Collaborative Planning and Scheduling of Interrelated Design Changes

During the detailed design stage of a building project, a vast amount of mostly interrelated design information is generated and communicated among specialists from several disciplines. Changes in some design information are inevitable due to the iterative nature of the design process. In many cases, when the design of a building component is modified by one discipline, this change affects the design of many related building components that are the responsibility of several other design disciplines. Commitment and resources are needed to accommodate such design changes to maintain compatibility among all the design information. Otherwise, incompatibility errors become embedded in the design information leading to numerous problems during the construction of the project. This paper presents a computerassisted methodology that helps design managers in planning and scheduling changes with interrelated effects on the design information.