Adaptation of the design structure matrix to the Turkish real estate development market

The real estate development sector is one of the leading producers of Turkish economy, as well as a sector that directly affects human life. In fact, they are all part of real estate development, from the house that provides the simplest housing needs to the very large mixed use projects. For this reason real estate development should be carried out very carefully. Today, unfortunately, unconscious investments are made with the passion of making profit. The Turkish industry is still struggling with problems such as the lack of academic & professional research, lack of proper & professional management, lack of standardization & regulation. In recognition of this problem, the Design Structure Matrix model was adapted to the Turkish real estate development industry. Within the scope of the study, the concept of real estate development was discussed, and the actors, duties and relations between them were examined during the process. Later, it was observed that the real estate development was no different from a production project and the concept of process management that could be used to make the production process most efficiently was examined. With this awareness, five real estate development process management models produced throughout history were examined chronologically. These are Grasskamp's Fundamentals of Real Estate model, Wheaton's Four Quadrant model, Miles's Eight-Phase Real Estate Development model, Kohlhepp's 56-cell Real Estate Development Matrix, and Bulloch and Sullivan's Design Structure Matrix. When this study was conducted, it was seen that each model was created by recognizing and overcoming deficiencies of a previous model, and in fact, they were all connected to each other. In the later chapters, the real estate sector in Turkey was examined and the reasons why the projects in the sector could not be produced in the most efficient way were investigated. Problems in the Turkish real estate sector have been listed under three main headings after discussions with professors and academics from sector. These are academic and professional shortages, lack of standardization and regulation, and shortcomings in professional project management. Design Structure Matrix, which is one of the most up-to-date and accepted development models applied today to solve these problems, has been adapted to Turkish market. Design Structure Matrix analyzes the development process under four main headings. These are: actors, tasks, associations between actors & tasks, and workflow. Design Structure Matrix helps the project developer to see the project as a whole from the very beginning, identify problems and take precautions beforehand. In the process of adapting the Design Structure Matrix to the Turkish real estate development sector, those steps were followed. First of all, all actors and duties are fixed and the categories they are in are revised. Later, when the sequence of work was different from Turkey, the work flow was changed, and finally, the relationship between each task was worked on. Throughout the process, steps were confirmed with the professors and academicians from the sector. At the end of this section, it is discussed how Design Structure Matrix can improve the problems identified in the previous sections. With the proper use of the Design Structure Matrix, real estate development projects are believed to be more efficient in terms of quality, time and capital. In the conclusion section, the importance of an updated process model in the Turkish real estate sector was once again emphasized, and future improvements and further research opportunities were assessed according to the evaluations made in the previous section. It should not be forgotten that as real estate development sector changes, expectations from real estate development process management models will also change. For this reason real estate development models are always evolving and should be changed according to the needs of the market.