Building momentum

25 Jun 2009

Paul Stallan is an A+DS Director who believes the organisation has an important role to play helping to shape the Scottish built environment

A+DS is entering a new phase of its corporate plan having spent since 2005 building an essential infrastructure and credibility. Raymond Young the Chairman of A+DS will in the next issue of Prospect outline how Architecture and Design Scotland will respond to the recent Governmental review that the organisation has just undergone. Prior to Raymond's commentary I was asked to 'scene set' and provide a personal perspective on my experiences working with Architecture and Design Scotland from both an inside and an outside perspective since the organisation's inception reflecting on its achievements.

In short A+DS has over a period of four years worked hard to establish a political and cultural profile to fulfil the role given to it by Scottish Ministers as 'Scotland's Design Champion', however from the very first day A+DS was under pressure to promote a more progressive approach to design advocacy as compared with the Royal Fine Art Commission that A+DS was in effect seen to be replacing. But what about A+DS's progress in its three key areas of focus; design review, advocacy and enabling?

The Value of the Design Review Process
The design review function at A+DS is a necessary evil and certainly the most contested and at times controversial activity that the A+DS team undertake in my view. I believe it is an absolute requirement that there is an independent design body that is removed from the local authority planning process to comment on significant development either in terms of its scale or in its strategic influence.

A+DS has increasingly been a friend to regional planning teams, helping to reinforce policy on challenging projects and provide a confident and informed view on design quality and the national place making agenda.

Take for example the poor planners who are required to mediate between their political masters, the elected members, the public and the development industry. It is a fact that there has been a definite increase in political lobbying in support of planning applications. Lobbyists can be seen (or rather not be seen) to clearly influence the outcome of a planning decision at a local planning committee if not at the level of Scottish Government itself.

Former directors of planning, retired MSPs and recognised industry figures with influence are recruited to soft sell major projects. This top down approach to planning is all perfectly above board however it does pressurise local authority planning teams especially if the project being promoted is problematic. A+DS as an independent advisor can help by basically 'taking the heat' and assist council planners to achieve greater transparency by insisting that the essential ground work is covered in terms of reasoned argument for any proposal. This is just one small area where A+DS has helped.

Another and for me the best reason that I can think of for supporting design review is 'leverage'! Personally I have presented many projects to my professional peers at A+DS over the years and more often than not been subject to penetrating criticism and questioning. I have always taken comment constructively and tried to use an A+DS report as a lever to improve a project and influence our client's ambitions. Of course there are times when design teams will disagree vehemently, but I for one have always enjoyed the sparring.

Greater Dialogue & Information Sharing through the Design Review Process
Gathered evidence from design reviews is a persuasive tool that A+DS is increasingly able to use to help substantiate its arguments for design quality. Every design review recommendation since 2005 is recorded and publicly available through the A+DS website. I have personally been able to draw on three years of school design assessment when I was asked to give evidence to an all party education working group of MSPs at the Scottish Parliament. Together with a representative from Audit Scotland, which as a body had recently undertaken a review of the entire Scottish new build schools estate, we were able to provide a comprehensive picture of the Schools provision here and now and what was presently in the planning system or under construction.

Our design review approach at A+DS can be flexible and extended to more workshop type sessions. The team are keen to encourage local authority procurement teams to seek independent advice very early on in the briefing stages if possible. As a result of the A+DS team having been exposed to the whole design development process and to different contractual routes we can with validity make recommendations that are not simply just about the product but rather the whole environment of schools commissioning and briefing. My key address to our Scottish MSPs was that the single greatest challenge that we faced in delivering not just new schools but good schools was leadership - leadership that valued and understood that design was integral.

Very simply through our research we gleaned that there is a great many local authority teams involved in the delivery of schools but the centre of gravity in terms of project ownership was with the council legal, finance and estates team, with little or no input from their planning colleagues and almost universally no input from architects or educationalists in the preparation of the actual briefs. Rather schools have been part of a carefully protected capital expenditure programme within local authorities where control is very much determined by cashflow and contractual parameters. This problem is partly generational as many authorities have simply lacked the skill and experience in procuring new schools for the obvious reason that they had not built any for 30 to 40 years.

