The construction industry does not have the best reputation for meeting its clients' expectations, and the acceptance of underdelivery is deeply ingrained. As demands on projects become more complex the problems associated with defining and achieving the criteria for success become greater.

Solutions put forward are often focused too narrowly and offer an uncoordinated and partial view of the potential sources of problems on projects.

Our experience on the Scottish Parliament Building revealed that issues went well beyond project governance or selection of a procurement route, to widespread weaknesses regarding the role of the client, the project team, the programme and budget and above all the clarity of the project's objectives. In response to this, Davis Langdon has developed a structured and broad reaching review system to access these issues early enough and put in place the necessary conditions for success.

DLivering Success

In order to create the conditions for greater certainty in project outcomes and to improve performance and outcome still further on all projects, Davis Langdon has developed a structured approach to reviewing the health of a project. The process brings together the accumulated expertise of a multidisciplinary team obtained from a wide range of complex and challenging projects.

DLivering Success is designed to be applied at all major stages of a project, considering the Why? What? and How? of a project – identifying the client's need for a project, and describing the facility, its required performance and its method of delivery.

The complex set of issues that underpin a project have been distilled into twelve interrelated Success Factors, all of which need to be in place to maximise opportunities for positive project outcomes.

Each project is reviewed as a whole to ensure that the necessary factors for success are in place. This provides the client and project team with a clear steer on relative strengths and weaknesses of a project and helps identify the areas where action is required. The DLivering Success principles are detailed on the following page.