Klotz, L (2008) Process transparency for sustainable building delivery. PhD thesis, Pennsylvania State University, USA.
Abstract
The construction and operation of buildings have considerable impacts, accounting for more than one third of all material and energy flows worldwide. A greater market share of sustainable buildings, which seek to reduce the associated negative impacts, is an essential part of plans to address global problems such as energy and water shortages, and climate change. Proven strategies and technologies exist today for more sustainable buildings, yet a pressing need to improve their implementation remains. The processes for planning, designing, building and operating, or “delivering,” these sustainable buildings are often complex and unfamiliar to the stakeholders (e.g., owners, designers and constructors) whose collaboration is essential to sustainable solutions. In other industries, process transparency helps facilitate complex, unfamiliar processes by making situations; including status, goals and rules; visible to all stakeholders. This research revealed the possibility of cost savings for sustainable buildings through increased process transparency by comparing the delivery of recently completed sustainable building projects to hypothetical, “counterfactual,” delivery of the same projects with complete process transparency. Building on this finding, one strategy for enhancing process transparency was also studied. Process maps, which are visual aids for picturing work processes, were developed. Then, quizzes and surveys were used to study the influence of process mapping on transparency. Primary contributions of this research include a rigorous method for applying counterfactual analyses to project delivery, evidence that reduced costs for sustainable buildings are possible by increasing delivery process transparency, and evidence that process mapping may be considered as a method to enhance process transparency.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | market; climate change; collaboration; project delivery; sustainable building; designer; owner; stakeholders |
| Index terms: | market share, owner, designer, implementation, cost saving, project delivery, transparency, process transparency, maps, strategy, survey, water shortage, mapping, sustainable building, collaboration, evidence, accounting, climate change |
| Subjects: | market analysis, sociology, management, spatial and geospatial analysis, economics, professional development, sustainable construction, environmental resource management, contractual arrangements, project delivery, economic analysis, evaluation and assessment methods, data collection methods, profession, climate science |
| Topics: | Sustainability, Procurement, Roles and Professions, Stakeholder Management, Business Strategy, Cost Management, Information Management, Research Practice, Organizational Design |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here