Complexity management proposals for construction projects

For the construction industry, Constructibility is a set of techniques and methods that aim, through an industrialization effort, to provide reasoned assurance as to :

• compliance with the performance levels required to satisfy end-users on the scale of the structures to be built, the "systems to be built", and ;

• the realization of the objectives of the stakeholders involved in the projects to achieve them, the "systems for doing".

On the one hand, studies show that an identified cost overrun of around 30% generates no value for end-users. On the other hand, all construction professionals have had experience of projects that have been delayed or overrun to an extent considered unacceptable, and/or projects that have degraded the initially planned performance of the built object.

At company management level, an accumulation of losses on several projects considered individually as low and/or a major loss on one project disrupted the financing of the overall strategy initially planned. Similarly, an accumulation of deviations from expected usage performance, once aggregated, mobilized resources and increased costs without creating any value, either for the company or for its subcontractors and customers.

While these situations are regrettable, they do occur on a regular basis. Against this backdrop, the consortium behind the FUI 19 RiD Project Management collaborative research project is working to meet this challenge, to enable players in the construction industry to integrate two difficult concepts - uncertainty and complexity - into their day-to-day management, and thus contribute to the creation of a common risk culture.

The project's specific proposals for integrated risk management have been developed elsewhere. This article focuses mainly on the complexity management proposals initiated by the project and, in particular, by its two research and development axes. In concrete terms, this translates into the introduction of KRI and KCI into the usual performance measures.

Given their aims, the originality of the approach is to consider, for each R&D axis, a control system capable of supporting the members of a Project Business Unit in steering performance at all project phases, and supervisors in controlling the equilibrium values of the strategy at project portfolio level.

The first chapter describes the key elements of the R&D project.

A second chapter identifies three requirements specific to the construction sector.

The third and fourth chapters describe how complexity is taken into account in integrated risk management...