Managing the briefing process: a case study of a low-income NGO housing project in Phnom Penh

Abstract

Briefing is an important part of the construction process. Inadequate briefing is largely associated with the nature of the client in terms of level of expertise. Unlike large-scale commercial developers, NGOs generally do not have the same level of expertise and have to rely on their limited resources to generate the project brief. The purpose of this study is to investigate into the issues concerning briefing process for an NGO-supplied low-income housing project in Phnom Penh. The framework used in this study focuses on the development of project brief during the initial stage of the project from identifying the client’s needs to design development phase. Exploratory case study is used in this study to probe in-depth into the issues arising from the briefing process of an NGO-supplied low-income housing project in Phnom Penh. The intent is not to generalise but rather to provide insight on the fluid and dynamic nature of the briefing process for such projects. Data are collected using various methods such as documentary study, site visits to the project site in Phnom Penh, and interviews. The main findings are that, firstly, to save costs, the feasibility study was not conducted in detail. Consequently, the project brief is skeletal. Secondly, because the project team consists largely of in-house staff members and volunteers (e.g. architecture students), it does not have the full range of expertise. Thirdly, despite the desire to build sustainable communities, there is not a substantial amount of user input during the briefing stage as the NGO is the key decision maker. Clearly, there is room for improvement such as conducting a more comprehensive feasibility study by involving more volunteers with relevant expertise, improving the selection process as well as training for the project team, and incorporating greater user input. Currently, the NGO does not have extensive experience in housing development. As it builds more such projects in future, there will be opportunities to learn.