I think you need to expound on what you are asking here. If you are talking about Project Budget then I’ve been given the task of reviewing and redesigning projects from other firms, but primarily for the purpose of making them work with a reduced project budget, or in some cases the original budget. I have come a cross more than a couple of construction documents that had been over design so that they no longer could be constructed under the clients project budget. You mentioned ethics in professional practice; well to me, this a a major fault in practice if you are putting out work that cant be constructed under the clients budget. This applies both to the largest scale public project to the family backyard design. If you are drawing a lot of spiffy looking color drawings and have no concept of how budget is reflected in them, you are committing fraud. I see a lot of this kind of stuff come through our office. But back to your question.
How do you review work of another, (other than from a budget angle)? If you are asking if it is simply a good design or well designed project, well to be objective we would have to stick with the basis for how the design responds to the criteria,. i.e. Design Guidelines. Beyond that if it accounts for site context, constructability, accessibility, sustainability, and future maintenance.
