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UBC Theses and Dissertations

Developing a specification for a computer-based decision support environment for managing change orders in construction projects Sooriyaarachchi, Dinesh Malinga

Abstract

The objective of this research is to develop a decision support environment for managing construction change orders and to visualize and interpret change order data to describe project performance as a function of change orders. The detailed conceptual development of a change management view is followed by the design of visualization techniques to represent change order data. The specified change view is expected to be implemented and integrated into the multi-view representation of a construction project. The multi-view representation of a project supports a wide range of project management functions. The change view provides a comprehensive set of properties that is sufficient to meaningfully represent the change management function of a project. Integration with other views makes it possible to link with other project data such as activity data, daily site data, records, etc. which can then use in representation of their variation against change order data. This helps project management personnel in taking their decisions. A comprehensive literature search provides insight into various industry practices and potential impacts of change orders on project performance. A review of commercially available state-of-the-art change order management systems was done to investigate solutions currently available for the industry in managing related information. Interestingly, the available solutions do not provide sufficient facilities to interpret change order data that help describe the impacts on project performance. The change management system specified in this thesis is expected to help streamline the change order process by capturing day-to-day information associated with change orders, generating reports and then interpreting the data to assist project personnel in their decision making. It also helps flag critical aspects that need emergency attention, such as congestion and trade interferences.

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