Abstract for: Estimating the impact factor of undiscovered design errors on construction quality

Construction projects are complex as they include many activities which influence and interact with each other at different stages. The impact of design phase undiscovered rework on construction phase quality has been hypothesized as influential in project dynamics by many. However few empirical studies have measured this impact. In this paper we develop a simple system dynamics model, estimate it using data from 18 construction projects, and validate the model on a validation set of 15 projects. The model provides good fit for the calibration set and strong predictive power on the validation set. It also allows us to estimate the impact of undiscovered design changes on construction phase quality, which appears to be notable.