The evaluation of the building design service can improve the relationship between professionals (designers) and clients (real estate developers or construction companies). The evaluation results allow the observation of the difficulties that may have occurred during service provision, the assessment of designers performance, provide feedback for the stakeholders, planning improvement actions, and the selection of designers for future projects. The aim of this study is to propose a set of guidelines for designer selection and design service evaluation from the building developer point of view. Case studies were carried out in four real estate developing companies and two design firms from the city of São Paulo. The results show that the builders and property developers have practices for designer selection and evaluation and that the design companies have practices for evaluating the satisfaction of their clients. Both types of evaluation - designer evaluation and evaluation of the contractor client satisfaction - have similar goals: to evaluate the design service. The observation of those practices and the literature review contributed to the elaboration of guidelines for designer selection and for the evaluation of the design service.
Building design; Design service; Design firm; Real-estate development
