Identifying Your Client

In the public area it is often difficult to know who is your boss. A client must be identified in order that professional engineers and planners can mutually search out with their clients what is to be achieved. Three constraints keep urban planning from a normative state. As planners, they cannot be certain what has caused today's problems. They do not know what will result from today's planning and even if they were confident of the causative relationships, there are not sufficient resources to plan for all elements. Professional experience must be used to assist the client in identifying his goals and priorities on them. The use of goals and objectives is presented and an initial and tentative set of the statements is offered to achieve a more efficient process. Service by professional engineers and planners has been excellent on the technical solution to the problem but on many occasions they have not attempted the most urgent problem.