Evaluating the impact of onsite design on project performance

The process of delivering capital projects is both information intensive and information dependent. The communication interface between design and construction is undoubtedly one of the most critical points of information exchange within a project. Improvements to the communication interface between design and construction will likely benefit all measures of project performance, including safety, quality, schedule, and cost. Performing selected design activities onsite, to some degree, is one technique employed to improve the design/construction communications interface. An important question to answer is whether the use of onsite design can be employed to favorably influence project performance for a given set of project conditions. The research addresses this issue. The research identifies which design activities can be performed on site to maximize the likelihood of improving specific project performance measures. Additionally, the research identifies the design activities negatively correlated to the same set of specific project performance measures. The research found conclusive evidence that onsite design is beneficial and contributes to project success. Previous research was referenced to generate a comprehensive list of 29 project performance measures. These project performance measures are broadly categorized as being related to safety, quality, schedule, and cost. It is important to note that projects utilizing onsite design were more constrained by cost, schedule, and technical complexity than projects not using onsite design. Even so, projects utilizing onsite design performed as well as those projects not utilizing onsite design in every performance measure category. Furthermore, the research found that effective implementation of an onsite design strategy contributed to the significant improvement of 16 of the 29 project performance measures. In addition, a computer based decision support tool was developed that permits users to identify specific design activities that should be performed onsite to maximize the likelihood that selected performance measures will be met or exceeded. The tool enables users to quickly and simply generate onsite design strategies for the various project phases and for combined, or multiple decision criteria.