St Nicholas Church of England Primary School

The client and design team used the Design Quality Indicator (DQI) process to evaluate progress in the design of St Nicholas Church of England Primary school to ensure that the project met stakeholder aspirations.

St Nicholas Church of England Primary School is in Rayleigh, Essex. A new building was required to provide modern facilities and more space for the school, which was previously in a small Victorian building.

The Design Quality Indicator (DQI) process was used to set end user aspirations at the briefing stage, develop an understanding of end user requirements and ensure that these needs were met throughout the design and construction process.

How the Design Quality Indicator (DQI) assessment helped

• highlighted end user aspirations
• opened channels of communication
• revealed areas where the architect had not communicated clearly with end users
• developed a shared understanding of the trajectory of the building project
• helped Essex County Council learn from this building to feed through to other capital projects
• enabled detailed feedback resulting in shared learning and a benchmark for improvements
• flagged up areas of concern in the design where effort was needed to resolve issues