Codes and Practice Management
This domain covers the regulatory codes you design to and the business discipline of running a practice: scope, fee, programme, quality and liability.
The codes and the office
- National Building Regulations (Maqarrat-e Melli-e Sakhteman) - a numbered series of subject volumes; among the load-bearing ones for planners: Mabhas 3 (fire protection and egress), Mabhas 19 (energy conservation), plus structural, seismic and accessibility volumes. A design that violates a mabhas cannot be approved by referencing the plan alone.
- Permit chain - approved detailed plan → building permit → supervised construction by a qualified supervisor → completion certificate; the supervisor's signature is a legal attestation.
- Practice management - scope definition and exclusions, fee basis from the professional tariff with complexity factors, contract type (lump sum, percentage, time-based), programme (Gantt, critical path), quality review, document control, change orders, professional indemnity.
Worked example
A client asks for "the same scope as before, but faster". Before agreeing, decompose: which deliverables compress, which activities are on the critical path, and what review time cannot be cut without raising error risk. If the client accepts a reduced deliverable set, issue a change order that records the reduced scope explicitly - accelerating a fixed scope is not a fee-neutral request. Reasoning shown: programme compression either adds resources (cost) or removes scope (quality); an undocumented verbal agreement transfers the risk to you at handover.
Traps
- Confusing the drawing approval with the supervisor's completion attestation.
- Allowing scope creep through informal instructions without a change order.
- Citing a building regulation article without checking which mabhas governs the issue.