Following in the footsteps of an increasingly complex procurement regime is the question of who gets the credit. Major NSW government projects including transport, stadiums, museums and hospitals involve at least two stages of design procurement very often awarded to different design teams. The same can be true for large projects procured by corporate and institutional clients. The first stage sees the design team engaged by the client to produce designs to inform numerous internal approval processes including a definition design to support a business case and a reference design forming part of the tender documents. Once a contractor has been selected, the second stage sees a design team engaged by the contractor, with no obligation or even likelihood that the same team is retained for both phases.
The theory is that the first team’s design is the embodiment of the client’s performance requirements and a demonstration that they can be fulfilled, reducing the risk for both client and contractor, but that it is the contractor’s responsibility to provide the actual design that will be delivered, supplied by their own design team, with a wall of probity separating the two.
If this were true, then design authorship for the completed project could be neatly attributed to the contractor’s design team. In reality, the more complex the project, the more likely it is that the first team’s design has been used as the basis for the second team’s design. The second team may even be given the first team’s Revit models to use as its point of departure. On highly technical projects, the first design team may have overcome a number of potentially project-killing challenges, both technical and administrative, and it would be highly wasteful for the second team to resolve them again from scratch. This is not to say that the second design team has a less demanding role technically or administratively; it is to highlight the critical value of both teams for the realisation of the project.
So who gets the credit? Is it simply the second team whose competitiveness, talent and persistence have allowed it to win and follow through on the delivery of an outstanding complex project? Or should some go to the first team whose own skill and dedication made the project feasible to begin with, both in general and in numerous particulars?
In awards, marketing and other forms of bragging rights, it is the delivery design team that gets the lion’s share. The reference design team is mentioned in passing if it is mentioned at all. In one sense this may reflect a certain legal reality for some major projects, where the first design team has agreed to transfer the copyright of the reference design to the client, and perhaps even consented to non-attribution of moral rights.
Numerous governing principles expect more of architects than this. When we give credit, we are not simply acknowledging our peers, we are telling the industry and the public what we value about our profession. What do we want them to value about the contribution of architects? Is it just the ability to complete the delivery of a project? Or is it also the ability to establish and define the project and meet its foundational challenges? If we want architecture as a profession to be respected for the full range of its contributions to the realisation of major projects from inception to delivery, we should start by announcing that contribution by citing our peers who worked on other stages.
There will be cases where the first design team has not waived attribution, or even agreed to transfer copyright, yet their design has been used as the basis for the delivery design. Again, the more complex, the more likely this is. In these cases the moral right of attribution of authorship, given by the Copyright Act 1968, requires the delivery design team to acknowledge and appropriately attribute the contribution of the first design team in its promotional and publishing activities.
Regardless of individual agreements surrounding copyright and attribution, the two main codes of conduct also require conformance to a higher standard than what current practice appears to deem acceptable. Clause 18 (2) of the NSW Architects Code of Professional Conduct declares that an architect may not put their name to any work ‘in a manner that misleadingly implies authorship’. In the case of major projects known to have used staged design procurement, omitting citation of the reference design architect is increasingly in breach of this clause. And Clause 4.2 of the Australian Institute of Architects Code of Professional Conduct states that ‘Members must not appropriate the intellectual property of nor unduly take advantage of the ideas of another architect without express authority from the originating architect […] and should recognize and give credit to others for professional work performed.’
In an industry where a staged procurement pathway is more and more the norm, giving credit to the design teams of preceding stages is a growing imperative under law and under our own professional regulations. If we know that our designs have been founded upon those of another team, we must credit them, not only for their benefit, but as a demonstration of respect for the full value of our contribution as a profession throughout the life cycle of major projects.
This article was originally published in Procurement (2019), Architecture Bulletin 75(4).