Development and testing of an innovative architectural programming simulation as a precursor to target value design

Abstract

More than half of international construction projects are underperforming. Poorly defined scope of work has been ranked as the one of the highest reasons for poor performance over which owners and construction stakeholders have control. An owner's requirements and expectations are specified during the programming phase of a project and these define a design's scope of work. One focus of Target Value Design (TVD) is making owner's value a primary driver of design by improving project definition during programming-thus optimizing the design phase. While the number of published research articles praising TVD has been increasing, there is a dearth of information regarding the application of architectural programming (AP) to Target Value Design exercises, which engage stakeholders in a design decision making process called Choosing by Advantages (CBA). CBA first requires identification of attributes that are of value to an owner. The purpose of this research was to explore the importance of architectural programming in helping to identify key attributes of value to an owner, and to report on a lean game designed and preliminarily validated by the authors to investigate the accuracy and perception of attribute identification through AP as represented by the game.