Planning and estimating design work: a review of British practice

This paper deals with the methods adopted by Architects and Engineers to plan and estimate the cost of their professional services and reviews techniques used by design managers to predict and plan the staff resources which are necessary for effective and efficient design work. The paper considers the significant trend towards fee competition amongst design professionals shows that there is a growing need for practices to more accurately assess and realistically programme their staff resource requirements. The paper also considers the extent to which cost control systems adopted by design managers are used to predict the cost of future design work and will describes a comprehensive survey which is currently being undertaken to investigate these issues.