A dynamic system to improve constructability of building projects

Design and construction are the most important stages in a project's life cycle and have the greatest impact on overall performance and cost. Despite the importance of coordination between design and construction, current practice exhibits severe information-transfer problems. Since corrections to designs at late stages are extremely costly, it is more efficient to spend effort on producing highly coordinated and easily constructible designs. To support this objective, this paper presents a real-time dynamic system for representing design information, including the design rationale and history of changes, to improve the constructability of building projects. The use of the system for collaboration is discussed and a case study for a real-world international project is presented to demonstrate its usefulness in improving constructability. This study is expected to help engineering and construction firms produce better-coordinated and more constructible designs with less cost and time.