The Process Protocol: Process and IT modelling for the UK Construction industry.

Transcription

1 The Process Protocol: Process and IT modelling for the UK Construction industry. Michail Kagioglou 1, Ghassan Aouad 2, Rachel Cooper 1 and John Hinks 3 1 Research Centre for Design, Manufacture & Marketing, University of Salford, UK 2 Research Centre for the Built and Human Environment, University of Salford, UK 3 Department of Building Engineering and Surveying, Heriot-Watt University, UK ABSTRACT: Sir Michael Latham (1994) published a report, which identified fragmentation and confrontational relationships as the greatest barriers to improving quality and productivity in the UK construction industry. The lead bodies for change in the UK Construction Industry e.g. the Construction Research and Innovation Strategy Panel (CRISP); the Construction Productivity Network (CPN) and Construct IT; the lead implementation body for the DETR (Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions) on Construction Information Technology; and the construction task force, have been calling for roadmaps for the purposes of alignment and identifying the direction for change. Such roadmaps have been called for in terms of Process and Construction IT. It was recognised that manufacturing industry is not as plagued with such problems having introduced a number of improvement initiatives over the past twenty years. One such improvement that has been adopted is the stage gate approach to new product development (NPD). This approach enabled progressive management and monitoring of the whole project lifecycle for all activities involved in the product development. The applicability and adaptability of manufacturing principles and practises into a construction environment has been examined in the past form a production viewpoint (Koskela 1992). This approach could prove beneficial to the UK construction industry. However, the applicability of such principles from a whole project view, similar to manufacturing NPD has not been widely examined. This paper summarises the main findings of a funded project, which involved a number of industrial partners from the whole spectrum of the UK construction industry. The main aim of the project was to develop a construction process, which adopts and adapts the manufacturing NPD principles. The authors present maps for Construction IT and for a Generic Design and Construction Process Protocol (GDCPP), the latter of which has been adopted by CRISP and is currently under implementation as a complete process as well as providing a framework for benchmarking and procurement. 1 INTRODUCTION Sir Michael Latham published the Constructing the Team report (1994) in which he identified a number of significant issues that hindered the effective development of the UK construction industry in the past and he put forward suggestions for the future change of the industry. A number of those issues and suggestions relevant to the paper are presented in brief below (Latham 1994): 1. Implementation of change begins with clients and together with the government they have a leading role in promoting excellence in design 2. A productivity target of 30 per cent cost reduction by the year 2000 should be launched 3. Fragmentation and confrontational relationships are the greatest barriers for improving quality and productivity Furthermore, Sir John Egan s Rethinking Construction report (1998) identified and presented a number of significant issues related to the UK construction industry. A brief summary of those issues is presented below (Egan 1998): 1. Although the construction industry is likely to have an output equivalent to approximately 10 per cent of the GDP, the industry s in-house research and development capital has fallen by 80 per cent since There are five key drivers for change: committed leadership, customer focus, integrated

