The CHECKIT Story

The original CHECKIT! system was developed in 1987-95 for the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA) National Practice Division.

Prior to publishing the first of the series, working with the RAIA Practice Division and a select team of seasoned practitioners, we did some research that established that a major reason why architects did not use checklists was that they were too long and took too much time.

At that time, the only checklists that RAIA members had were the British RIBA checklists, which were very comprehensive. Too comprehensive, in fact, for Australian users!

So we worked on the 85% theory – that it was better to have an easy-to-use system that got 85% of things right most of the time than to have a system that would get 100% of things right, but be too lengthy to use.

We didn’t know it at the time, but what we were doing was applying Juran’s Pareto Principle of the ‘vital few’.

Download the The Original Checklists for FREE!

CHECKIT Description

You can learn more about CHECKIT and checklist theory
in Charles Nelson’s book Managing Quality in Architecture (Routledge, 2006)
and at designnode.net

The Checklist Paradox

The single most important fact about checklists is an inherent paradox in our perspective on them: We all really believe in using them, but we staunchly resist doing it.

You can’t build a successful system of quality checklists in your practice without resolving this paradox.

If this paradox interests you, get and read David Maister’s superb book Strategy and the Fat Smoker. It explores, and brilliantly explains why it is so hard to do the things we know we need to do.