Scaffold design brief. A printable design brief for commissioning a scaffold design — the information a designer needs before they can design anything, gathered once rather than over a fortnight of phone calls.

Most bespoke designs are late because the brief was incomplete, and most briefs are incomplete in the same places: what the scaffold is actually going to carry, what it can be tied to, and what is going to be hung off it or wrapped around it. This sheet is those questions in the order a designer asks them.

Sheeting is on the brief because it is the single most commonly forgotten item and the one with the largest consequences. A structure designed unsheeted and then wrapped is a different structure in a wind, and the decision to sheet it is usually taken on site, weeks later, by somebody who was not at the design stage.

Whether a scaffold needs a bespoke design at all is a question the brief does not answer and must not pretend to. It depends on the structure, what it is for and whether it falls within the scope of the compliance guidance the industry works to — which is why the sheet asks for the information and leaves the determination to whoever is competent to make it.

The attachments line matters more than it looks. A brief sent without the elevation drawing, the ground investigation or the photographs of what is behind the render is a brief that will come back as a list of questions, and the fortnight is lost there rather than in the design.