“Who of us would not be happy to lift the veil behind which the future is hidden and to focus our thoughts on the unknown future” (Shepherd & Williams, 2015). What if we already know our unknowns, would it not be a piece of cake to deliver construction projects of high quality within time and budget? In order to predict the unknown future, Fluor introduced Construction-Driven Execution philosophy. In a construction-driven project, construction managers are involved early in the process during front-end engineering and design (FEED) to provide input to office departments in order to prevent mistakes from happening in later stages of the project. By this it is aimed to ‘lift the veil’ and focus on the unknown knowns (i.e. complex issues) in an integrated effort. Construction managers typically focus on operational decisions during construction on-site and focus on tactical and strategical decision-making during FEED. This transition has a major impact on the way construction managers should approach issues in their daily functioning: they shift from a firefighting to a fire preventing approach. In this perspective, the role of construction managers in FEED is compared to that of project managers, in which the construction manager is responsible for the management of the execution portion of the project. The Project Design School assumes that some kind of design thinking is involved by project managers, in which they use a certain frame and go through certain steps when approaching complex issues. To apply this frame for educational purposes, the Project Design School has created the Project Design Cycle. This cycle consists of four elements: Awareness, Design, Performance and Reflection. The Project Design School aims to fill a literature gap in project management research, which concerns the approach project managers use when choosing and adapting project management tools and systems to be applied in specific situations. These two problem fields of Construction-Driven Execution and the Project Design School are combined into the following research objective: 1. Gather and provide empirical data to firmly establish the ubiquity of the Project Design Cycle elements, their cyclic relationship, and the degree to which managers use these elements as an explicit method, 2. Provide Fluor with advice on how to apply design thinking principles (as incorporated in the Project Design Cycle) within the construction management department in order to enhance the Construction-Driven Execution philosophy. In order to achieve this objective, the following research question is answered in this report: -> How can the Project Design Cycle enable construction managers to identify and approach complex situations in a construction-driven FEED phase? A theoretical framework and empirical research are conducted to answer this question. First, a theoretical framework is determined, which includes the influence of Construction-Driven Execution on construction management practices in FEED and the incorporation of design thinking principles in the Project Design Cycle. Subsequently, the current application of the Project Design Cycle by construction managers is researched in a qualitative case-study analysis. In total five construction managers (respondents) are selected of three oil & gas projects (case-studies). Each respondent is interviewed twice by use of semi-structured interviews. The main goal of the first interview is to get background information of the respondent and to identify complex issues they were confronted with in their current project. The complex issues are discussed in-depth in the second interview, in order to analyze the Project Design Cycle elements in the applied approach of the respondents in their daily practice. The main findings obtained in the cross-case analysis are: - The respondents often did not recognize or perceive the complexity of the issues. It is observed that the recognition of the complexity has a large influence on the way the respondents approach issues. Issue-categories that were perceived as complex concern: modularization, pre-assembly, sequencing of work and revising the plot plan. Alignment of disciplines is not recognized as complex by the respondents. From the twenty issues identified in the first interview, ten were defined as complex in the cross-case analysis. - When an issue is recognized as complex, nearly all Project Design Cycle elements were applied most of the times by the respondent. However, the sequence of the elements was often not correct. The design element was conducted separately (generate and test) sometimes. - When an issue is not recognized as complex, it is observed that practically always one or two Project Design Cycle elements were not applied by the respondents. It is found that the design element is recognized the least, followed by performance. Moreover, it is observed that the sequence is most likely not to be performed in the correct order. It can be concluded that construction managers do apply the elements of the Project Design Cycle in their daily function in FEED. However, only when the issue is recognized as complex. Thus, the approach of the construction manager strongly depends on their ability to identify and recognize complexity elements within issues. Furthermore, it is found that the design element is most likely not to be applied when the issue is not recognized as complex. This indicates that the searching and experimenting nature of design thinking is often not applied by the respondents in this situation. It is observed that the construction managers fall back in their on-site problem-solving mode when they do not recognize the complexity of the issue. In this simplified problem-solving approach, the respondents go straight from awareness of the problem to the performance of a solution. The design and reflection elements are often skipped in such approaches. It is determined that the Project Design Cycle provides a suitable framework to educate and support construction managers in approaching complex issues in FEED. However, the Project Design Cycle needs to be adjusted in order to create acceptance and support within the construction management community. Based on the empirical research, the Project Design Cycle has been transformed to the ADAPT – decision-making cycle (figure 1: ADAPT). ADAPT is an abbreviation of the elements Awareness, Development, Assessment, Performance, and Throw-back. In this research context, the essence of ADAPT is precisely that: construction managers have to adapt in order to change something (their approach) to suit different conditions (construction-driven FEED). By doing so, they “have to become familiar with a new situation”, which represents the new role and responsibilities they have to fulfill in order to solve complex issues in the early stages of the project. ADAPT incorporates the identification of complexities, development and assessment of alternatives, creation of a solution with the highest value, and a reflection upon the outcome. This framework can be used to educate and support construction managers by improving their capabilities and skills that are required to approach complex issues during FEED. ADAPT serves a double purpose in construction management practices and could be applied in the form of a cognitive processing model and in the form of a decision support system: - Cognitive processing model: remind and support construction managers not to make decision merely based on old experiences, but to take their time to properly reflect on situations and share their knowledge in order to identify, recognize and acknowledge complex situations. - Decision support system: structure constructability meetings to approach complex issues in a multi-disciplinary way and to provide construction managers the ability to get an understanding of the problem situation, in order to determine an effective course of action by drawing upon the entire repository of construction management research, knowledge and tools. It is recommended to implement ADAPT both top-down and bottom-up. Top-down support is required to estimate enough man-hours for construction managers in FEED and by selecting the right people that are able to approach complex issues. Additionally, ADAPT should be implemented bottom-up as an integrated approach in which the construction manager is pro-active and takes it upon themselves to drive, adopt, and move it forward. This can be done by making individual construction managers aware of the cycle and its added value. Moreover, the constructability program serves as a perfect platform to implement and test the application of ADAPT. In constructability, multiple disciplines work together to create integrated solutions in order to prevent ‘fires’ from happening on-site. ADAPT can be used as a structure to identify complex situations in the constructability program. These identified complex issues can then be discussed in so called ‘constructability focus’ sessions. In these sessions the focus is put on a specific component or sub-area of the design that contains high complexity, by a multidisciplinary team. As construction management lead these sessions, it is a perfect opportunity to implement the ADAPT decision-making cycle and use its elements to shape and formalize these sessions in a structured way. Additionally, by being aware of the elements, and in special ‘throw-back’, construction managers learn to share their knowledge with other colleagues, disciplines, and projects. In this way, awareness is created for future situations and enables others to identify and solve complex situations in an early stage. Further research should be performed to investigate the underlying reasons of why and when construction managers perceive issues as complex (or not), how construction managers could identify complex situations in the FEED phase, and which qualifications are required of construction managers to properly function in a construction-driven FEED phase. Also, the relation between the recognition of complexity and the occurrence of the design element need to be further examined. Finally, further research should be conducted to determine the effectiveness of the application of the Project Design Cycle (in the form of ADAPT) in construction management. ... Read more

