Abstract:

The construction industry is mainly project-based in which design and construction transactions within projects are generally separated. Various complexities are inherent in construction projects, e.g. dealing with diverse interests of multiple stakeholders and managing resultant changes/ variations, rework and wastages. Mainly, design changes originate from some optional or compulsory grounds and in most circumstances such changes may be deemed as inevitable. On the other hand, rework is often deemed as a non-value adding activity or process that is related to redoing transactions or rectifying incorrect works. Consequently, rework could adversely affect the performance and productivity and ultimately the profit margins as well as the stakeholders satisfaction aspects. For example, some previous studies found that the costs of rework in poorly managed projects could be very high (e.g. 25% of the contract value, 10% of the total project costs). Also, some earlier studies identified that significant part of the rework in construction projects are from design related factors (e.g. 50% of errors in buildings had their origin in design stage; design induced rework could contribute to 70% of the total amount of rework in construction projects).

Effective design management in construction projects is regarding the right balanced managing of systems engineering, requirements engineering, value engineering and constructability considerations. In this seminar, an exploratory overview of some notable observations from recent Hong Kong based research on this topic is presented. The presentation includes some discussions regarding the causes and effects design changes and design related rework occurrences in design consultancy works of construction projects.

Biography:

Dr Ekambaram Palaneeswaran was a full time Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, HKU from Oct 2003 to Sep 2006. Dr Palaneeswaran received his B.E. degree in Civil Engineering from Government College of Engineering, Tirunelveli under Madurai Kamaraj University, India and his M.E. degree in Construction Technology and Management from Technical Teachers Training Institute, Chandigarh under Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology (A deemed University), India. He obtained his PhD degree in Civil Engineering (Construction Management) in 2001 from the University of Hong Kong. He has worked in the Department of Civil Engineering at HKU since 2001, and was a Post-doctoral Research Fellow from 2002 - 2003.

Dr Palaneeswaran's main research areas are construction management, project management, procurement and project delivery. The 9 years and 3 months of active research experience in HKU include several achievements such as 2 awards (i.e. from CIOB and Emerald Literati Club), 23 refereed journal papers, 37 refereed conference papers, several non-refereed publications (e.g. reports), invited presentations, and research grants & incentive awards (e.g. HK$666,000 as PI and HK$2,616,000 as section Coordinator/ Co-Investigator).