A study on ‘design thinking’ for constructability

Abstract

It is a well-known fact that the design phase is fragmented from the construction phase predominantly due to the differing perceptions of the two phases. In any construction project, the decisions in design take place without foreseeing the constructability issues thereby resulting in changes, errors, omissions, repetition, redesign or rework. The ideal solution to overcome this is to integrate these two phases which is complicated to achieve. Thus, the objective of the present study is to investigate an integration mechanism for construction projects. Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) is the recent buzz word in construction firms that has the potential features to integrate teams, processes, information, etc. Although researchers had identified BIM (Building Information Modeling) as one of the potential virtual tools for addressing the constructability issues, still it is inadequate. In this paper, two approaches-Point-based and Set-based design process were explored and compared to understand its pros and cons. Further, a generic integration framework was proposed to improve constructability during conceptual design planning of construction project.