Scoping Workshops
Scoping Workshops are used to commence and clarify complex urban projects, when project understandings are limited, information is scattered and/or contradictory, and when the best way forward is not well understood or agreed upon. Project briefs written under these circumstances may actually impede project outcomes, rather than facilitate them. In order to address these all-too-frequent problems, ESD’s Scoping Workshops convene relevant stakeholders, regulators, leaders and project designers for one to three days in an exercise organised and led by ESD, during which participants jointly review available project information, identify and agree on key place-specific challenges and opportunities (sometimes involving early preliminary designing), identify information gaps and how best to fill them, and agree on an optimal project methodology.
Scoping Workshops yield more integrated and place-based understandings among participating stakeholders, and optimised project briefs which are more integrative, place-based and cost-effective. Nowadays ESD commences most of its major urban projects with a Scoping Workshop, and many public sector clients ask ESD to lead a Scoping Workshop prior to finalising their project briefs. A Scoping Workshop may also serve as a crucial means of informing a pre-acquisition “due diligence”.