Design and build is a contract route in which a single contractor takes responsibility for both the detailed design and the construction of a fit-out. The client provides a concept, a brand manual or a set of employer's requirements; the contractor develops it into buildable, approvable drawings and then builds it.
The client defines the outcome — brand standard, performance, finishes, programme and budget — rather than the detail. The tighter this document, the fewer arguments later.
The contractor reads the concept against the actual unit, the mall handbook and the local code, and reports the conflicts before pricing rather than after award.
Architectural, MEP and fabrication drawings produced to be built from and approved from — one set, not a design set followed by a separate shop-drawing exercise.
Material submittals, mall NOCs and authority approvals run in parallel with procurement, because the contractor controls both.
The same party that drew it builds it, so a buildability error is theirs to absorb rather than yours to instruct as a variation.
The contractor. If the detail cannot be built as drawn, correcting it is their cost, not a client variation — which is the central commercial reason the route exists.
Usually, because detailed design, approvals and procurement overlap instead of running in sequence. The saving is in the approval phase, which is where most fit-out programmes actually lose time.
Yes, and it is one of the best uses of the route. The manual becomes the employer's requirements and the contractor develops the local detail that makes it approvable and buildable in that unit.
Brand standard and finishes schedule, performance requirements for MEP, the handover date, the base-build condition being handed over, the approval route, and the budget. What it should not contain is a half-finished detailed design.
When the client wants full control of every detail, or when a consultant has already produced a complete, coordinated and approved design. At that point there is little design left to transfer.
We bid retail and commercial fit-out tenders across the Gulf from our Jeddah base.
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