Volker, L (2010) Deciding about design quality: value judgements and decision making in the selection of architects by public clients under European tendering regulations. PhD thesis, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands.
Abstract
"In the past few years the image of tender procedures in which Dutch public clients selected an architect has been dominated by distressing newspaper headlines. Architects fear that the current tender culture will harm the quality of our built environment due to a potential lack of diversity, creativity and innovation in architectural design. Clients often allow legal requirements to overrule their actual wishes. The current practice of architect selection by European public clients has its roots in three distinct systems: 1) tendering for services and works, 2) the selective search to identify a suitable architect or design team, and 3) the architectural competition. It is these diverse roots of the selection process that appear to cause conflicts between the legal rationality of procurement and the psychological rationality of public decision making. This PhD research addresses the origin of these problems as currently experienced by public commissioning clients in architect selection and proposes pragmatic implications for future practice. It is therefore of interest for commissioning clients, management consultants, policy makers and legal advisors but also for designers and researchers in the field of architecture and decision making. Based on four empirical cases the author shows that during architect selection the rational legal requirements clash with the psychological process of decision making. Decision makers only start to make sense of the proposed designs once they are confronted with the alternatives. It is therefore almost impossible for clients to design a selection procedure and announce the criteria and weighing factors up front, as required by procurement law. The scientific underpinning of the findings is found in four theoretical perspectives on value judgements in design and the latest decision theories in which emotion, intuition, and expertise play prominent roles. In the conclusions five sensemaking processes are distinguished and several underlying situational characteristics are identified that influence the selection process, such as complexity, uncertainty and decision support. The thesis proposes fifteen factors for a successful design of a tender procedure to select an architect. It also offers recommendations for change of the current Dutch practice."
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | tendering; architect; decision-making; value judgements; European procurement; EU regulation; design quality |
| Index terms: | intuition, architectural design, complexity, decision theory, commissioning, regulation, decision-making, design team, design quality, decision support, rationality, architectural competition, sensemaking, public client, architect, built environment, newspaper, designer, creativity |
| Subjects: | profession, professional practice, tendering, decision-making and reasoning, design practice, political science, completion, systems engineering, innovation and creative processes, infrastructure and transport systems, sociology, decision analysis, cognitive psychology |
| Topics: | Research Practice, Roles and Professions, Stakeholder Management, Governance, Urban Studies, Design Practice, Engineering Principles, Risk Management, Procurement, Quality Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCT |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here