Design fee versus design deficiency

The relationship between the design quality and the design fee is directly dependent upon how the fee is determined, compared to the level of services to be provided. Design deficiency is an error or omission in the drawings and/or the specifications, which results in a facility that will not adequately perform its intended mission. This study is an attempt to determine a statistical model that relates the design fee and design deficiency. Such a model can be used to predict the level of design quality. Data regarding design fee and design deficiency were collected for sixty construction projects in Saudi Arabia. Although the data have a large variation, the developed model shows clearly the decrease of design deficiency as the design fee increases.