In Sri Lanka, the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam waged a civil war between 1983 and 2009. During this period the social and economic development in the north and east of the country was disrupted. Due to this disruption a development opportunity for this region is the expansion of the fishery industry. In 2016, the Sri Lankan government proposed the Northern Province Sustainable Fisheries Development Project, in which the construction of a harbour at Point Pedro in the Jaffna District is included. This harbour should become the second largest fishery harbour in Sri Lanka.

This report covers the design study of the Point Pedro harbour project, the goal of this study is to design a safe, economically efficient and socially accepted harbour at Point Pedro. To achieve this goal, the following research question “How can safety, economic efficiency and environmental impact be combined optimally in a harbour design for Point Pedro in the Jaffna District?” is answered.

In figure XX, the final design of the harbour can be seen. This design is focused on the optimal combination between safety, economic efficiency and environmental impact. Because these criteria are conflicting, they are prioritized as follows: (1) safety, (2) economic efficiency and (3) environmental impact. Safety is provided by constructing breakwaters around the harbour, providing sheltered water conditions in the harbour basin. Also, the harbour entrance is constructed in a way that monsoon waves cannot directly intrude into the basin. Economic efficiency is accounted for by constructing the quay wall close to the central located fish processing facilities. This optimizes the supply chain, resulting in a smaller loss in the fish production (compared to the current situation). The costs are optimized by reusing all dredged material inside the breakwater or for land reclamation. Additionally, the location of the harbour entrance is minimizing the sailing routes as much as possible, without creating safety issues due to wave intrusion. Finally, the negative effects of social impact are limited by involving local fishermen and residents during the entire development process. Because these stakeholders are potential blockers of the project, it is important to include their opinions in the design. This can also be done by broadening the scope, in which touristic facilities and accommodations can be included in the project. Other negative impacts of the harbour can be either mitigated or minimized. However, because the environmental impact is determined as the least important criteria, it is not able to solve every issue.

This design is considered to be the most optimal combination for the harbour design of Point Pedro, regarding the criteria of safety, economic efficiency and environmental impact. It is recommended to EML Consultants that three characteristics of the proposed design should be implemented in their final design for Point Pedro: (1) apply building on the reef for land reclamation inside the harbour, (2) cluster the fish processing facilities near the unloading quay walls, because it optimizes the fish supply chain and reduces fish loss, and (3) construct the jetties for large boats (in the east of the harbour) as proposed, because it optimizes manoeuverability inside the harbour using minimal space. The final recommendation is to perform additional research to make a more accurate design, as the main limitation of the report is the limited amount of available data. Additional research should be done in the fields of; wave data, ground conditions over the entire harbour basin, cost estimation and sedimentation.
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