Collaboration processes A State of the Art

Report, 2010

The key objective of InPro is to define and support a new way of working with integrated design from a life cycle perspective, capturing client requirements and collaboration between stakeholders during the early design phase of a construction project. This phase starts with the first client contact and ends with the delivery of a design proposal, with recognisable functions, visualised for easy understanding and with a cost calculation to support the clients' go/no-go decision. The aim of Work Package 2 is to develop model-based and knowledge-based working methods for the Early Design phase. This will result in a systematic integration of lifecycle design processes in new construction or renovation of buildings, taking into account the added values for society/citizens, clients/users, and the construction sector. This Work Package will also propose a framework for the collaboration process between involved parties. The aim of Task 2.2 "Collaboration Processes" is to develop this framework for collaboration in the Early Design process, where all partners share information in a common Open Information Environment delivered by WP5 and add knowledge to the project. This framework of collaboration is a concept related to the needs of shared guidelines in order to work efficiently together, generally defined in a contract. This framework will answer to the main question: How to create concurrent and iterative working processes with clear decision milestones? and includes other key questions: How to create functional working groups that represent different competencies or backgrounds, including conflict resolution concepts How to to establish trust How to balance between formal and informal communication channels How to communicate design changes in a virtual building model between concurrently working design teams, e.g. by managing, categorising and highlighting design changes How to reuse knowledge It also includes project and contractual issues management, progress monitoring, strategies for delegation of responsibility, methods for risk assessment and strategies for continuous improvements based on measured Key Performance Indicators developed in Task 1.3.