Project cell: Cellular organization of the building design process

The construction sector plays an important role in most economies; therefore, any waste reduction in a building's life cycle will result in a significant benefit to the economy. It is at the building design phase that most costs and wastes are defined for the entire building life cycle. Moreover, many forms of waste are also accumulated during the design phase itself. This article presents a new approach for organizing and managing the building design phase in a more effective and efficient way. This approach, called project cell, promotes concurrent engineering and lean management principles to achieve better performance during the design of a building. The project cell approach was implemented in the design process of a generic kindergarten project for the Brazilian Ministry of Education. In this case study, the implementation of project cell resulted in better productivity in the building design process as well as more effective building designs when compared with the traditional departmentalized approaches. The authors believe that introducing project cell may be valuable contribution to the Construction Engineering Management (CEM) body of knowledge.