2 processes and teams, quality driven agenda and commitment to people. 3. In order to achieve 10 per cent annual reduction in construction costs and 20 per cent reduction of defects, radical changes are needed to the processes through which the project develops. These processes need to be explicit and transparent to the industry and its clients Both the Latham and Egan reports broadly suggest that improvements can be made in the construction industry. In order for such improvements to materialise there needs to be a consistent and hollistic approach to developing, managing and coordinating construction projects whilst at the same time the personnel within it i.e. clients, contractors, consultants, suppliers, etc. are operating within a consistent business and project framework. The manufacturing industry, although not without its problems, has examined and in most cases solved the current problems in construction. This however, was achieved by implementing consistent and small steps. The technology and knowledge transfer of manufacturing experiences and principles into a construction environment have been the subject of research in the UK for a number of years. Indeed this is further emphasised by the formation of the IMI (Innovative Manufacturing Initiative) and in particular the Construction as a Manufacturing Process sector, which funded the research project described in this paper. 2 MANUFACTURING VS. CONSTRUCTION There majority of manufacturing operations could prove to have a number of similarities with their construction counterparts. The manufacturing industry's continuous mission, towards effective and manageable production and materials handling techniques has been implemented form a customer perspective in its wider sense. These customers do not only include the person or body that provides the finances for undertaking the project but also the end user, internal customers to the organisation i.e. functions, departments, etc. as well as external stakeholders such as the environment, local communities, culture etc. This focus on internal and external stakeholders necessitated that any improvement made should firstly be beneficial to the customers and then as a result ensure the company s survival and continuous growth. This has necessitated the careful identification and consideration of all activities undertaken in a project either internally or externally. Those activities were then placed into a consistent framework, which not only presented these activities in a co-ordinated, logical order, but their management was explicitly presented in terms of personnel and resources utilisation. These frameworks resulted in consistent processes which are presented in two levels: strategic i.e. business case, overall company considerations, and operational i.e. operations management. New product development (NPD) processes have been developed in manufacturing so that the whole development of products from the first steps of identifying a need or capturing a clients' need to the final delivery and replacement of a product can be considered as parts of 'one' consistent process. A number of generation of such processes have been developed in the past. It is interesting to observe that the initial NPD processes developed were sequential i.e. the development of a project moves through different, almost mutually exclusive phases. This approach has been exemplified by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration s (NASA) phased program planning (PPP). Concept decisions, product design and testing are performed prior to manufacturing system design, process planning and production. The construction industry could relate with this approach in particular due to the fact that temporary organisations are formed on a project to project basis based on functional expertise areas which are not integrated. However, the days of sequential approaches to NPD have long gone for the majority of manufacturing companies. They have been replaced by processes which concentrate on front end participation of a wide spectrum of expertise which attempt to predict, inform and design out problems that might be encountered at the later stages of the process. The majority of manufacturing organisations are currently implementing stage/gate or phase review new product development methodologies, whereby early involvement of project participants is structured and the results of their activities are documented and they are used for decision making and communication purposes. NPD in its literal sense does not exist widely as a process undertaken by the construction industry but its principles could potentially be applied to the construction industry (Kagioglou et al. 1998). For the majority of projects undertaken by construction firms the NPD process is enacted once only, each time with a different combination of distribution, production and delivery techniques. That said, it could be argued that an element of commonality exists between each 'one-off' NPD process in construction. Koskela (1992) suggested that the neglect of process improvement in construction has

3 become a barrier for progress and due to deficient conceptualisation, development efforts such as industrialisation and computer integrated construction have often be misdirected. This is true to the nature of the industry, which sees IT as a driver for achieving improvements in construction projects. Although this might be the case on the operational level there is a lack of co-ordination of IT within a process framework. For example, there is little point examining the assembly capability of a building at the production stage because this activity will identify what has been designed wrongly instead of identifying these non conformities during the design stage where mistakes can be rectified at a fraction of the cost which would have been incurred if the changed were made at the production stage. Furthermore, the consideration of IT in the project environment needs to be considered very carefully because potentially those temporary multi organisations (TMOs) could operate a number of IT systems, which often can result in systems that are not compatible. This paper describes a generic design and construction protocol and an IT process map. 3 THE PROJECT The Design and Construction Process Protocol project was funded by EPSRC under the IMI 'Construction as a Manufacturing Process' sector. It's two-year duration involved the participation of a number of companies from the whole spectrum of the UK construction industry e.g. clients, contractors, subcontractors, consultants, suppliers and IT specialists. The main aims of the project were to develop a design and construction process protocol based on Manufacturing NPD and to examine how IT can facilitate such a process. In order for any process to be implemented and have an impact in the construction industry it requires the strong drive of the client body. Therefore, the process protocol was developed from a client perspective and in particular the uneducated or one off clients because they require the most help when undertaking major construction projects. In addition the process had to be generic so that it could be applied in a variety of situations and by a variety of clients. As a result the process needs to be adapted and in some cases redesigned to suit company procedures and the nature of the project. The same applies for the IT modelling which needs to prescribe generic technologies so that the selection of a particular IT system becomes secondary with the primary being its applicability in the project environment and its functional properties. 3.1 Project Methodology The methodology employed to successfully achieve the project aims and objectives had to accommodate qualitative and quantitative data, the triangulation of which could produce valid results. For this reason a number of research techniques were applied as shown below: Extensive literature reviews of construction (design and construction) and manufacturing (NPD) sectors, as well as the IT support technologies available either established or emerging Investigation into the applicability of manufacturing principles into construction and how this technology and knowledge transfer could be achieved Investigation into modelling techniques and identification of their applicability for the needs of the project Interviews, questionnaire and workshops were undertaken so that general trends can be identified and analysed by the strong participation of the industrial partners to the project Retrospective and prospective case studies within the construction and manufacturing industries so that common attributes and practises can be identified, as well as identifying areas for improvement Process and IT modelling so that any lessons learnt can be communicated in a transparent manner whilst aiding wide dissemination 3.2 Project Results The two-year project resulted in the production of the following: A generic design and construction process protocol map A generic IT map based around the process framework An academic report illustrating the investigation methods and knowledge gained as well as describing the overall results of the project and future word areas Guidelines for the process protocol

