Written by Andrea Barnard Tuesday, 13 April 2010 14:10
DELIVERY of construction projects in WA requires major re-evaluation before matching up with international standards, according to Professor Peter Love of Curtin University.
Prof Love, a construction management specialist from Curtin’s School of Built Environment, has extensively researched and identified a number of key solutions to problems faced by the industry that could potentially save it millions of dollars in time and labour.
Using a combination of industry experience and operation management expertise to assist in analysing the errors encountered in construction projects, Prof Love says a mixture of communication, psychology and human error account for most of the problems which can be rectified by better management and planning.
“A Government report in 1991 stated that if we could just improve the performance of the construction industry, just by 10 percent, we could add an extra 2.5 percent to GDP which could have significant impact upon employment figures.
“There are just so many problems with the industry. It’s fragmented and there’s a great deal of uncertainty about the next job for many contractors. A major problem is the separation of design and construction processes. So our work has been looking at how to integrate these processes as well as ways of building trust within the industry.”
As part of his research, Prof Love engaged in exploring modeling techniques as a way to simulate the impact that pathogenic conditions have on projects throughout their life cycle
“We use operations research techniques, such as System Dynamics to model the impact of changes and errors. We use this technique to examine how one variable impacts another.
“We found that design errors manifest within the project system and don’t get identified until downstream on site.
“In one project we’re looking at the propensity of designers to commit cognitive failures. We are working with psychologists and have relied upon research undertaken in medicine. On average an architect might work 50 plus hours and when combined with fatigue, there are bound to be mistakes.”
Prof Love says it’s a shame to see so many easily identifiable issues causing problems within the industry.
“Design firms say they have quality assurance systems in place and their undertaking design audits, checks, verifications and reviews but they’re not.
“They may miss out procedural steps when under pressure. Failure to undertake design checks, for example, may become a cultural norm. This is referred to as an omission error. We’ve found that firms are under so much pressure that they’re not doing reviews.
“Design errors contained in contract documents are a real issue that people don’t want to talk about. You speak to contractors and subcontractors on site and they will tell you, it’s a major problem.
“We need to go back to fundamentals to understand what’s going wrong in the procurement process of projects and develop solutions that address the problems the industry is facing more effectively. At the moment, many of the solutions that have been proposed simply act as band-aids.”
Further Information: Professor Peter Love Telephone: 08 9266 4723. Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
