Browsing by Subject "Engineering design quality"

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Engineering design quality defects : causal factors, interactions between causal factors, and mitigation strategies
(2024-02-05) Woo, Jeyoung; O'Connor, James Thomas; Bagchi, Uttarayan; Caldas, Carlos H; Leite, Fernanda L
Engineering design quality defects in engineering design deliverables have negative impacts on overall project performance. The author’s previous study identified the 11 most problematic engineering design deliverables, 73 significant engineering design defects with their 351 causal factors, and 266 completeness inclusion items for the 11 problematic engineering design deliverables. However, in-depth analysis of the causal factors for the engineering design defects could significantly enhance overall project performance and reduce design changes or construction phase rework. While previous studies have identified the causal factors and assessed the negative impacts of engineering design defects in terms of cost growth, engineering design defects have remained an unsolved problem. As an in-depth extension of a previous study, this dissertation compiles three journal article manuscripts that address major issues regarding engineering design quality management. These articles stand as the three chapters of the dissertation. The objective of Chapter 2 is to explore the causality of engineering design quality defects by identifying associations between causal factors and their impacts in terms of relative frequency, relative impact severity, and defect impact types. It also explains how these metrics form the basis for calculating priority scores for the causal factors. This study shows that human resource-related factors are associated with higher priority scores. The objective of Chapter 3 is to identify all two-causal-factor pairings for the 11 most problematic engineering design deliverables, to characterize the interactions between these causal factors and to assess associated impacts. The objective of Chapter 4 is to identify mitigation strategies that can be implemented easily and effectively to mitigate engineering design defects. The chapter presents 40 mitigation strategies and assesses survey respondents' opinions on the expected ease of implementation and on expected mitigation effectiveness. From the analysis, the author identified both deliverables and defects for which mitigation strategies are the easiest to implement and the most effective. This study contributes to both the body of knowledge and to practice in engineering design quality management. This contribution allows project practitioners to better understand the causality of engineering design defects, and to prioritize causal factors based on the causal factor pairings. Moreover, the research identified a set of deliverable defects that can be mitigated. The information and mitigation strategies developed through this research will help construction project stakeholders eliminate or reduce engineering design defects.