time were the consultant team seemed to spend more time writing emails and clarifications rather than get in and get the job done.  The process had seemed to get longer and the quality of the documentation was declining.  A sign of the times I guess. 

Clients were far more educated and started to hire consultants to drive the building process.  The way in which the client was contracting was also changing.  In my world – the trend was towards a “Design & Construct” type contract – clients realized that they could reduce a lot of their own risk by mitigating the design and building risk onto the builder. Before 2010 – most of the tender contracts were mainly hard dollar contracts and now coming into 2020 most the tender contracts are a design and construct and then they are amended to say the builder takes on all risk.  

Larger building companies started to drive the process and architects were contracted to manage one facet of the process.  All of a sudden, builders had a choice to use their own architect or an internal project manager to drive the design process but under the watchful eyes of the builder or the client.   The ‘Design Manager’ was born. 

The design manager who was a specialist in procuring the design – This meant that builders or clients could hire a “Design Manager” . Now if you asked me tens years ago what a Design Manager was – I would respond with a description much like a project architect of the year gone by.  Subsequently, many of the good project architects jumped to the dark side working for builder’s or clients’ employments as the financial rewards were hard to ignore.   These managers often had a background in Construction  Management or Architecture but not always the case.  

Recently I have worked in many specialized genres an I have noticed that he design management could also be done by someone left of field, an expert in a specialist building or service.  I have met former nurses who have been wonderful design manager for aged care facilities and hospital buildings.   I have seen this in resorts, restaurant chains, warehouse chains, etc.   Shopping centers owners may have procurement officers that know their product so well – they are the logical choice to drive the process. 

A formal qualification does help but not a rite of passage anymore.  

In D&C building companies it is common to have a dedicated Design Managers that churn out one type of development and the larger builders in the  Tier 1 & 2 genres. It is rarer to have a dedicated  DM in Teir 3 to be able to justify their wage against overhead. But Tier 3 builders often have an internal staff member who is multi skilled who would assume this roll when the need arises, sometime they would contract such roles out on a contract basis. 

The modern Design Manager has taken over the roll of the project architect from my youth.  A good Design Manager &/or  “Old School Architect” are worth their weight in gold.  In a tenders these days builder manage risk.  A good design manager is basically managing their clients risk.. Look at tender documentation and from their experience they can find another path in methodology, finishes and basically change the goal posts on risk etc. 

In this day and age where we all buy and sell risk – a design manager is the clients or builders way to reduce their risk,  to managing quality and drive a process from start to finish.