Design coordination meetings are among the most common meetings on any construction project. They are also among the most commonly mismanaged. The difference between a coordination meeting that resolves issues and one that merely records them is the difference between a project that progresses smoothly and one that carries the same unresolved conflicts from week to week until they become construction problems.

Most construction projects hold design coordination meetings regularly throughout the design and construction phases. In theory, these meetings should be the mechanism by which design conflicts are identified and resolved. In practice, they are frequently ineffective — producing minutes that record issues without resolving them, and consuming significant team time with little output. This article sets out a practical approach to facilitating design coordination meetings that actually achieve their purpose.

The Problem with Most Coordination Meetings

The most common failure pattern in design coordination meetings is that they become a forum for identifying and recording issues, rather than resolving them. The same issues appear week after week in the minutes, with no resolution and no escalation. Participants attend without having reviewed the previous actions. Decisions are deferred. The result is that coordination problems accumulate and eventually surface as site clashes, rework and delay.

Prepare a Proper Coordination Issue Register

In a well-run coordination meeting, issues are discussed, resolved or escalated — they are not simply identified for the first time. Prepare a coordination issue register in advance of the meeting and share it with participants so they can prepare their responses. At the meeting, work through open issues systematically, focusing time on issues that can be resolved in the meeting or that require a decision. Issues that require offline investigation should be assigned an action, a deadline and an owner, and closed out before the next meeting.

Focus the Meeting on Resolution, Not Discovery

Each action should be assigned to a specific named individual, not to a discipline or a company. ‘The structural engineer will resolve this’ is not sufficient — it needs to be a named person who is responsible for delivering the resolution. This does not mean only one person does the work, but it does mean one person is accountable for ensuring the resolution is delivered on time.

Assign Real Accountability

Every action from the meeting should have a specific resolution date, not just ‘ASAP’ or ‘next meeting’. Deadlines create accountability and allow the coordination register to be tracked meaningfully. If a deadline is missed, it should be flagged at the following meeting and, if it is affecting the design programme, escalated. Persistent unresolved issues should be escalated to the lead designer or project manager, not simply recirculated indefinitely.

Set a Resolution Deadline for Every Issue

BIM coordination tools, particularly clash detection in a federated model, can transform the quality of design coordination meetings. Rather than relying on team members to identify conflicts verbally, a clash detection report provides a concrete, visual list of issues to work through. Prepare the clash report before the meeting, assign clashes to the relevant disciplines in advance, and use the meeting to review resolution proposals rather than simply to identify that clashes exist.

Use BIM Coordination Effectively

JC Virtual PMs provides design management support to SME construction teams across the UK. If you need help establishing an effective design coordination process — including setting up a coordination issue register, facilitating meetings or managing the BIM coordination workflow — contact us to find out how we can help.

How JC Virtual PMs Can Help