Abstract for: Empirical Study of Design-Construction Feedbacks in Building Construction Projects

Understanding project dynamics is one of the core application areas for system dynamics. Despite a long tradition of modeling the interactions between multiple phases in a project model, the strength of these feedback mechanisms have not been rigorously estimated. In this article we take a step towards addressing this shortcoming by estimating the feedback relationships between design and construction phases of construction projects. We estimate the parameters of three hypothetical feedback relations between design and construction with data 15 construction projects. Consistent with previous qualitative evidence, the estimated factors reveal that undiscovered design rework diminishes construction quality and production rate significantly and construction completion speeds up the detection of undiscovered design rework. We also assess the predictive power of our model using another set of 15 empirical cases. The model showed excellent fit to the calibration data calibration and good prediction in validation.