A05.01 Design Disciplines

documents / A - Managing the Practice /

by Charles Nelson AIA, LFRAIA »                                                                                                               

Who are the actors in our play?

I don’t pretend this is a complete list – but these 68 categories represent most of the design discipline specialties I’ve encountered in my years in the industry.

On a typical project it is not uncommon to have a dozen or more of these disciplines represented – and on a major project it frequently is more than 2 dozen. Further, on major projects, there may be multiple instances of the same discipline; for example, two architects, or a design architect and a documentation architect. In the case of the Melbourne Central project, there were a design architect and two development/documentation architects.

The lead consultant has to coordinate and manage the inputs, process progress and outputs of all these different disciplines.

You might organize these differently. Let me know what I’ve missed!