Alcantara Jr., P T (1996) Development of a computer-understandable representation of design rationale to support value engineering. PhD thesis, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA.
Abstract
The life span of facilities produced by the Architecture-Engineering-Construction industry is typically 25 years or more. Several distinct phases characterize the life span of a facility. Each of these phases involve numerous participants from different professional disciplines. These participants generate and use a lot of information about the facility. Current methods used by the industry to convey this information are drawings and specifications. However, these drawings and specifications reflect only a summary of the information generated and used by the project participants. This summarized information only describes the product. Information about the process of generating these information becomes implicit in the drawings and specifications. Rationale is the collective term for this set of implicit process information. The main issue addressed by this dissertation is the need to communicate design rationale information. Design rationale is a subset of the entire rationale generated for a facility. Design rationale refers to information about the design process. Explicitly stating design rationale information reduces the chance of misinterpreting design drawings and specifications. The primary objective of this dissertation is to define a data structure capable of representing design rationale information. This data structure also allows a computer system to perform analytical tasks on the design rationale data. Examples of analytical tasks a computer system can perform on design rationale data include: generating a parameter dependency network and resolving data conflicts. This dissertation defines this data structure as two separate but complementary modules. The Knowledge Representation Module assists in gathering project-specific product information. The Rationale Storage Module assists in capturing project-specific process information. This dissertation discusses each of these two modules in detail. The secondary objectives of this dissertation include: (1) defining a computer program architecture, (2) creating a computer program interface, and (3) verifying the appropriateness of the data structure in representing design rationale. A proof-of-concept computer program, DRIVE, applied to an actual value engineering study project accomplishes these objectives.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Garza, J M d l |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | conflicts; professional; value engineering |
| Index terms: | construction industry, dissertation, module, computer program, design drawing, product information, data structure, drawing, value engineering, design process, specification, computer system |
| Subjects: | technical documentation, data science, computing systems, design methods, value management, industry analysis, software systems, contractual condition, research dissemination and communication, innovation studies, architectural elements |
| Topics: | Research Practice, Business Strategy, Cost Management, Design Practice, Digital Applications, Contract Administration |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCT |
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