What Happens During a DfS Review Meeting?
A DfS review meeting brings the Developer, Designers and Contractor together to identify foreseeable design risks at a specific project stage, decide how to eliminate or reduce them, and record the outcome as a Design Risk Record.
Direct answer
The meeting works through the current design with the people who created it, asking a structured question: who could foreseeably be harmed by this design, at what point in the building's life, and can that risk be removed or reduced through a design change?
Typical flow
Briefing
DfSP briefs attendees on the stage's DfS objectives and prior open items.
Walk-through
Design reviewed element by element for foreseeable risk to construction, use, maintenance or demolition.
Discussion
Team discusses elimination first, then reduction at source, then collective before individual controls.
Recording
Hazards transferred to Design Risk Records; decisions and residual risks captured in minutes.
Follow-up
DfSP sets or confirms actions and, where needed, schedules a follow-up review.
Who is considered
Reviews are meant to consider people who carry out or are affected by construction work, people for whom the finished structure is a workplace — including those who later clean or maintain it — and people affected by its eventual demolition. This is broader than the construction phase alone.
See who should attend a DfS review meeting → and the full DfS process across project stages →.
Official references
- GuidanceWSH Council, Workplace Safety and Health Guidelines — Design for Safety — official source →