What are the eight design stages in a Made project?
Design that runs in defined stages produces decisions that hold. Design that runs as one long conversation produces revisions.
What are the eight design stages in a Made project?
Design runs in eight stages, moving from feasibility and concept through to fully documented construction drawings. Each stage closes a set of decisions before the next begins, which is what allows factory fabrication and site works to run in parallel later without rework.
Most construction delay is not construction. It is a decision that was not made when it should have been, surfacing as a variation months later.
Staged design exists to prevent that. Design runs in eight stages, construction in five, and the discipline is that each stage closes before the next opens.
Why staging matters more in modular
In conventional construction, a late decision is expensive. In volumetric modular it is worse, because fabrication has already begun in a factory to fixed dimensions.
A module in production cannot absorb a change the way a partially built room on site can. Which means the design has to be genuinely resolved before fabrication starts, not resolved enough to begin.
That constraint is often described as a limitation. It is the opposite. It forces the decisions forward, and decisions made early are cheaper than the same decisions made late.
What the stages do
The early stages establish what is possible. Site assessment, planning pathway, the accommodation brief, the compliance framework that applies, and a concept that satisfies all of it. This is where feasibility is proved or disproved.
The middle stages resolve the design. Layouts, accessibility provisions, structure, services coordination, and the split between what is built in the factory and what is built on site. This split is a project-specific decision, and it is made here rather than assumed.
The later stages document it. Construction-level drawings, specifications, certification documentation, and the manufacturing information the factory works from.
By the end, every dimension a module will be built to is fixed, every service penetration is located, and every compliance provision is documented rather than intended.
What closes a stage
A stage closes when its decisions are recorded and signed off, not when the drawings look complete.
That distinction matters. A stage that closes with an open question does not close, it defers, and the deferred question reappears at the point where it costs the most to answer.
Where the client sits in it
The decisions that need a client are concentrated in the early and middle stages, which is deliberate. By the time fabrication begins, the client is not being asked to approve things weekly.
That is the trade. More attention at the front, far less through delivery, and a programme that does not stop to ask questions.
Why this enables the parallel programme
Site preparation and module fabrication run at the same time, which is where the programme reduction of up to 60 percent comes from.
Two things happening at once only works if both are working from the same resolved design. If the design is still moving, the parallel programme becomes two things going wrong at once.
The eight stages are what make the parallelism safe.
One business, all eight
Design, approval, certification, manufacture and site works sit inside one accountable business. There is no handover between a design consultant and a builder, which is the point in a conventional programme where intent is most often lost.
The compliance framework is designed into the stages rather than checked against them afterwards.
Discuss your project and we will map it against the stages.
MADEmodular / MADEbetter.
MADEmodular / MADEbetter.