4 This paper describes the Process Protocol and IT maps. 4 THE PROCESS PROTOCOL FRAMEWORK The production of the Process Protocol framework was influenced by a number of existing frameworks in the construction and manufacturing industry. The main aim was to produce a model, which could be understood and communicated very easily whilst illustrating the principles and philosophies behind its structure. For this purpose a number of modelling techniques were considered such flowcharts, activity based, IDEF0, data flow diagrams etc. The models produced based on the aforementioned methods were presented to the industrial partners to the project but it was found that although the models described the process they did not communicate its elements effectively. This is very true in particular for high level processes where strategic rather than operational processes are modelled. The decision was made early on in the project to adopt some of the basic attributes of any process and try to apply them so that a consistent and transparent process can be produced. Rosenau (1996) notes, that process models are an effective way to show how a process works and as a definition: A process map consists of an X and a Y axis, which show process sequence (or time) and process participants, respectively. The horizontal X axis illustrates time in process and the individual process activities (and) or gates. The Y axis shows the departments or functions participating in the process... Beyond this convention, there appears to be little formality in the method used to represent a process. The research team and industrial partners of the research project have agreed to employ such a method by representing the project/process phases on the X-axis, and the project participants on the Y- axis. Furthermore, it was important that the framework produced for the process would lent itself for modelling the IT. Indeed, IT should not stand outside the process as an off-the-shelve tool but it should be integrated to the process. The task therefore was to produce the necessary elements that need to be included in the X and Y-axis of the process framework whilst making sure that all the important elements of the process protocol philosophies and principles were communicated in an effective way. Figure 1 illustrates the process protocol map. 4.1 The Process Stages According to Hughes (1991): " every project goes through similar steps in its evolution in terms of stages of work. The stages vary in their intensity or importance depending upon the project." The identification of those steps is very important as they define the genericity of the model that is created. For example, taking the process from a contractor s point of view you will end up with a process, which does not refer to the front end business issues of the client. Furthermore, if a process is formed based on the architect s point of view then you end up with a different process the RIBA plan of works had this viewpoint. To identify the generic stages within the design and construction process the industrial partners to the project were asked to fill in a qualitative questionnaire whereby their beliefs and aspirations were communicated through the identification of the generic steps of the process. Due to the fact that the steps presented were from a particular, functional viewpoint (contractor s, architect s, client s etc.) the results were triangulated and debated through a number of workshops. The final result of these investigations were the formulation of four broad stages with respective phases within them as presented below: Pre - project stage: Demonstrating the need Conception of need Outline feasibility Substantive feasibility study and outline financial authority Pre - construction stage: Outline conceptual design Full conceptual design Coordinated design, procurement and full financial authority Construction stage: Production information Construction Post completion stage: Operation and maintenance As a result they have formed the top X-axis of the Process protocol. Since the aim of this exercise was to represent the whole life of a project with a particular focus at the front end, the construction phase, although time and resources consuming, is only a small part of it. Furthermore, the consideration of construction activities is focused on operational issues rather than strategic.

