Creating great educational places and spaces
A guide to Design Quality & Delivery for schools
The Design Quality and Delivery Guide, and its supporting DQD Worksheets, offers a concise and practical resource for school-based members of a project team to help them participate confidently in the design, delivery and evaluation of a capital project - not as technical experts, but as informed, active clients who understand what they are trying to achieve and how to protect it.
The role and structure of the guide
A crucial role of the guide is to build the confidence of school leaders and school communities to participate actively in a capital project, recognising that opportunities to shape outcomes are greatest in the early stages, and that a school's influence and responsibility shift across the life of a project. Built around a four-stage Project Roadmap - Definition, Design, Delivery and Evaluate - the guide is intended to provide schools with confidence by simply defining:
- What design quality and delivery mean for a built project.
- The school's role and level of active participation at each stage.
- Where influence sits along the roadmap, and why early investment in clarity compounds over time.
- Practical prompts, checklists and tools for confident engagement.
Its content has been shaped through collaborative workshops with school leaders, business managers and built environment professionals, grounded in the decisions they found hardest and reflecting the practices that consistently produce stronger outcomes.
If you have any questions about the guide, please get in touch with us