Of course, digitising the entire planning process is an enormous goal, and for efficiency’s sake, the process will have to begin with a single use case.

Through structured questioning and diagramming on flipcharts and whiteboards (or their digital equivalents), we turn those concerns and desires into clear objectives.The aim is to ensure that all stakeholders understand each other’s drivers and that we develop an agreed set of objectives that everyone feels is comprehensive and fair.. We turn that knowledge into an initial, digital model.

The model captures all the systems and their interfaces, and represents all aspects of the overall solution that affect the objectives of the various stakeholders.This initial representation allows us to agree what kind of expertise we require to develop a solution.For a prison design, that might mean that we need to understand how guards and social workers do their jobs.

For a pharmaceutical plant, it might mean we need a specialist in oral solid dose manufacturing, a quality representative and a health and safety specialist.. Based on this initial representation, we can start gathering the knowledge and data that is essential for developing a solution.We use this input to create a comprehensive and holistic model of the problem and the outline solution.

We call this process Chip Thinking®️.

It allows us to generate outputs about its performance under different conditions..There is a great deal of evidence that demonstrates that these approaches lead to projects which conceive of value well beyond normal experience..

The working assumption generally held in the pharmaceutical industry is that beyond the formulation of an accepted project concept, iterative and questioning approaches offer less value and maybe pose risks in later design stages.Therefore, the approach is to decide on a single concept to integrate the engineering structurally in an EPCM type contract and to focus purely on deliverables..

This idea does not match reality and undermines the ability to both hold on to and even augment the delivered value.As described by Henry Mintzberg about business strategy, engineering design will always include a combination of deliberate and emergent components.. Pretending a high level of fixation at best is counterproductive and at worst destructive to the project’s ability to deliver value.