From concept to handover: the design stages, and why your software should know them
Stages are not bureaucracy — they are how design risk is retired in order. Here is the ladder most projects climb, and what each rung means for drawings, fees and approvals.
Every architecture project climbs the same ladder: an idea becomes a concept, a concept becomes a developed design, a developed design becomes documents a contractor can price and build. The stages exist because design risk has an order — you cannot detail a wall whose position is undecided — and because fees, approvals and liability all attach to stage boundaries.
The reference ladder
The best-known framework is the RIBA Plan of Work, which runs from stage 0 (strategic definition) through 7 (use). Most practices, whatever country they work in, run a local dialect of the same ladder — the names change, the logic does not.
| Phase | What is decided | What the client signs off |
|---|---|---|
| Brief & feasibility | What is being built, roughly how big, roughly what budget | The brief |
| Concept | The design idea — massing, organisation, character | The concept |
| Developed design | The design fixed in its major decisions — dimensions, systems, materials | The scheme |
| Technical design | Everything a contractor needs to price and build | Issue for tender/construction |
| Construction | The design defended and detailed through execution | Progressive approvals |
| Handover | The building complete, defects listed and closed | Practical completion |
Why stages should live in your software, not your folder names
In most practices, stages exist as folder names — `03_DD`, `04_TD` — which means the stage is a filing convention, not a fact the system knows. Nothing stops a stage-2 drawing being transmitted while the stage-1 approval is still pending; nothing tallies which deliverables of the current stage are done; the fee instalment tied to stage completion is tracked in a spreadsheet that does not know what the drawings are doing.
Ofivio AE makes the stage a live object: eleven design stages, each owning its deliverables and drawing sets by discipline, each with its own revisions, transmittals and BOQ. When a stage's deliverables are done, that fact is visible — and the fee milestone attached to it is one step from an invoice, in the same system.
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