Editor’s Note:

This article is part of Entralon Hub’s Leadership View series, where senior real estate leaders examine the structural forces shaping the next phase of residential investment and market behaviour.

In this feature, Iwein Meyskens, Managing Director at archipelago architects, analyses why tender drawings are no longer sufficient in performance-based projects, and how architectural design is increasingly required to address long-term scenarios, adaptability, and behaviour over time rather than fixed outcomes at delivery.

For a long time, architectural work has revolved around a clear deliverable.

Tender drawings marked the moment when design intent was fixed, responsibilities were transferred, and the project moved from concept into execution.

In long-term, performance-based delivery models, that logic no longer holds.

When buildings are contracted, evaluated, and maintained over several decades, drawings alone cannot capture what truly matters. The focus shifts from what is built at handover to how the building performs, adapts, and endures over time.

From fixed outcomes to future behaviour

Tender drawings describe a building as it is meant to exist at a single moment.

Performance-based contracts require something different: an understanding of how that building will behave under changing conditions.

This introduces scenario thinking into architectural work. Instead of locking design decisions into a single, static outcome, architects are required to anticipate multiple futures changes in use, shifts in occupancy, evolving technical demands, and long-term wear.

Design quality is no longer measured by precision at one point in time, but by robustness across many.

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Performance as a design parameter

In DBFM(O) projects, performance is not an abstract ambition. It is embedded in contractual obligations and monitored throughout the asset’s lifecycle.