Management and planning of a collaborative construction planning process

Construction planning is performed in a multi-disciplinary environment in which it is crucial to explore interdependencies, manage the uncertainty of the information exchange and the understanding of the context. Current construction planning often works on a “throw over the wall” basis - plans are developed only or mainly for control purpose, and ignore the “how” aspect. Construction method planning is treated as a linear process and isolated from information and logistics management. Planners are often puzzled by information; they usually receive a large amounts of formal and informal communications with different formats, some of which are not relevant to their role. The quality of the information received is also often poor (i.e. incomplete design information). In order to deal with the uncertainty caused by insufficient information, guesses are frequently made in the planning process, which neither the initial planner, nor the downstream planner will later check. They are usually ignored and left until execution of the plan, when the problems reveal themselves. This paper argues the importance of effective management of information flow in a planning process and the need to improve the management and planning of construction planning. A collaborative planning process model using a dependency structure matrix tool to manage and optimize the construction planning process is presented.