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Introduction Man has been building from the earliest times. Man still marvels at the accomplishments of constructions from earlier civilizations: the pyramids in Egypt, the Roman aqueducts and coliseums, the Great Wall of China, and others. In comparison to these civilizations, America is a newborn country. This brings many architects and engineers to attention, because they now have an untouched, unmanned land to sketch their imaginations, innovations and create whole new drawings in a new canvas called America. The construction industry is one of the driving industries in the world economy. In the United States, construction accounts for approximately 8% of the Gross National Product (GNP). Total construction volume in 1998 was in excess of $500 billion, with more than one million firms operating in the construction sector (ENR 1998). However, in contrast to other manufacturing industries that fabricate a large number of units such as automobiles or personal computers, the construction industry is generally focused on the production of a single and unique end product. Additional characteristics that contribute to the industry¡¯s uniqueness from other industry sectors include the following: 1. Projects can have exceptionally long life spans, lasting from a few months to several years 2. Projects are typically related with high costs and high cost risks 3. Projects can require a great number of small and large enterprises with varying collaborations 4. Projects carry significant information handling needs Figure 0. Effects of Low Productivity in Construction Industry. Because of the unique characteristics of construction project, construction industry has very ineffective operations and management of project systems (see figure 0 above). While constructability does not necessarily add to or improve the function or operating reliability of a project, the introduction of construction knowledge and experience into the project can result in reduced installed cost. This reports will examine how we can evaluate the problem of construction business and implement constructability to existing phases of construction. Constructability The concept of constructability was introduced in 1986; it stated ¡®¡®Constructability is the optimum use of construction knowledge and experience in planning, design, procurement, and field operations to achieve overall project objectives¡¯¡¯. Many different definitions have emerged since this original definition of constructability, based on the individual project needs and requirements. All definitions focus on the issue that the benefits of constructability can solely be achieved by the integration of the construction knowledge and experience into each phase of the project delivery process. Constructability should be an important objective in all phases of the construction project, and designers play an important role in achieving better constructability (Fischer, 1997). Most projects however, do not receive constructability input although previous research has demonstrated numerous benefits of such an input. One reason for this lack of constructability input is the lack of formal, specific constructability knowledge bases that can link constructability issues to design decisions and that can be made available on-line to interested parties in the form of some kind of database.
Approximate Word count = 1831
Approximate Pages = 7.3
(250 words per page double spaced)
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