Project Assessments in Construction and Real Estate - Analysing management of end-user needs and ensuring performance in the building life cycle. CREDIT Report 4

• In this report a generic model for the capture and assessment of end-user requirements and needs, the CREDIT carpenter model, has been developed. The main determinants of the model is the need for the project organisation (including the facilities management organisation) to ensure a thorough understanding of the end-user requirements and needs as well as an assessment through out the project process. The end-users and the project organisation are often working in two different value chains. This, among other things, means that they may not share a common understanding of the process. Apart from just assessing to what extent the requirements and needs has been achieved it is important to assess the process of accomplishing the desired result. This way it is possible to learn from what has worked well and what has not. There is some variation in what and how it is being assessed depending on what type of building it is. Assessments on housing are more inclined to focus on softer aspects, for example perception etc. In the other cases there are, generally, a more technical perspective. It may be an affect of how knowledgeable the users are. In regard to housing the users have possible less experience of construction and communicating their needs than in the case of offices etc. There is also a notable difference between approaches and interest on what to assess in the different countries. Sweden has a much more soft approach and an ambition of getting as many as possible to understand what is being assessed and for what reasons while Finland has a much more technical and measurable approach. The clients, naturally, play a large part in the construction process, also when it come to capturing and transferring the requirements and needs of the end-users. It is mainly the clients that initiate it. Maybe more surprisingly, they do perform a lot of the work themselves as well. Designers play an important role as do known end-users as well. During the project it is mainly the client that initiates the assessments, but the actors of the project process, designers and producers that perform it. Evaluating the degree of fulfilling the requirements and needs as well as assessing the process to enable learning is again mainly a client action both initiating and performing, the rest of the actors do not engage to any larger degree. The processes from begin of the brief to the end of construction have well developed routines as a part of the project management system. These routines are good enough to successfully fulfil the studied project and the control of the process in order to get internal efficiency in the short run perspective. But there is almost no case that shows any assessment tool that support feedback, the knowledge development and the innovation process which is important in the long-run perspective. The missing feedback is marked in the carpenter model. Found in the study there are two examples of tools that together may to some extent overrun this issue. Building Information Models have the potential of acting as an information carrier within a project, storing all types of information needed for assessing a number of different aspects. The main issue is to get the right information and presenting it in a way suitable for the target group. This is done in the case of Falk in Skanska (in Norway). It is a system gathering and presenting a multitude of KPIs, from a number of different systems, in an easy to understand layout.

Subject headings

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Samhällsbyggnadsteknik -- Byggproduktion (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Civil Engineering -- Construction Management (hsv//eng)

Keyword

End-user

user-benefits

shopping centres

educational and office buildings

hospital

End-user

Publication and Content Type

rap (subject category)

vet (subject category)