A new building project will rarely only affect the owner. Customers may shop there, residents may live there, or students may learn there. Each of these groups has different needs and preferences for the building they use. If you want to synthesize these preferences and needs into the final product, you may want to think about utilizing stakeholder involvement.
What is a Stakeholder in Architecture?
In a broad sense, the term “stakeholder” refers to individuals, groups, or organizations who can influence or be affected by a project’s outcome. For architecture projects, this can include an owner or company that will own the building, regular occupants who will use the building, and even individuals or businesses that will be affected in some way by the new building.
Contrary to the common use in a corporate context, stakeholders in architecture may or may not have financial involvement in the project. A stakeholder in the architectural process simply needs to be an entity that you think would benefit having their voice heard at a certain phase of the design.
How Much Input Should Stakeholders Have?
The amount of influence that a stakeholder should have will be unique to the needs of your project. Stakeholders can also have varying levels of input for different phases of the project.
For example, leadership on a K-12 project may involve the general public during the visioning of the project to gather large swaths of data and point the project in the right direction, but they may later utilize a small sample of teachers when planning on the specific needs of the third-grade classrooms.
Deciding on the types of stakeholders and the amount of input you want them to have is dependent on your priorities as an owner. Involving more stakeholders could result in longer design phases, as meetings need to be built around more schedules, and bringing the team to a consensus can become more challenging. However, more voices being heard initially could result in fewer revisions after the design is finalized, since the stakeholders can make their concerns known early.
Conversely, if only a few stakeholders are involved, design phases can move more quickly as decisions are made unilaterally. This could be beneficial if the project is under time constraints and the building does not require specific customization to several different groups. However, less stakeholder involvement also means less input before plans become solidified. This could result in overlooked details that are more costly to rectify than if they had been considered at the beginning of the design process.
Methods to Gather Stakeholder Feedback
There are several ways to get stakeholders involved in the architecture design process, and what you choose will depend on the needs of the project and the relationship the stakeholders have to the project.
Owner-led Feedback
Some owners decide to be sole messengers on behalf of their stakeholders. This means only the owner communicates and makes decisions with the architect, using input they’ve independently gathered from stakeholders. This method can avoid issues with scheduling and centralizes decision-making to a single person, which can be useful for expedited projects that have few stakeholders.
With this method, however, the owner could prioritize their own ideas over the stakeholders, potentially creating issues down the line if the building doesn’t meet the needs or standards of its regular users.
Specialized Stakeholder Feedback
Other structures allow different departments to have a say about their section of the building. For example, in a school project, you could consult the athletics facility about the design of the gym, while the food staff is consulted about the design of the kitchen. This allows each stakeholder to have influence over the part of the building that they will use the most and specialize the space to best suit their needs.
If you decide on this method, figure out what level of input you want these stakeholders to have at each stage of the project, and make them aware of the specific input you want to receive from them. Without clear direction, the comments you receive can be unfocused or too broad, increasing the time to make decisions. If you state the expertise you want from each stakeholder and how they can contribute to the overall project, you’ll likely end up with more productive discussions.
Community Stakeholder Feedback
For projects centered on the community, it can be useful to gather input from the many stakeholders that make up that community. This method of stakeholder involvement is less about gathering specific action items and more about gauging general sentiment that will help focus the project’s priorities and best serve the broadest group of stakeholders. It’s also a great way to ensure the community’s voice is part of the process, which can garner enthusiasm and excitement around your project.
Given the amount of people in this stakeholder group, it’s probably not possible to receive individual feedback from everyone on every part of the design, but it can be useful to have their perspectives early in the visioning process. Surveys, town halls, and other visioning activities with members of the community can help an owner understand the wants and needs of these stakeholders, which they can consider when making decisions further into the design process.
Determining the Right Stakeholder Governance for Your Project
These are just a few of the ways that stakeholders can be involved in your project, but there is no “best” method for every job. Often these methods are mixed and matched to suit the needs of your project, and your architect can help you explore options and guide you through the process of bringing stakeholders into the conversation.
At Neumann Monson, we value collaboration and community involvement, and we’ll give you the tools you need to involve stakeholders and make every voice heard. Schedule a meeting with one of our architects to find out how your project can best utilize the many voices in your community and build projects that benefit them.
For further info on how you can get stakeholders involved in your project, check out our learning center articles on architectural visioning workshops and how to involve staff in the design process.