Championing design with Harbinder Birdi

In today's podcast we talk about design – specifically the need to embed good design at the heart of infrastructure investment.

To help us to unpack and explore this issue my guest today is Harbinder Birdi, architect and founder of the Birdi and Partners practice. 

Loyal listeners may well remember that Harbinder was a guest on the podcast last April, just after he took on a task for the Institution of Civil Engineers to explore the role of infrastructure design champions – a role set out by the 2020 National Infrastructure Strategy and reinforced by the National Infrastructure Commission which said board-level design champions were crucial to gaining better outcomes from our public investment.

So today we can get an update on this work.

Last time we spoke we discussed the power of infrastructure to change lives and reflected on projects such as Crossrail, which has delivered infrastructure that delights and improves the lives of the public. 

Harbinder’s view then was very clear – that every infrastructure professional has to do more than simply play lip-service to the notion that good design matters. It has to be a fundamental driver for every investment decision and be linked implicitly to creating the better social, economic and environment outcomes that flow from investment.

His design champions work has moved on and culminated with a report called “Defining and developing the design champion role” produced for the ICE in October which, amongst other things, states that the creation of legally responsible design champions across all projects is critical to achieving a step change in infrastructure delivery.

So let’s find out more as we welcome Harbinder back to the Infrastructure Podcast.

Resources
Defining and developing the design champion role
National Infrastructure Strategy 2020
National Infrastructure Assessment
Design Principle for National Infrastructure
ICE - What Makes Good Design paper
Transforming Infrastructure Performance -  Roadmap to 2030