Group Decision-Making and a Design Communication Model Using Quality Function Deployment

Abstract

Effective and efficient communication skills are crucial for successful projects in the construction industry. When project stakeholders' decision-making defines all requirements without exception and reaches an agreement for approval, possible waste and potential risk factors may be reduced. Design decisionmaking is a group rather than an individual task; thus, the final design is drawn by sharing and exchanging information with which each individual project stakeholder is interactively involved. Group decision-making enables the use of professional advice; takes advantage of greater knowledge, facts, and alternatives; and derives design plans with a high level of execution and satisfaction through sufficient opinion exchange among the stakeholders. Thus, this study proposes a novel group decision-making method based on quality function deployment (QFD) together with a communication model to define users' various requirements in a cooperative manner among stakeholders to secure reliability, understandability, and rationality in the final design plan. To verify this study, a series of communication processes related to the definition of user requested functions, modification of required functions and design feedback were presented by selecting actual cases of design development.

Lean product development and agile project management in the construction industry

“…Design is a complex stage accomplished by several agents, who are often in more than one organization or department (Tjell & Bosch-Sijtsema, 2015). It is at this stage that several actors (multifunctional teams composed of architects and engineers from different areas) are pushed to discuss and propose technical solutions for design and to describe the future enterprise to be defined (Chun & Cho, 2018). Due to this initial purpose, which defines the scope of future and more expensive stages (construction and operation), the design phase becomes one of the most important and impacting steps for the development of a construction project (Arditi & Gunaydin, 1997).…”

“…However, even with all the relevance, it is common to find problems and waste during the design stage. One of the greatest difficulties is that all this range of multidisciplinary professionals involved in the process as a whole has a limited capacity for rational decision making (Chun & Cho, 2018). This occurs for several reasons, from traditional conflicts between executors and designers (based on negative and strong stereotypes) (Loosemore & Tan, 2000) to several hidden agendas and power games involving many agents (Lohne, Svalestuen, Knotten, Drevland & Laedre, 2017).…”

“…Reifi, Emmitt & Ruikar, 2014). Not only costumers but also the designers have difficulty in designing, communicating and agreeing to the desired and needed specifications within a new venture (Chun & Cho, 2018). It is quite common for the client to have many hopes and expectations in the beginning of the construction project.…”

Determining retrofit technologies for building energy performance

“…Therefore, the owner and tenant should have the essential knowledge about sustainable retrofit and technical methods to lead an excellent performance improving decision-making from the retrofits (Anagnostopoulos, Arcipowska, and Mariottini 2015). However, many studies show that owners and tenants have a lack of knowledge about how, when, and why a building should be sustainably retrofitted (Bernstein et al n.d.;Lapinski, Horman, and Riley 2006;Menassa and Baer 2014), Same studies also imply that it is difficult to align stakeholders' demands and financial sharing properly (Chun and Cho 2018).…”