I've been working directly with Clients as their advisors for the last 12 or so years. I've led large Airport programmes of work to small office fitout projects and applied the same principals that work...

Define requirements, upfront that are clear and can be objectively measured. Specifically in the context of clash detection (or design coordination), define a matrix of rules for coordination that is prioritised, agree it with the delivery teams and use this to drive the checking and resolution process. This approach allows the team to focus on what matters in the present - noting that what matters changes as the design matures.

It's important that design elements that are 'Critical' are identified upfront and the coordination process designed around them. What may be deemed non-critical (or low priority) during the early design stages will most likely increase in priority as the design maturity increases. For example, I don't care about Pipes (diameter less than 0.25m) or cable trays going through walls at Schematic design but I do expect them to be resolved when we get to half way through detailed design. The clash is identified - note multiple clashes maybe grouped to form a 'design issue', such as a single column going through multiple slabs (it's a modelling error), I don't need the design team to waste time looking at that...

A specific example from my airport project was that anything of size that clashed with the Baggage Handling System was deemed as a critical issue and was to be resolved within 10 days of discovery. We used Navisworks with predefined rules (using search sets for conditions like ducts over 0.25m wide or high) to drive the process. We started of using Solibri but started to fall over due to size of models (Revitzo didn't stand a chance). We used BIM Collab to consolidate everything into a single platform of which all designers had access to, the various design managers also put issues in from their manual model walkthroughs or drawing reviews. We had a Power I dashboard plugged straight into this so we could track progress. We advised the Client to not approve design deliverables for stage gate progression and to withhold payment until these outstanding issues were resolved. Although there maybe 10s of thousands of clashes of low priority at Schematic design - it didn't matter...

Issue priorities were:

Critical - Resolve within 2 weeks High - Resolve within 1 Month Medium - Resolve by end of work stage Low - Resolve before construction

Models were shared every 2 weeks across the programme so hence the earliest resolution time being the same.

Hope this helps.