The wrong side of complexity: The National Infrastructure Commission's Design Principles

John T Roberts • October 30, 2020

"For the simplicity that lies this side of complexity, I would not give a fig, but for the simplicity that lies on the other side of complexity, I would give my life."
F. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Supreme Court Justice

Early in September the ICE ran a webinar on "What makes good design", presenting the bones of the 'Design Principles for National Infrastructure' launched back in February 2020. And I wanted to like them - I really did! But I came away feeling rather frustrated and not knowing what to do with them.

I think my problem stems from having written a list of Design Principles myself. About eight years ago, together with Chris Hendy, Nick Cooper and David French, we drafted the 'Atkins Design Principles'. We were inspired by a feeling that a number of pressures - technology, training, increasing complexity, international working, etc - were putting pressure on the design our teams were doing. We felt we needed to establish a set of Principles that defined what the process of design must include.

There were seven Principles and they were all very tightly and simply defined. Nine sentences in total. For instance, number one was "we have fully understood customer requirements, assessed these as being reasonable and translated them into a clear basis of design". "We have put in place suitable processes to ensure that our deliverables meet the design requirements" was another. Unlike the 10 Commandments they were 'Thou Shall' rather than 'Though Shall Not', and together they described the all the processes you needed to have in place to successfully deliver the design of anything: an oil rig, an eco-home, temporary works, landscape, a tall building, marine works……. Everything.

And I think Principles should, by definition, apply to 'Everything'. Which brings me back to the National Infrastructure Commission's list of Design Principles:

Climate. People. Places. Value.

They aren't central to all the things I listed earlier. For the design of an oil rig for instance 'climate, people and places' are not central. For temporary works the list hardly applies, and safety is a definite omission! I could go on. And there is no reason why all these things don't need and deserve to be designed well.

"Principles are the simplicity on the far side of complexity."

Stephen R. Covey

I don’t think that the NIC's list are Principles. Instead they are 'customer requirements' as defined under Atkins Design Principle 1, and their relevance and emphasis changes from project to project (just like Principles don't). Yes, it is very important that that our finished infrastructure respects and delivers these four words, but saying they are the 'Design Principles' feels a bit like the word Design just got hijacked by some Architects.

I think a set of Principles that define how design should be carried out is vital. If you have followed the news coming out of the Grenfell enquiry you can see a process that has been pulled apart over the years to the point where our industry has been regularly delivering projects with gaps, overspend, technical errors and under-performance. It is clear that the process and management of design needs be talked about, debated, taught and better defined.

Climate, people, places and value are all very important but listing them won't actually help us deliver what the future needs. I think we need to recognise and embrace some much more mundane Design Principles that will actually realise projects with those four words as central requirements.

Of course, the word 'Design' itself is central to the problem. The NIC want to define it one way. I want to define it another. Even in my grumpy state at the end of the webinar I was charmed by Hanif Kara's presentation. He quoted John Heskett: "Design is to design a design to produce a design". The word is appallingly ambiguous!

We are all trying to nail a jelly to a wall, and it is very important that it sticks.

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