Citation
Finch, E. (2005), "Special issue: briefing", Facilities, Vol. 23 No. 7/8. https://doi.org/10.1108/f.2005.06923gaa.001
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2005, Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Special issue: briefing
In the words of the great Salvador Dalí “I shall be so brief that I have already finished”. Well, perhaps not that brief, because that is the subject of this issue. To North Americans the name given to the document that encapsulates the requirements of a client intending to create a facility is the “programme”. In other parts of the world the word “brief” is used. However, with the increasing complexity of buildings, such documents are becoming anything but brief. Moreover, many would argue that the idea of such a static document to encapsulate a client’s requirements is outmoded. For some, the process of “briefing” is an ongoing process that must capture evolving situational needs. For me, I think that the idea of a brief as a one-shot process holds greater appeal – it may not be entirely accurate but at least it gives us constancy in an environment where we are often inclined to forget what we were trying to do in the first place.
The papers in this issue do illustrate the wide range of considerations that emerge in the briefing process: various and competing issues jockeying for supremacy. Today we accept the contribution of many varied stakeholders in the briefing process addressing accessibility, the environment and human health. This is reflected in all of the papers in this issue. Each of them attempt to either: recognise the requirements of a particular stakeholder (as in the paper by Ormerod and Newton on accessibility); formalise the briefing process to ensure that stakeholder contributions are identified and weighted (as in the paper by Smith, Love and Heywood as well as Yu, Shen, Kelly and Hunter); or develop visualisation tools to enable facilities managers to contribute more effectively to the design process (see the paper by Pitt et al.).
Louis Kahn once wrote: “A great building must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed and in the end must be unmeasurable”. Undoubtedly, the facilities manager has many measurable means to influence the design, starting of course with information about what worked and what didn’t with the last facility. Just how this is interjected between the two unmeasurable stages remains somewhat problematic.
Edward Finch