The Inclusive Design Overlay to the RIBA Plan of Work is one year old. It was touted as a landmark document at its inception, but as the saying goes, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The anniversary provides an opportunity to check in with the profession to see how architects and clients have been using it and whether it has been a success on the ground during project delivery.
Jenny McLaughlin, Inclusion Lead at Heathrow and one of the original instigators of the overlay, says that at a recent inclusive design round table with leading clients – including the likes of Grosvenor, The Crown Estate, and the London Legacy Development Corporation – the feedback was “incredibly positive”.
“It was clear that the overlay is enabling them to do something that was not possible before,” she says. “Everyone knew that creating it was the right thing to do, but the steps to take to embed inclusive design into programme delivery so that they could be understood and applied by all built environment professionals, from clients to operators, had never been clearly set out.”
What does the Inclusive Design Overlay provide for architects and clients?
The Inclusive Design Overlay seeks to help built environment professionals create buildings and spaces that welcome everyone, regardless of age, sexual orientation, gender, health conditions, disabilities, or ethnicity.
However, it is far more than an inclusive design checklist for architects, or a client guide to inclusive project briefings: the Overlay sets out separate Plan of Work pathways for the client team – split again between the client (organisation or individual) and the client’s project management team – and design, construction and asset management teams. So, the client and every professional supporting the project management function can identify their own unique tasks at any stage of project delivery.
It's recommended that a key figure on projects should be the Inclusive Design Lead, normally an independent Inclusive Design Consultant. Elsewhere, and on smaller projects with no budget for a specialist consultant, an Inclusion Champion should be identified from within the client organisation or design team. The framework gives everyone the opportunity and confidence to have a direct dialogue with the Inclusive Design Lead and so feed into the creation of the inclusive design strategy.
Jenny has implemented the overlay at various project stages of work at Heathrow (she has not yet had an opportunity to follow the overlay from Stage 0), such as a new baggage facility and temporary welfare facilities for people involved with the construction process.
Inclusivity means meeting the needs of people working on site too, she points out.
“As a client, we want to meet the needs of those on site so there are no barriers to people being part of the project,” she says. “We can also mitigate some of the risks in the industry that can cause long term health impacts. In this way the overlay can interweave with a client’s duties under CDM 2015 regulations.”
The fact that the overlay can be usefully applied at any work stage demonstrates that the authors have done a good job of embedding actions at appropriate points.
She continues: “Every time you go from one stage into another, the overlay gives you a moment for pause and reflection so that you can make sure that you are continuing to meet the objectives set out in the original strategy and check that actions from the last stage have been carried through.”
Learn more about RIBA Publishing’s The Inclusive Housing Design Guide
What’s next for the Inclusive Design Overlay?
Jenny says pockets of awareness on the need for inclusive design are certainly spreading among client organisations, and certainly when it is spoken in the same terms as sustainability and safety as part of what she and built environment professionals deliver on every project.
She suggests that one of the great strengths of the overlay is that it gives clients a ready-made management process that can be adopted and applied to new projects, from project inception onwards.
Her impression is that take-up of the Inclusive Design Overlay for projects in these early days has been mainly client-led by organisations that have already adopted a well-defined position on inclusivity, although she says she is now seeing signs that clients are being approached by architects armed with the overlay and promoting the benefits of its approach.
As for the future, Jenny would like to see more practices using the Overlay to start dialogues with clients over the imperative of inclusion, in the same way that clients are being educated on other drivers for change such as building safety.
Download RIBA’s Inclusive Design Overlay to the Plan of Work.
Thanks to Jenny McLaughlin, Project Manager – Inclusion Lead, Heathrow.
Text by Neal Morris. This is a Professional Feature edited by the RIBA Practice team. Send us your feedback and ideas
RIBA Core Curriculum topic: Inclusive environments.
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