Value and Risk Management for Dynamic Brief Development in Construction

Client satisfaction was identified as one of the most significant challenges facing today's construction industry. It was considered as a key measure for construction projects success. This perspective stemmed from the pivotal role played by clients as the core of the construction process and the driving force for improvement, hence, necessitated the importance to achieve their satisfaction and get their requirements accomplished. Clients are most likely to be satisfied when two requirements have been fulfilled. Firstly, by translating their requirements into a design that specifies technical characteristics, functional performance criteria and quality standards. Secondly, by completing the project on time, as specified and in the most cost effective manner to produce a product that matches or exceeds their expectations. Because of its vital role in eliciting and communicating client's requirements to the design and construction teams, the briefing process represents a cornerstone for achieving client satisfaction. In addition, effective client briefing is crucial to the attainment of client objectives with respect to time, cost and quality, where inadequate briefing is considered as a key source of client dissatisfaction and the reason why buildings have been wasteful of resources or defective in use. For this reason, the briefing process has to be flexible, well organised, and responsive to the client requirements. During the course of this research, formal observations, literature review, analysis of 36 case studies, documentary data and unstructured interviews with projects' architects undertaken by the author showed that very few buildings finished on time or at the right cost and clients often criticise the fact that the finished buildings were not what they expected. In addition, the construction industry was blamed of providing products that do not achieve clients' requirements and meet their expectations. Furthermore, it was articulated that clients' organisations used change orders to achieve their emerging requirements and adapt to the influence of the internal and external brief development drivers. This is attributed to the limitations of the current bri efing theories, which confine the development of the project brief to a certain stage. Permitting brief development throughout the project life cycle without establishing the procedures that control its development leaves the project brief uncontrolled and Jeopardise the achievement of clients satisfaction. This necessitated the need to develop a system that is capable to manage brief development for the benefit of the client. Since brief development either add values or risks to the project or could add both, the well-established methodologies of value management and risk management were the most appropriate tools to manage dynamic brief development, Because of the obvious benefits of their integration since better value could not be achieved unless associatedr isks have been managed,b oth methodologiesw ere integrated to formulate the Value and Risk Management Protocol (VRMP). The developed protocol is an innovative decision making too] designed to enable clients' organisations and construction professionals adopt the proper decision to develop and manage brief development. It consisted of four steps: identifying problem, structuring objectives, scrutinising alternative solutions, and adopting development decision. Due to the time consumption experienced during the application of the protocol on a real case study and the need to manage large amount of information used, it was essential to utilise the benefit of information management and information technology to overcome these limitations. The VRMP was encapsulatedin a computer-baseda pplication called the Brief Development Manager (BDManager) prototype software. The produced prototype acts as a too] to expedite the implementation of the structured steps of the VRMP in a computer based environment and facilitated collecting, verifying, organising, storing, retrieving, sharing and updating live project information database. In addition, it facilitated inquiring, viewing and printing reports of projects information. The BDManager prototype software was applied on real case studies and evaluated by its users. Evaluation results are encouraging and end users recommended the use and adoption of the produced software as an- innovative IT tool for managing dynamic brief development in construction.