Value of Concurrent Engineering for A/E/C Industry

Abstract

Producing constructed facilities of the highest quality in a cost‐effective environment will benefit not only owners and end users, but also all participants engaged in the conception, design, construction, operation, maintenance, rehabilitation, or decommission phase of its life cycle. Cost‐effective and top‐quality facilities can be conceived, designed, built, and operated if these activities are not performed in a vacuum, but rather, performed in a life‐cycle context. Concurrent engineering is a philosophy, which is conducive to true life‐cycle analysis. It brings together, from project inception, multiple individuals to address all angles of a project and enables the accumulation of knowledge and information so as to reduce downstream risks and anticipate constructability, operability, and maintainability expectations. Aspects of concurrent engineering are already practiced in the architecture/engineering‐construction (A/E/C) industry in the form of Total Quality Management (TQM), constructability reviews, and partnering. Other aspects like multifunctional team formation, macrolevel reorganization, and computer‐based cooperative and distributed design still have not been adopted. This paper suggests that the A/E/C industry should continue adopting more facets of the concurrent engineering paradigm. Concurrent engineering can turn the industry's high degree of fragmentation and specialization into a strength, as opposed to a current debility.