Avoiding conflicting roles amongst Architects, Interior and MEP designers

For carrying out various design function-related activities, the process of assigning user rights to core design activities, particularly in IT environments, is complex.

If Architects, Interior Designers, and MEP designers are assigned rights injudiciously, there can be conflicting roles as per a few illustrations below.

Few Illustrations of conflicting role assignments in Design functions are tabulated below   

Employee code no’s like EA001 & onwards, EI001 & onwards, ME001 & onwards mentioned above are just for simple understanding of readers and would vary based on the size of the construction company, no of projects to be designed, and design organization structure being lean or fat.

Many more such conflicting role possibilities can be directly identified by readers in design functions related to Architects, Interior Designers, and MEP.

In some design functions, with a very lean design organisation, the same designers perform design activities for Architects or & Interior Designers or & and MEP designs.

Implications

Assigning conflicting roles, can trigger colluding of designers with outsourced consultants or contractors, or project team members, and compromising of the cardinal principle of "segregation of duties" leading to:

·       Design deficiencies.

·       Adverse impact on project costs or construction quality or not meeting customer requirements or project completion timelines.

·       Statutory non-conformances

 Suggested approach – Assigning roles based on Segregation of duties

The roles assigned to any designer need to be such that these are appropriate to the designer’s position/level, skill, and competence. The roles are to be assigned so that the cardinal principle of segregation of duties is followed to ensure that there are no conflicts of duties or incompatibility in roles. The activities proposed are as below:

1.     Identify Parameters for developing the S-O-D (Segregation of Duty) template for Assigning Access Rights to Core design processes and their activities

2.    Design SOD templates for assigning access rights to core design processes and their activities based on the parameters identified.

3.    Software programming of SOD template for assigning access rights for core design processes and their activities

4.    Populate the SOD template with “Access rights” related activities for core design processes. This includes reflecting the assigned profiles for capturing assigned profiles vis-à-vis activity for core processes

5.    Affecting Changes

As and when changes occur vis-à-vis following for any reason, the design team reviewing and amending populated templates as above.

·       Changes in design functions assigned for executing core processes

·       Changes in core design processes

·       Changes in design activities

·       Change in hierarchy levels in business hierarchy vis-à-vis lower, medium, and higher levels

·       Changes in hierarchy positions of designers vis-à-vis low level, medium level, and high levels e.g.

o   Lower level:  staff, junior/assistant manager, and so on

o   Middle level: manager, senior manager-sr. Mgr. and so on

o   Higher level: general managers-GM, directors-Dir and so on

More details and illustrations about the implementation of the Segregation of duties concept are included in chapter 11 (Templates at annex 26C,27C,28C,29C) in my handbook