A distributed process management environment for collaborative building design

The building design industry comprised of a number of design experts who through sharing their ideas, knowledge, and experience, achieve an effective design practice. Design teams aim to work in environments that support collaborative building design. A number of studies and theories have contributed to the development of effective collaborative building design environments. Thus, the majority of the existing environments allow design teams to communicate, have a shared understanding of the team's vision and insights, and experience the shared creation of products. However, none of them supports the self-sustainability of effective team performance by allowing the monitoring and controlling of the design processes.; The basic premise of this study states that a distributed process management environment (DPME) can facilitate effective collaborative building design by facilitating (a) the communication of team members, (b) the shared understanding of the team's vision and insights, (c) the shared creation of design solutions and the discovery of the team's vision, and (d) the self-sustainability of effective team performance. This study investigated the effectiveness of such an environment in meeting the conditions required for collaborative building design. A conceptual model of the DPME was designed and later implemented by a network-based system called Design Process Management System (DPMS). The effectiveness of the DPME was evaluated by a group of experts (N = 13) who were considered to be experienced in and knowledgeable regarding the current needs and expectations of design teams. In the DPME evaluation, the experts were asked first to discuss the current needs and expectations of design teams from an effective collaborative building design environment by identifying the capabilities and limitations of currently employed collaboration methods and tools. They were then asked to evaluate the effectiveness of the DPME in meeting the conditions required for collaborative building design. The findings of the DPME evaluation showed that the effectiveness of collaborative building design environments is not only dependent upon the exchange of information about the products being designed, but also upon the self-sustainability of an effective team performance. Although the findings of the DPME evaluation showed that the DPME effectively supports the self-sustainability of effective team performance, they also showed that the DPME can be further enhanced by improvements in (a) the shared space model, (b) the feedback and process communication and representation methods, (c) the control of design and process decision making, (d) the standardization of design communication and representation methods, and (e) the collective learning procedures of design teams.