The role of knowledge management in improving constructability

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Constructability issues cause dire repercussions in the industry and often pose as overwhelming threats to the successful delivery of projects. Constructability issues mainly arise from a design, which does not sufficiently embody the knowledge and expertise of the construction phase. Subsequently this creates a variety of negative secondary effects during project execution, which eventually manifest as time-, budget- and quality-risks to the project. The research thesis explores the status quo of constructability issues in South Africa, with specific reference to the relationship between construction and design. It is well known that close collaboration between consultants and contractors has the potential to lead to more effective construction processes, improved construction safety and to cost effective structural solutions. Not all contract forms allow sufficient collaboration between these parties at the time of conceptual design, nor at the detailed design stage. For this reason it is imperative that a designer has sufficient experience and knowledge of construction processes to produce suitably constructible designs. In principle, constructability issues can be regarded as the result of poor coherence, and thus poor communication, between construction and design. The problem therefore lies in the transfer of knowledge between project participants, which can be described as poor knowledge management, in particular, of constructability knowledge. This research aims to address the topic of constructability and to demonstrate how structural knowledge management between contractors and designers can lead to improved construction processes. The concept of constructability is defined, through the identification of technical traits to explicitly describe constructability, concurrently with input from industry expertise and professional experience in the field. Knowledge management principles are also studied in detail and the status quo of current knowledge management initiatives in the industry is investigated. The investigations are done through a series of questionnaire surveys, personal interviews and correspondences. The principle conclusions from the study are that designers do not always understand what constitutes a constructible design. Furthermore, although constructability knowledge is found to exist in complex tacit forms, some explicit guiding principles can indeed be formulated to aid designers. In addition, considering the unique characteristics of each project, these guiding principles should be supported by proposed knowledge management initiatives to facilitate structured forums of knowledge sharing between different parties to develop and transfer constructability knowledge. This will assist to accelerate the learning process towards becoming an accomplished designer, and empower the capacity of both designers and contractors to manage constructability problems.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University