5 Fig. 1 The Generic Design and Construction Process Protocol

6 4.2 The Activity Zones Traditionally, a construction project s participants are referred to by their professional or expert status. Ball (1988) demonstrates how this may be attributed to the inherent class relations associated with each of the professions and expert groups. The participants in the Process Protocol are referred to in terms of their primary responsibilities, and are represented on the Y-axis of the Process Model (figure 1). It is recognised that traditionally, project to project, organisational roles and responsibilities change, resulting in ambiguity and confusion (Luck & Newcombe, 1996). The research team of the project and the industrial participants, have recognised early on that there is a need to depart from this traditional views. The Process Protocol groups the participants in any project into Activity Zones. These zones are not functional but rather they are multifunctional and they represent structured sets of tasks and processes which guide and support work towards a common objective (for example to create an appropriate design solution). A single person or firm can carry out an activity zone in smallprojects but in large and complex projects, an activity zone may consist of a complex network of people and between relevant functions and/or organisations. Membership of the zones is determined by the specific project task and/or process implemented. The activity zones for the Process Protocol are the following: Development management Project management Resources management Design management Production management Facilities management Health and safety, statutory and legal management Process management The majority of the activity zones are selfexplanatory but for the process management. These activity zones are essentially the interface between the Development Management (predominately the client body) and the other project participants. A distinction must be made between this conventional view of a project manager and the Process Management role. Process Management, as the title suggests, is concerned with the enactment of the process, rather than the project. Acting as the Development Management s agent, it will ensure the enactment of each process phase as planned. 4.3 Decision Making and Communications Communications between the project participants is a very important aspect. Poor, late or inaccurate exchange of information often results in mistakes which when rectified at the construction phase result in excessive costs. There is a clear need for a system, which informs all project participants of changes made as well as providing the backbone for communications. Such a system will need to store and maintain the relevant data in an efficient and structured manner. The Process Protocol aims to provide this by the creation, use and maintenance of a 'Legacy Archive' (bottom X- axis). Potentially such a system will not only hold information of a current project but from past project as well. Therefore the effective interrogation of any data in the Legacy Archive will facilitate learning from past projects whilst ensuring fast and accurate communications. The content and context of any data in the legacy archive will need to relate closely with the decision-making mechanisms of the process. The process protocol utilised the stage/gate or phase review approach to decision making which was first invented and utilised in the manufacturing industry. Such systems call for the installation of virtual gates between phases in the process. To gain access through a gate the project will need to satisfy a number of criteria and assessment factors relevant for a particular phase. These factors or assessment criteria are presented as deliverables and they are shown in the process protocol for every phase. Although there are potentially thousands of deliverables in a construction project they can be grouped to form the main deliverables. Those deliverables are assessed by Development Management at the gates and they decide for the continuation or otherwise of the project. Cooper (1994) identified that the introduction of gates throughout the process, which when seen as rigid (call for the temporary overhaul of a project) could potentially increase development cycles and result in poor utilisation of resources. He has called for fuzzy gates in the process, which are semi-transparent (activities are allowed to progress rather than overhauled) and therefore offer flexibility. These gates are referred to in the process protocol as soft gates and they exist at the end of each phase in the project. Hard

