Proactive design quality assessment tool for building projects

Building projects have become increasingly complex in recent decades for various reasons, including continuously improving technology, ongoing demand for more sophisticated design, and larger numbers of project stakeholders. Consequently, project teams find it increasingly difficult to attain design quality without errors or omissions. To provide a proactive approach to design quality management of building projects, this study focused on developing a design quality assessment tool based on the contributing causal factors and impacts of high-priority design defects. To this end, the authors first conducted interviews with 66 industry professionals to identify the contributing causal factors and impacts of quality-problematic design defects. Based on the results of these interviews, the authors generated 160 leading indicator questions to incorporate into their design quality assessment tool. The developed implementation tool enables practitioners to assess project design quality and prevent undesirable risks in a timely manner. This study deepens understanding of building design defects and supports design quality improvement through an effective design quality assessment tool.