Multi-disciplinary Discourse on Design-related Issues in Construction Site Meetings

Modern, complex construction projects require multi-disciplinary competence to ensure the quality of design. Site meetings are typically the arena in which designers, engineers and managers co-create and develop new design solutions, give feedback to each other and jointly discuss design-related issues. In these meetings, project partners transcend their traditional, distributed job descriptions in order to share their knowledge to create better design details. This study explores what design-related issues are addressed in the site meetings, who participates in the discussions and creates new design solutions, and with whose expertise the decisions on the new design solutions are finally made. The unit of analysis is a discussion episode, which encompasses actions from identifying a design-related topic to answering a question, solving a problem or making a decision on the topic. The research data were collected by observing actual site meetings in two renovation projects. The findings reveal that the site managers were the most active party addressing design-related issues in the meeting discussions. Their main reason for initiating a discussion in the meeting was the need to modify or specify an existing design detail. As design work is iterative by nature, the same design topics were discussed repeatedly in several meetings. Each party's – the project manager's, the designers’, site managers’ and others’ – contribution was crucial in design-related issues, problem solving and the creation of new design solutions. However, the question remains whether this multi-disciplinary collaboration could be organized differently in order to avoid disturbances, delays, and extra work and costs from later design changes in construction projects.