Information Model for Managing Design Changes in a Collaborative Environment

Abstract

Coordination of design information during the detailed design stage is essential for the design team to provide quality construction technical documents that are free of incompatibility errors. An analysis concerning current design coordination practices in the building industry revealed that design changes constitute a major cause of failure. More specifically, propagation of changes among the various design disciplines is deficient due to lack of required “linking” knowledge. Such knowledge is necessary to propagate the effect of a design change by one discipline on the other disciplines involved in the design of a building. This paper presents an information model that aims to help the coordination of design information through managing design changes. The model uses a central database, which is developed not only to carry the building components data, but also to make these components active in assisting the coordination process. In addition to its ability to propagate design changes, the model is capable of tracking past changes and helping in the planning and scheduling of future ones. This paper focuses on the development of the information model and illustrates its implementation.