Recent PFI / PPP models provided an attractive out sourced one stop shop offer; however what we have seen in part recently is councils like Glasgow begin to procure schools on traditional forms of contract. Others have looked at contractor frameworks and design build and of course just around the corner there is the potential of the new Scottish Futures Trust.

The Role of A+DS as National Design Advocate
The role of national design advocate requires politically sensitivity and a realistic take on how government, local authority and the industry are in a constant state of evolution. The challenge is a cultural one and if we are being honest a generational one also.

The A+DS education team have looked at the procurement landscape of not just the Schools estate but also the further and higher education landscape, a fiefdom overseen by the Scottish Funding Council. This sizeable education estate which although not as challenging as the schools programme would benefit from greater design leadership and design investment within its executive organisation. We have had really good meetings with the Council in this regard and have promised to continue our discussion on design briefing, however our resources are presently stretched given the ministers prioritisation of the schools agenda.

If you understand the potential however for commissioning good design through the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council then you will understand why A+DS is interested in a continued dialogue and building its advocacy role to support other similar public bodies.

The Funding Council has for example an allocating budget of £1.6bn to Colleges and Universities for the support of learning and teaching, research and other activities. A major part of this budget helps to support an estate that is made up of 21 major H.E. Institutions. There are almost 1,000 non-residential buildings across 72 sites, worth almost £5billion. While spending on the estate has increased in recent years, almost half of it needs to be improved over the next few years. It is reported that it will cost approximately £700m to bring it all up to a sound standard.

Despite the Funding Council having a huge infrastructure and Governmental department to manage the above finance there are no leadership statements on design or procedures set down that determine that design quality is embedded in a project briefing and procurement process. Basically the funding council is 'behind the eight ball' when compared to more progressive local authorities, health boards and even cities that A+DS has worked with who have appointed 'internal' design champions.

There are other organisations that like the council are generally led by accountants and who rely heavily on project manager inputs and where design input is not understood as a structural necessity but as a nicety. This has proven to be a false economy as A+DS, Audit Scotland and CABE have outlined in the Schools Estate.

The challenge that A+DS has been charged with is to promote a modern Scotland that is less competitive and more collaborative, to work with bodies like the Funding Council to improve output and public spending.
In short A+DS has been building and sharing intelligence in the three areas of education, health and housing. These three areas have been prescribed and identified as the priority areas that A+DS has been asked to focus on by the Scottish Government. The role of A+DS as advocate is entering a new phase because as I have described we have had to grow into this role to be credible.

Enabling Change
The enabling programme is the one work stream that I have personally had least exposure to or involvement with. The enabling work is however in my view the most challenging and potentially the most rewarding A+DS initiative helping to reinforce our role as advocate. The organisation has however struggled to establish a powerful offer in this respect; one reason being that it was always going to take time, but the other reason is a lack of leadership within A+DS in this area specifically.

It is my own view that A+DS needs greater internal leadership and Government support in the area of procurement, not necessarily in terms of funding but in terms of political muscle. We need a core internal team who genuinely understand and who have experience of complex procurement processes and who are also supported by practitioners from whatever discipline, practitioners that have demonstrable skills in delivering quality projects. Enabling means getting down and dirty and being able to influence for the greater good a better outcome. We need an even stronger team to encourage and incentivise more client bodies to ask for help, make the process attractive and efficient and show examples of improved outcomes.

A strong enabling programme would make A+DS more complete and allow the organisation to influence the commissioning of new projects across Scotland to a greater extent. A+DS has over 100 enablers on its books but perhaps a smaller group that are more organised with the correct network and support who can learn from shared experienced would be more effective.

The key objective being to encourage clients to have a more rounded understanding of what factors are important to ensure the delivery of a successful design led Scotland. I have chosen to tough it out with A+DS when others have in a 'media moment 'chosen to take the huff and throw in the towel early. To effect a cultural change in the country means hard work and tireless campaigning, it's not good enough to simply patronise and be aloof, you have to get in behind the machinery, at times accept a defeat but keep going not just with a consistent message but with a plan.