7 gates are introduced where the continuation of a project would require heavy investment and when the impact of decisions made at a phase could potentially have a great impact to the project. This mechanism should install some consistency through the phase review reports for each phase of the project development. These phase review reports and other relevant documentation can be stored either on a paper driven system or ideally based on IT where the data can be interrogated and presented in different views. Taking under consideration that construction projects will typically last a considerable time the availability and easy access of project information through the phase review reports and the legacy archive system could prove very important when making future decisions. 5 IT AND THE PROCESS PROTOCOL The legacy archive presented above is only one of the tools that can be created by utilising IT. The information requirements of the Process Protocol need to be modelled. Technology can then be used to enhance integration and sharing of information. Technologies such as object oriented databases, virtual reality, expert systems, case-based reasoning, neural networks and traditional commercial packages can be used and integrated in order to illustrate these principles and to ensure that information can be shared between the various processes. This is a long term objective. This will allow the industry to realise the benefits, which can be gained from coupling visualisation systems, knowledge based systems, and traditional commercial packages in support of the reengineered processes. There are a number of IT solutions that could be applied throughout the lifecycle of a project to undertake diverse activities from modelling of a projects solution to the production of manufacturing information and operation of the finished facility in a virtual world. The aim is to provide an integrated IT system where IT can be utilised. Attention is drawn in implementing IT from a process focus rather than was the case traditionally where IT solution were and in some cases still are, developed as stand alone tools without a clear place in the design and construction process. Figure 2 illustrates how IT could be integrated in the Process protocol and enable communications between project participants, as well as speeding up the development of a project solution. Aouad et al (1998) suggests that when IT usage is similar to that shown on the IT map (figure 2) it should be possible for the client to walk through and interrogate various aspects of the designed building, such as cost and specification using VR, and also the information stored in the integrated database. It could be possible for the QS to select the most appropriate procurement path using neural networks techniques. The designer could be able to select the most suitable design using case-based reasoning techniques from information stored within the legacy archive of the integrated intelligent database. With the use of the intelligent integrated database and improved communication applications information flow between applications and project participants would be transparent and the data would remain unduplicated and uncorrupted. The IT map (fig. 2) includes some of the technologies specified by industry and academia at the initial phase (pre-project phase), where simulation, what-if? and economic appraisal tools are most appropriate. Potential project scenarios could be re-generated from an archived library of previous projects. These could include VR, 3D and other mediums. AI techniques including case-based reasoning, neural networks, fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms and KBS may be appropriate at the initial phase of design where the creativity issue of design plays a major role. CAD, VR and other tools are not able to capture the information required for this phase. The latter of these tools may prove helpful at the detailed design and construction phases. It is clearly shown on the IT map that there are many tools which can be used to support the various phases of the design and construction process. These tools are generic and can be used by any industry. It is the maturity of using an IT tool within an application context which will help the overall process through a technology push (Hinks et al. 1997). The IT map will serve as a catalyst for the process and shouldn t be looked at as the main driver although it could prove to be the main focus for some of the activities within the process. The process is driven by needs and requirements, and the technology can help in meeting these by providing the right mechanism for visualising, managing, communicating and integrating information which will result in a more consistent and improved process.

8 Fig. 2 IT and the Process Protocol

9 6 DISCUSSION The process protocol and IT map presented in the paper illustrate a potentially improved design and construction process. However, there are a number of issues that need to be considered when implementing such a process. It was also clearly identified by the industrial participants in the projects that there is an important need for changes in contractual arrangements, possible to include retention-based approaches or consultative-fee-based arrangements for pre-project consultation from a variety of professionals. This could improve the requirements capture phase for the clients, and allow them to make their early stage decisions on construction or alternative project solutions from a base of informed knowledge rather than inexperienced ignorance. Inherently the process calls for culture changes within the design and construction process. There appears to be a desire for change towards a more co-operative, less confrontational culture within the construction industry, which the industry itself was working for. This was seen as being a major potential advantage for production of a unifying process protocol potentially capable of unifying the design and construction process. A product-oriented emphasis (rather than a process-oriented emphasis) focuses on the differences between products and processes operating in other sectors. One of a kind products do tend to limit the feedback potential (Koskela, 1992) and focus reviews on product feedback and not process feedback. By focusing on the uniqueness of the product, rather than the commonality of the process for the management of their production, the construction industry continues to put its efforts into solving and resolving individual product -focused problems without creating the managerial systems which could help avoid, overcome, and/or learn from product and process solutions. To promote such a process emphasis it is essential that the parties involved in project teams are operating to a consistent process, which requires broadly similar process capabilities of the various team members. This will mean that industry-wide process improvement is required for the design and construction process to achieve repeatability and hence manageability (Hinks et al. 1997). There is also a requirement for a range of support tools that are needed by the various organisations, which will be operating the process protocol. Training is needed in order to allow the industry to establish their process capability and prioritise changes in process capability, and to allow them to identify and integrate an existing IT support change in the process. Implementing the process protocol would be a matter of business reengineering as well as process re-engineering. It will require to be operated across the depth of the industry as well as its breadth, in co-ordination with clients and those parties involved in the use and management of buildings beyond their completion. 7 FUTURE WORK Although the process protocol might be a catalyst for change, it will require to change flexibly as the industry adopts it partially. It will be essential to benchmark the processes as a whole, across the industry as well as the individual organisational processes. This may be a national bench marking initiative which can prove to be a useful mechanism for promoting the process protocol and the changes in individual organisational processes required in order to move to something more harmonised than the existing fragmented system. The concept of genericity embodied within the process protocol extends little further than the management and process principles which would be applied by process management and the phase review board in defining the phases activities associated with the various stages of the process. It is foreseeable that in specific projects, the application of process protocol would involve a lot of customisation. In this context the model should be seen as being more prototypical than generic. The effective implementation of the Process Protocol will greatly depend on its ability to effectively translate the strategic to the operational level. To this end further work is needed (and is currently under way at the University of Salford) in examining the sub-processes (Activity Zones) and produce generic maps for those sub-processes. In such a way the underlying principles and philosophies of the Process Protocol will form the framework for company/project based wide adoption and effective implementation. This is confirmed by the adoption of the Process Protocol by the CRISP Process Group with the comment that sub-level process definition needs to be defined. Furthermore, the process protocol is currently under implementation either as a complete process or as providing a framework for benchmarking and procurement.

