CONSTRUCTABILITY IMPLEMENTATION MODEL USING DEPENDENCY STRUCTURE MATRIX

Utilizing construction knowledge and experiences in design phase can reduce change orders and improve productivity in construction phase. To do so, information must be made available to the design team in time. Current approaches for effective utilization of constructability knowledge, however, only focus on the formalization of constructability knowledge such as a checklist, which lacks the consideration of the appropriate use at the proper point in time. The inadequate use of constructability knowledge can result in unnecessary reworks. To deal with this problem, the design team needs to know what constructability knowledge is required for specific design activities in the design process. This paper presents a constructability implementation model using the dependency structure matrix (DSM) that focuses on information flows between design activities and constructability knowledge. For this objective, design activities in the design process are modeled in a matrix form based on their dependency. Then, constructability knowledge, which needs to be considered in the design stage, is mapped into activities and incorporated into the matrix, creating Constructability-DSM (C-DSM). Next, the partitioning algorithm is applied to C-DSM for optimal information flow. The Partitioned C-DSM is then analyzed based on the relationship between activities. Finally, the optimal utilization of construction knowledge in the design process is determined by identifying what constructability knowledge is required for each design activity, and how and when it is reflected to design for constructability. Thus, this research can help provide robust control actions to reduce unnecessary iterative cycles in design process for efficient constructability implementation.