What Is Schematic Design?

SD settles the moves that are expensive to reverse: where the building sits, how tall it is, where people enter, where the stairs and elevators land, and which structural system can span the bays. Code work at this phase is a strategy, not a full analysis: occupancy, construction type, and whether the exiting concept works. Mechanical and electrical concepts are described, not routed sheet by sheet.

What SD does not do is pick every finish, size every beam, or write a project manual. Teams that draw SD to CD resolution spend the fee early and then defend details the owner has not approved. The drawings should be clear enough to estimate and to reject a bad scheme, and loose enough that a stair can still move.

A typical SD package includes a site plan, floor plans, major elevations, a couple of sections, a narrative of structural and MEP systems, a code summary, and an estimate. Some contracts add a simple model or renderings so a non-technical owner can see the massing. The owner-architect agreement lists the actual deliverables. A firm’s internal SD checklist is not the contract.

Outline specifications sometimes start here as a system list: steel frame, curtain wall, packaged rooftop units. That list is what the estimator prices. If a system is missing from the narrative, it is missing from the cost, and it will look like growth in design development.

Design development assumes the SD scheme. Consultants size equipment, the structural grid hardens, and the fee burn rate jumps. An owner who "approves SD" while still debating the program will pay for that debate in redrawn DD documents. Written approval, with the estimate attached, is what lets the architect proceed.

Comments at SD should attack the scheme: the core is too far from the lease span, the loading dock conflicts with the zoning setback, the construction type will not allow the height. Annotation comments can wait. There is not enough drawing yet to annotate.

Agencies that never say "schematic design" still have an early gate. A 30% design submission on a federal or DOT job is often that gate: criteria, general arrangement, typical sections, preliminary cost. Calling it a 30% CD confuses the builder’s reviewers, who expect construction documents.

Fast-track and design-build jobs overlap SD with procurement of long-lead items. The overlap does not delete the phase. Someone still has to approve the arrangement before steel is released, or the early package becomes the first change order.