Stakeholder’s Influence on Design-Construction Planning

Abstract

The design phase requires several interactions between the client and the architect as compared to other phases. Major decisions on the project were finalized during this design phase with the inadequate involvement of the forthcoming stakeholders—fabricators, contractors and vendors. Further, fragmentation in design and construction phase had led to redesign and rework during the construction execution. Additionally, this fragmentation had design solutions that had not involved constructability issues, which resulted in schedule and cost overruns. This issue can be over come by involving all the possible stakeholders during the design phase. As involving all stakeholders at the design phase is practically impossible, the influence relationships of the possible stakeholders for design-construction can be derived. To address this challenge, an integrated design approach has been chosen to formulate a methodology for developing the design-construction relationship whereby the stakeholder’s influence was derived. Hence, an axiomatic design (AD) framework was proposed where designer and contractor input considered in the design phase was analysed and compared. Case data of a building project was utilized in developing and testing this concept. This paper also discusses the refinements for applying to real projects.

Keywords: Design phase, axiomatic design, design-construction relationship, stakeholder’s influence