Criteria for strategic decision-making at the pre-briefing stage

The client briefing stage is heavily researched throughout the world. The pre-briefing, or strategic stage, which precedes it, is the focus of this research. This is where the nature of the project is defined because a choice has to be made between alternative strategies. Ten criteria have been established as the means of evaluating such strategies and the criteria compared to those emerging from the design, procurement and project management literature. Criteria from the urban planning literature have been incorporated into one of the author’s neural network-based software for addressing urban planning and other problems; titled, Strategizer. The original Strategizer was then modified in order to manage client problems. This new version is called Stratbuild and it has used our ten criteria for several simulated and real client briefing problems. The criteria are described and compared with those used by researchers in the procurement and client briefing literature. Alternative solutions (some not concerned with a building solution) have been evaluated using these criteria. Implications for the design team in focussing on the strategic stages are discussed.