Walk into almost any site office in Klang Valley, Penang or Johor Bahru and you will find a familiar pile: requests for information (RFIs) waiting for an answer, shop drawings waiting for comments, and a coordination drawing that three consultants have each marked up in a different colour. None of it looks dramatic on its own. Together, it quietly decides whether the programme holds.
We have written on this platform about procurement, variations, claims, payment and handover. This piece looks at something that sits underneath all of them and rarely gets its own line in the project budget: design management, the discipline of getting the right design information to the right people at the right time, and closing the gaps between the people who produce it.
Why design information is a project management problem
It is tempting to treat design as the consultants' business and construction as the contractor's. In practice, the boundary is blurred on every Malaysian project. Under traditional procurement using the PAM or PWD forms, the employer's consultants produce the design and the contractor builds it, but specialist subcontractors still design curtain walls, fire protection, lifts and many building services. Under design-and-build, the contractor takes on design responsibility, yet often inherits a concept or employer's requirements prepared by someone else.
Either way, a building is assembled from information produced by many hands: the architect, civil and structural engineer, mechanical and electrical engineer, quantity surveyor, specialist designers, and increasingly the IBS precaster or modular supplier. Every hand-off between them is an interface. Every interface is a place where something can be missed, duplicated or left for the site team to "sort out".
When that happens, the symptoms look like construction problems: rework, abortive work, late material orders, disputes over whether an instruction is a variation. But the root cause is upstream, in how design information was planned, coordinated and released.
The RFI is a symptom, not a process
Many project teams measure design health by counting RFIs. A long RFI log is not automatically bad; on a complex job, questions are healthy. What matters is the pattern behind them.
Repeated questions on the same element usually point to an unresolved interface, for example between structural openings and M&E services routes.
RFIs that are really design requests ("please provide details for...") suggest the design was released for construction before it was complete.
Slow responses often reflect unclear ownership: nobody is sure which consultant should answer, so everyone waits.
Answers that change scope are where variations and claims are born, which is why RFI responses need the same discipline as any instruction under the contract.
A good project manager reads the RFI log the way a doctor reads a chart. The question is not "how many?" but "what is this telling me about the design process?"
Five practices that make design management work
1. Plan design deliverables like construction activities
Site works have a detailed programme; design often has a list of submission dates and little else. A design delivery programme should be built backwards from construction need: when does the site need the piling layout, the reinforcement details for the transfer slab, the approved façade shop drawings, the final M&E coordinated ceiling layout? From those dates, work back through consultant production, review, comment and approval periods, including statutory submissions to the local authority and technical agencies.
The UK's RIBA Plan of Work is a useful international reference here. It breaks a project into defined stages with expected design outputs at each one, which gives everyone a common language for what "complete enough" means at each point. Malaysian teams do not need to adopt it wholesale, but the principle of agreeing stage outputs upfront travels well.
2. Write a responsibility matrix for design, not just for construction
A design responsibility matrix sets out, element by element, who designs, who checks, who coordinates and who approves. It should be explicit about grey areas: connection design for structural steel, temporary works, builder's work in connection with services, waterproofing details, and the interface between architectural finishes and specialist systems.
This matters contractually as well as practically. If a specialist subcontractor's design responsibility is not clearly written into its subcontract and reflected in the main contract, the project will find the gap at the worst possible time. Agreeing it early is far cheaper than arguing about it later.
3. Make coordination a scheduled event, not an afterthought
Clash-free design does not happen by itself. Regular design coordination meetings, with a clear agenda built around specific zones or systems, are the engine of design management. The most effective ones work through one area of the building at a time (for example, the basement car park services or a typical floor ceiling void) and close out actions with named owners and dates.
Where the project uses Building Information Modelling (BIM), federated models make clashes visible earlier. CIDB has actively promoted BIM adoption in Malaysia, and many larger public and private projects now require it. Internationally, the ISO 19650 series sets out how information should be managed across the life of an asset using BIM. The lesson from both is the same: the software only finds clashes; people still have to resolve them, record the decision and update the drawings.
4. Control the status of every drawing
One of the most common causes of site rework is simply building from the wrong revision. A disciplined document control system, whether a common data environment or a well-run register, should make it obvious which drawings are for information, for approval, for tender and for construction.
Simple rules help: only "for construction" drawings go to site; superseded drawings are withdrawn, not just reissued; and every revision carries a clear description of what changed. On busy projects with many subcontractors, this alone can remove a surprising amount of friction.
5. Treat design changes through the change process
Design will evolve. Clients refine their brief, authorities impose conditions, and site conditions reveal surprises. The danger is when design changes travel informally, through a revised drawing issued without an instruction or an RFI answer that quietly adds scope.
Every design change should pass through the same gateway as any other variation: identify it, assess its time and cost effect, get the right approval, and then release the revised information. This links design management directly to the variation and claims controls the industry already knows it needs.
The design manager: a role worth naming
In the United Kingdom and Australia, it is common for main contractors on design-and-build projects to appoint a dedicated design manager, a person whose job is to coordinate consultants, manage the design programme and protect the construction team from incomplete information. Singapore's push towards integrated digital delivery reflects a similar view that information flow deserves deliberate management.
In Malaysia, this role is often absorbed by the project manager, the project architect or a senior engineer on top of their other duties. That can work on smaller projects. On complex buildings, infrastructure or projects with heavy specialist design content, a named design manager, on the client side, the contractor side or both, is often money well spent. The key is clear authority: the design manager must be able to chase consultants, escalate delays and hold the line on information release dates.
What clients can do
Clients and developers shape design management more than they realise. Three decisions make a real difference:
Allow enough design time before tender or construction. Compressing design to start site early usually moves the cost into variations and delay.
Freeze the brief at agreed points. Late changes are sometimes unavoidable, but they should be conscious decisions with known consequences.
Appoint consultants with coordination in scope. If coordination is not in anyone's appointment, nobody is truly responsible for it.
A practical starting checklist
For project managers who want to strengthen design management on their next job, a short checklist goes a long way:
Is there a design delivery programme linked to the construction programme?
Is there a design responsibility matrix covering consultants and specialist subcontractors?
Are coordination meetings scheduled, zone-based and minuted with actions?
Is drawing status controlled, with a single source of current information?
Do RFI responses and design changes flow through the change and variation process?
Is someone clearly accountable for design coordination, with the authority to act?
Closing thought
Good design management rarely gets noticed. When it works, drawings arrive on time, services fit in the ceiling, and the site team spends its energy building rather than asking questions. When it fails, the cost shows up everywhere else: in the programme, the final account and the relationships between the parties.
For Malaysian construction project managers, taking ownership of the flow of design information is one of the most practical ways to protect both delivery and value. It is not glamorous work, but it is where many projects are quietly won or lost.
The articles and technical notes published on this website are intended for knowledge sharing and professional discourse within the construction project management community. The views, opinions, and interpretations expressed are those of the respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy, position, or constitutional stance of the Association of Construction Project Managers Malaysia (ACPM) or its Council.
The content should not be construed as legal, regulatory, or professional advice. Readers are encouraged to exercise their own professional judgement and seek appropriate advice where necessary