A proposed construction design change management tool to aid in making informed design decisions

Current practice shows that construction design change management (CDCM) relies heavily on the experience of practitioners to assess the impact of proposed design changes. This UK government and industry (Arup) funded research is concerned with mitigating the risk associated with a practitioner making a judgment disproportionate to the true impact of a design change. Several design management and planning tools have been reviewed (including the Analytical Design Planning Technique (ADePT) and the 'last planner' methodology), suggestions have been made on how they can be adapted to apply to design change management. A CDCM model has been proposed as a possible solution, enabling practitioners to make a better informed decision regarding the true impact of a proposed design change. The CDCM model incorporates a design structure matrix (DSM) and process map generation to create a checklist of rework; it also records the reason for deviation if the true impact is different to the assessed impact. The cost, resource, deviation, and reason for deviation are stored in a database and are available when a similar change is required on a similar project, allowing compensation to be applied to the predicted impact. The analysis used in the CDCM model is demonstrated using a generic simple building case study.