Eignung
The OP-OD method is particularly suitable for medium-sized planning tasks in structural engineering, urban planning, and open space planning. Although the method’s ambition is to be impartial, it is not value-neutral (at least from the point of view of its authors). It commits to respectful collaboration. The procedure and mechanisms of a method such as OP-OD require project initiators — usually the building owners or citizens’ assemblies [Baugruppen] — to be willing to view planning as a genuine collaborative process during which they have to take on more responsibility and, at the same time, relinquish sole decision-making authority. The OP-OD method is a well-structured tool and an aid to this end.
Equally important, the application of OP-OD requires the willingness of all participants to strive for an unprejudiced search for solutions. In this regard, it is by no means expected that each participant will be a ‘perfect person’ or even share particular views in terms of politics or philosophy of life. In fact, the method is expressly designed for each participant to contribute their (by its very nature) specific and individual views of the world and of the concrete task at hand. It is precisely for this reason that everyone is welcome in the first place. OP-OD takes the limitations of each participant as a starting point and serves to loosen them up by taking a wide-ranging viewpoint on the issues that need to be solved.
The OP-OD method may be applied to its full extent by private clients such as housing cooperatives. In principle, for private clients there are no obstacles in terms of public procurement. The high level of transparency of the procedure and the high degree of access to it, which are viewed as fundamental, should also be advantageous from a compliance point of view. However, issues relating to copyright (or its partial relinquishment) as well as to liability for planning outcomes, possible errors, and resulting damage, have yet to be clarified. In this regard, open questions remain, especially concerning the transition to other planning phases — such as approval procedure and detailed design. Although these questions can sometimes be answered in relation to a specific project or actor, there is still a lack of more detailed studies and recommendations on how to deal with them as a rule. Also, the changed understanding of collaborative planning and shared responsibility at the heart of OP-OD, especially as far as planners and building owners are concerned, has not yet been thought through in a legal sense as regards changed contract designs and liability mechanisms.
For public contracting authorities, on the other hand, the OP-OD method is currently only applicable to a limited extent. However, it can be used without any difficulty in its current form as a preparatory planning tool by actors subject to public procurement law. The fundamental ambition to involve users and, also, political decision-makers at an early planning stage, from 0 onwards, can thus be pursued in a new way. The method can deliver basic planning principles and initial planning variants similarly to a feasibility study. As a result, it fits in very well with the concerns of, in particular, public contracting authorities and, especially amongst them, smaller municipalities. As regards further applications and the awarding of contracts, however, adjustments will need to be made.
Necessary prerequisites for public contracting authorities
The OP-OD method breaches some of the elements of the legal requirements for the awarding of public contracts. Difficulties with the application of OP-OD to usual competitive tendering procedures arise, amongst other things, from: a violation of confidentiality requirements; possible conflicts of interest concerning persons involved in the award; the requirement for impartiality within such procedures; the principle of anonymity; and also, for example in the Federal Republic of Germany, the mandatory application of the directive for planning competitions [Richtlinie für Planungswettbewerbe – RPW 2013] or the independence of judges. Changes to (European) public procurement law to the effect that all components of OP-OD would be compliant with public procurement law are not a realistic option at the moment. Initiatives would need to be taken in other places with regard to necessary changes in support of collective and participatory procedures, or even completely different planning methods. However, there is currently no sign of this. It would be worth checking, however, to what extent modifications or additions to, for example, the RPW 2013 might allow significantly more collaborative and participatory elements. A method such as OP-OD, including its options for finding solutions, could thus be available to public contracting authorities as a fully-fledged planning tool, albeit in a slightly modified form.
All persons potentially entrusted with a project or affected by a project may be considered for participation in a planning process using the OP-OD method. On the professional side, these will be representatives of all planning disciplines such as architecture, landscape/open space, load-bearing structures, residential building technology, structural physics, energy performance, fire protection, electrical engineering, accessibility, façades, life cycle, specific project-relevant techniques such as clay or wood construction, and sociology. On the expert side, they will include building owners, politicians or representatives of project-specific groups, and investors. Finally, the user side, depending on the type of building and use, will bring together residents, working people, tenants, and customers, as well as teachers and students and, on a case-by-case basis, possibly also representatives of neighbours.
Concrete examples and fictional cases can be found under the heading Real Fictions. These make the conceivable compositions of the OP-OD collective (depending on the planning task) more tangible.
The core of a method such as OP-OD is not suitable for demagogues, agitators or actors who always ‘want to lay the blame at someone else’s door’, or for those who only can, or even only want to work together under the threat of legal action. It requires a foundation of compromise and agreement in preamble to respectful collaboration. Hence the OP-OD method is not a naïve one. It makes it possible to deal with conflicts objectively on an equal footing and in a goal-oriented way, and to achieve solutions — even if (and especially so) not everyone shares the same opinion at the outset. However, since this is a description of the ambitions and desired benefits of OP-OD, it is by no means certain that these can be achieved in every use case. Hence the remaining weaknesses of the method and the difficulties it still faces are receiving the highest priority in the course of the underlying research; they can be found under ZukunftBau (Nah am Nutzen 1) and are also clearly evident in the external appraisals (Nah am Nutzen 2).
DThe OP-OD method is particularly suitable for medium-sized planning tasks in structural engineering, urban planning, and open space planning. The development of the method is based on the experiences made by a cooperative, the Genossenschaft Kooperative Großstadt eG (LINK), with a number of projects in the field of cooperative, experimental housing construction. Cooperative construction is an obvious field of application for the method owing to the immediate availability of the concrete user perspective well before the planning starts and to actual experiences with participation processes. The method’s transferability to players in another field, rental housing, is just as obvious. A concrete but fictitious example can be found under Real Fictions. The application of the OP-OD method to a construction project by a municipal housing association is demonstrated by way of example.
In principle, the use of the method beyond housing construction is conceivable and desirable. First of all, public construction tasks in the education, leisure, and cultural sectors might be mentioned. Likewise, OP-OD is suitable for special construction tasks at the interface between urban or district-specific questions and concrete structural engineering tasks. Thereby, the multitude of actors and often conflicting interests in this area can be brought together within a concrete planning process, and a directly implementable solution can be developed. For example, meeting places and buildings in the wake of new transport schemes would be conceivable here.
In addition, it is hoped that a method such as OP-OD might be particularly suitable for construction measures within the existing stock and might be relevant even from a very minimal depth of structural intervention. This could already begin with the repurposing of buildings or rooms, or the negotiation of new or newly shared uses and the structural measures flowing from these. We assume that the specific dynamics of the OP-OD method and the opportunities it offers for parallel readjustment of a task will be beneficial precisely for this purpose — especially compared to classic competition procedures. In addition, an OP-OD process requires significantly fewer precommitments than a competition procedure, where the competition entry is, at the same time, a binding tender for a later planning commission. In a process using the OP-OD method, on the other hand, all participants can shape the updating of the task descriptions through their contributions and ideas. In addition, all technical and specialist perspectives are already represented during this process. This can lead to higher efficiency, as well as to a more precise and, thus, more sustainable planning concept for the existing building stock.
In addition, all technical and factual perspectives are already represented in this process. This can lead to greater efficiency, but also to a more customised and therefore more sustainable planning concept for the existing building stock. This assertion needs to be evaluated in further steps of method adaptation.
