Multidisciplinary Design Optimization to assist the Methodology of Target Value Design in Building Projects

Abstract

In the Architecture-Engineering-Construction (AEC) industry, the traditional design process initially focuses on establishing the customer’s qualitative requirements to generate a design and costs it later. The problem with this approach is that there’s no guarantee the customer is willing to pay the project’s cost and, generally, the project´s cost exceeds that amount. On the other hand, the number of design options is limited and does not necessarily satisfy the buyer’s needs with the traditional process. Unlike the traditional design process, Target Value Design (TVD) is a methodology that initially establishes the value (cost, time, quality, constructability and so on) as the driver of design. Later, a multidisciplinary team design the project iteratively in order to achieve that value. In this way, TVD helps to reduce waste associated with the design process time and to achieve the project’s value (Ballard, 2006). However, TVD needs a lot of effort of team members, it´s an iterative and time-consuming process and, the number of design alternatives is limited. In order to assist TVD, we proposed to use Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) through Process Integration and Design Optimization (PIDO) and Building Information Modeling (BIM) to simulate the TVD process. This paper proposes a methodology consisting of three parts: integration of BIM and PIDO for the optimization, formalization of TVD criteria and preparation of a study case to apply and validate the model. We expect three general findings: a successful integration of IT, Optimization of TVD with MDO and more design options in less time