RIBA

RIBA Plan of Work



RIBA Plan of Work

The divided groups within the client-organisation collectively provide roles that co-ordinate the disjointed way in which proposals are developed. The groups' “identity” and the way they engage with the decision-making process is based on their “inter” and “intra” group communications and hierarchical relationships (Brown, 1998) and is a response to the “division of labour” effect; organisational effectiveness is thus a product of how its parts combine to achieve synergy. The division of management roles is accentuated in the public sector where accountability places a need for named individuals to justify their decisions in the context of particular projects. In the private sector, accountability places a need for objective decision-making in the context of “shareholder expectations”; that is, results at an organisational level (e.g. annual published results) rather than at a project level, means private sector managers can enjoy the benefits of “swings and round-abouts” that are not as readily available to their public sector contemporary. Decision making in the public sector, financed by taxpayers' money, tends to be more risk-averse than in the private sector. In the public sector, PFI and PPP do attempt to bring this wider-portfolio benefit into consideration as the public sector project is transformed from a capital expenditure to be minimised, into a capital investment intended to create wealth.

So far in this paper, the description of Decision-approvers, takers and shapers, above, has been linked with large capital investment proposals. However, these roles can easily slip down the organisational hierarchy for smaller capital investment proposals. It is the estimated cost of investment that usually determines the level of management-seniority/authority that acts out the Decision-approver role. In some cases the roles can be combined and in small projects the same person can act out the approver, taker and shaper roles if accountability rules permit. As explained, if a project cost is estimated below a certain level (e.g. £100K) then less senior managers take on the responsibility of Decision-approver. The inherent danger with this approach is that low-cost-low-value options are considered alongside low-cost-high-value proposals by managers who may lack the strategic awareness and organisational insight that more senior personnel have. Such organisations have effectively placed a greater emphasis on financial risk than wealth creation in their approach to find their own organisational balance between “risk and reward”.

Figure 1 is a decision model that shows the funnelling nature of the process proposals must pass through. As the client's core business is not property related, the bids for funds compete with a range of initiatives from across the organisation. The purpose of this figure is to highlight the fact that the Decision-shapers are in competition for funds against other Decision-shapers from within the same organisation; information exchange may be influenced by the competitive environments within the organisation (Pfeffer, 1981).

Figure 1An overview of the proposal stage

Figure 2 is a decision model which shows that the pre-project stage begins before a proposal emerges and in advance of stage A of the RIBA plan of ...