10 8 CONCLUSIONS The principles of the process protocol can therefore be summarised as a model which is capable of representing the diverse interests of all the parties involved in the design and construction process, which is sufficiently repeatable and definable to allow the modelling of IT to support its management and information management. The process protocol is divided into a series of sub-stages defined as pre-project, preconstruction, construction and post-completion, and within each of those major stages there are sub-phases which can be operated concurrently or concatenate to make the process more efficient in smaller scale projects. It provides a mechanism by which the systematic and consistent interfacing of the existing practices, professional practice and IT practice support tools can be facilitated. The terms used within the process should be clear in terms of what is required from whom, when and with whose co-operation, for whom the requirements are to be delivered for what purposes and how they will be evaluated (during phase reviews). The consideration in detail of the activity zones in the process should eliminate any ambiguity and it should offer a consistent framework at the operational level whilst maintaining strategic focus. The wider application of the process protocol will require the consistent consideration of the overall construction culture based around current practises and procedures. Partnership and framework arrangements will play an important role in the wider application of any contemporary process. Finally, the modelling of any process (including the modelling of IT) will have to achieve its primary objective, which is to communicate principles, philosophies, procedures and organisational structures in a non-ambiguous way. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The research team wishes to thank IMI for providing the resources for the research project and the participating companies for their contributions to the project. REFERENCES Aouad, G., Cooper, R., Kagioglou, M., Hinks, J. and Sexton, M A synchronised process/it model to support the co-maturation of processes and IT in the construction sector. Proceedings of CIB Working Commission W78 - Information Technology in Construction Conference, Sweden, 3-5 June, Royal Institute of Technology-Stockholm: Ball, M Rebuilding Construction. Routledge, London, UK. Cooper, R.G Third-Generation New Product Processes. Journal of Product Innovation Management, (11): Egan, J Rethinking Construction, D.E.T.R. Hinks, J., Aouad, G., Cooper, R., Sheath, D., Kagioglou, M. and Sexton, M IT and The Design and Construction Process: A Conceptual Model of Co-Maturation. International Journal of Construction Information Technology, 5(1): Hughes, W Modelling the construction process using plans of work. Proceedings of an International Conference - Construction Project Modelling and Productivity, CIB W65, Dubrovnik Kagioglou, M., Cooper, R., Aouad, G., Sexton, M., Hinks, J. and Sheath, D Cross-industry learning: the development of a generic design and construction process based on stage/gate new product development processes found in the manufacturing industry. Proceedings of the Engineering Design Conference 98 - Design Reuse, UK, June, Brunel University- Uxbridge: Koskela, L Application of the New Production Philosophy to Construction. Technical Report 72. Technical Research Centre of Finland, Finland. Latham, M Constructing the Team. H.M.S.O. Luck, R. and Newcombe, R The case for the integration of the project participants activities within a construction project environment. The Organization and Management of Construction: Shaping theory and practice (Volume Two), Langford, D A and Retik, A (eds.), E. & F. N. Spon. Rosenau, M The PDMA handbook of new product development. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., U.S.A.