Planning for, facilitating, and evaluating design effectiveness

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2007-12

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Design Effectiveness is the degree to which the design effort helps in achieving project value objectives. Because Design Effectiveness largely exists within the context of the design phase, considerations on other project phases, such as front-end development or construction management, have been excluded from this study. Practices that promote Design Effectiveness are called Design Effectiveness Practices (DEPs), and the primary aim of this research was to develop a method for identifying suitable DEPs on a given project. The research consisted of three segments. The first segment of the research consisted of an ANOVA analysis of the CII benchmarking database to analyze the effect of Design on project performance metrics. The second (and main) segment of the research was the development and validation of a Design Effectiveness Practices Selection Tool. The MS Excel[Trademark] based tool determines the priority of application of 30 different DEPs on a project given the project's desired benefits (from 11 Project Value Objectives), design phase, and unique characteristics. All the 30 DEPs were correlated with the three input parameters using Score Matrices with the aid of expert opinion. The Score Matrices produced a score for each of the input parameters, and the three scores were combined to form a Composite Index Score for each DEP. The Selection tool was also validated in a two-step process, and met the validation thresholds set out for it. The third segment of this research involved the development of a Design Effectiveness Evaluation Tool, also based on MS Excel [Trademark]. This dissertation contributes to a growing area of research by providing comprehensive, structured compilation of DEPs and also by developing a selection method to effectively recommend the most suitable DEPs. From the perspective of the industry, the results of this research (and most notably the Selection Tool), facilitate the implementation of the DEPs and should help in maximizing the potential benefits to a particular project.

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