Evaluation of Waste and its Causes in Structural Design Process in South African Construction Industry

Abstract

The construction design process consists of five main phases: the inception design phase, the predesign phase, the detailed design phase, the construction phase, and the close-out phase. Each of these phases is fraught with waste that affects project performance. This research investigates such waste and its causes in the structural design process (SDP), through an analysis of in-depth interviews that were conducted among 25 consulting engineers in Bloemfontein, South Africa, in 2017. The engineers have extensive experience in the SDP, and are affiliated with Consulting Engineers in South Africa. Data was collected through faceto-face interview with semi-structured questions, and analysed thematically. The findings from the study indicate that waiting time, design error, over-processing, excessive vigilance, overproduction, and correction/rework are the main forms of waste in the SDP. Based on these findings, the research concludes that waste occurs in virtually all phases in the current practice of the SDP. The study recommends that designers and contractors should work together as a team at the design stage of projects so as to identify and reduce SDP waste for effective delivery of construction projects. The research also recommends that further studies, which go beyond merely establishing correlations, and which attempt to evaluate the causal pathways of the dominant waste in the SDP, should be conducted. Further research that explores mechanisms such as lean tools for waste identification and reduction in the SDP is thus recommended.