A meta-analysis for design management issues in construction projects

Construction sector is one of the fastest growing and versatile sectors in Turkey. Time in construction sector has accelerated according to technological progress. In parallel to technological progress many factors like construction systems, material properties, construction techniques, management strategies and methods, etc has changed project processes and working methods. Because of the technology use in construction projects, projects started to be privatized and projects that are in bigger and had never been done have started. As a natural result of all these progress and changes, need for expertize in projects has increased. Design and construction services that require a lot of specialized expertise got started to be needed and as a result of the crowded teams working together and increase of complexity of projects, management problems have arisen. Today designers cannot handle these requirements and takes a lot of external consultations and project services. Design process is one of the places that require this type of expertise services. As people that are included in project process increased, people from different disciplines started to work together. So need for design management of these kinds of complex project design processes has arisen, design processes has gotten complex and became such that they need special management and design management subject became something talked about. Management of design process happens under supervision of design manager which manages design team and requires coordination between project partners, information flow, management organization, collaboration and integration between project processes. Decisions taken during design process has a big effect on other processes. As a result of changes on work processes, required expectations from designers has changed and on traditional jobs and definitions about design processes has changed. Now, designers, in addition to technical knowledge on design work, are also required to be talented and knowledgeable on management subjects. In addition to tasks and responsibilities of designers, employers whom start and finance construction projects started to get conscious about this matter. From the viewpoint of the employer, a design process that continues with wrong or mistaken decisions and actions, cause big problems during the construction phase and for that reason many projects cannot be completed on time, not becomes on par with required quality or exceed anticipated budget. Because of this reason for both employer and other project partners, it is quite important that design process is managed for getting expected value out of the project, improvement of efficiency and project phase to be handled actively. As result of wide reaching literature research that was realized through this thesis study, it was seen that interest and awareness about "Design Management" which was the main topic of this thesis study has started to increase both among academic studies and among applicants across the sector. Scientific publications are important instruments in order to share a knowledge and to provide a basis for new researches. In this thesis study, it was intended to analyse current situation about design management topic, new application and methods to be manifested, problems and deficients to be detected and for it to be a road map that can be used as a resource for other studies on design management topic with the help of scientific publications. The main objectives of this thesis study are to introduce the findings of the literature review about the design management issues in construction sector and classify academic studies dealing with all aspects releated with design management issues using meta classification method in the last decade. It was seen that scientific publications about design management issues in this thesis have different methods to introduce and develop the ideas. Literature review, questionnaire survey, interview and multi method etc.. Literature review studies are provided to reveal scientific productivity, tendency, research emphasis and other contributions of researches. It is important to realized that a methodology which was chosen for the research has to be effective and efficient to provide evaluation of scientific publications of releated subject. A meta classification method was chosen in this thesis study because it has a lot of advantages to categorize different type of studies releated with design management issues. An important methodological issue was constructing structural framework of meta classification system for the subject of the thesis. Therefore a meta classification system is adapted and used in order to present the state of art design management. In this thesis, 107 academic studies were used to determine the situaton of design management in construction sector. In this thesis study, 107 academic studies were selected, seperated and categorized according to several criterias such as year, author, database, journal, country, objectives of the paper, input/output of the research, source of information, level of analysis, origin of problem and contribution etc… Using a meta analysis system was helped to categorize different characteristic features logically and systematically. 107 academic studies which were used in this thesis study were elaborated on many characteristics features. It was chosen in mainstream databases which has allowed by İstanbul Technical University library network. Therefore it is decided that 7 mainstream academic databases were used for that study. In alphabetical order ,these databases are; American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Elsevier, Emerald, ICONDA, Researchgate, Springer and Taylor & Francis which have major weight in academic studies. In this thesis study, 107 academic studies were examined with many aspects releated to design management perspective. According to examined studies, some matters are distinguished from the others from the points of focus point. These outstanding focus points are; developing design management and design management process, obtainin project value with design management systems, lean design management, using collaborative and integrated design management systems, adaptation and entegration of design management issues, enhancing international project process, managing information flow, design management in sustainable project, decreasing design errors, defining design manager's roles and responsibilities, increasing communication and interaction within the design team, quality management in design offices, BIM adaptation in construction projects, increasing utilization of technology and innovation in construction projects, determining strategic decision making methods, analyzing delay factors, design team management, identifying requirements of design management, motivation/demotivation factors in design offices in design process, risk management, maturing user interface design management methods, interdisciplinary interaction etc.. It's clearly understand after focusing studies that there are noticable efforts for developing design management issues both among academic studies and among applicants across the sector. When recent researches about "Design Management" is looked through a general perspective, with studies that were conducted abroad about design management; innovative project processes that emerged were studied, studies were conducted to continue design discipline while integrated with other disciplines, new method and applications were tried. In contrast to these, in our country; studies about design management came behind other countries and it was seen there were ones in the beginning phases. But considering the importance of the subject, it can be realized that both in Turkey and in other countries, studies that were conducted about design management are still not mature enough. Design management subject is extremely important for today's conditions. Also both other countries and Turkey, it's clearly seen that this subject area needs to improve for better implementations. In this thesis study, deficiencies of construction design management issues in Turkey are shown in chapter 4 for increasing efficency in construction projects. It is clearly revealed that especially in Turkey, there are major deficiencies from the point of design management in construction sector. These major deficiencies are considered as lack of source, lack of education, lack of awareness and lack of practice. Also this thesis study will be recruiting both academicians and practitioners for their projects. It is expected for this thesis project to increase importance and awareness on design management in constructin projects, for it to shed light to design processes on large, complex and innovative projects produced currently and will be produced in the future.