A survey of communication issues in construction design

Communication, including the integration of specialised knowledge and negotiation of differences between team members, is a vital process for collaborative design. This paper describes a questionnaire survey which was conducted to confirm the communication issues and problems, highlighted from a literature review, in current construction design. A number of organisations, all involved in construction design, were identified and questionnaires were distributed to personnel frequently involved in internal or external communication during the design process. The results of the survey confirmed the importance of communications to design outcomes and highlighted that communications between design participants suffer from a number of common problems. Further research is needed to help improve the communication processes and hence construction design itself.