Designing for value: Why good architecture demands better procurement

For too long, construction procurement has been dominated by a single question: “Who can deliver it cheapest?” It is a seductive metric: easy to measure, easy to compare, and easy to justify to a board. But the problem with lowest-cost tendering is that it rarely delivers the lowest cost in reality. Instead, it produces buildings that are more expensive to run, harder to adapt, and quicker to fail. The alternative, and the path the industry is beginning to embrace, is value-based procurement. It asks a richer question: “What delivers the most value over time?”

The Role of Design in Defining Value

Good design is often seen as an aesthetic concern: form, style, image. But in truth, good design is the foundation of value-based procurement.

• Whole-life cost: A slightly higher upfront investment in insulation or glazing can slash operating costs for decades.

• Adaptability: Flexible floorplates or demountable partitions extend building lifespans, reducing demolition and rebuild cycles.

• Wellbeing: Natural light, acoustic control, and thoughtful layouts reduce absenteeism in schools and offices or improve health outcomes in housing.

  
  

These benefits are rarely captured in a lowest-price tender. But they are real, measurable, and transformational.

Frameworks That Show the Way

Several frameworks now guide clients and designers towards value-based decisions:

• BSI Flex 390: a tool for embedding value-based procurement into projects, encouraging consideration of whole-life impacts.

• The Four Capitals Model (Constructing Excellence) broadens the definition of value to include produced, natural, social, and human capital.

• CLC’s Procuring for Value initiative encourages transparent metrics for performance beyond cost.

• PAS 8700 (Modern Methods of Construction): the UK’s first MMC design and assurance standard, ensuring consistency, safety, and value across residential projects. It supports better decision-making by giving clients confidence that MMC solutions are robust, safe, and future-proof.

  
  

Taken together, these frameworks signal a shift: design is no longer judged on aesthetics alone but on its capacity to create enduring value across time, place, and community.

An Architect’s Responsibility

Architects have a unique role to play in this shift. We sit at the intersection of client vision, technical feasibility, and long-term stewardship. Design choices are often the hinge on which value turns:

• A building that saves 10% in capital costs but locks in 50 years of high maintenance is not value.

• A housing scheme that maximises density but ignores community integration is not valuable.

• A school that hits budget but stifles pedagogy is not valuable. The procurement system must evolve, but so must we.

Architects have to lead clients by showing, not just telling, how design creates measurable value.

From Transaction to Transformation

The shift from lowest-price to value-based procurement is not just a change in contract terms. It is a cultural reset. It requires clients to think long-term, supply chains to collaborate earlier, and architects to articulate their decisions in terms of outcomes, not aesthetics. Most of all, it requires us to remember that good design is not decoration; it is intentionality. Every line we draw is a choice that carries cost, consequence, and opportunity.

Procurement reform alone will not deliver better outcomes. Nor will design brilliance, isolated from reality. But together, value-based procurement and purposeful design form the foundation of a built environment that truly serves people, places, and the planet. Architecture by Design exists to make this connection clear. Because when procurement values more than cost, design can deliver more than buildings. It can deliver value that endures.

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