Title
A three-stage framework for introducing a 4D tool in large consulting firms
Abstract
The increase in the use of 4D management tools in recent years within the construction industry has been phenomenal, partly due to the increasing support available in commercial software packages, and partly in response to a greater demand for efficient construction management. However, successfully implementing a 4D management tool in an engineering firm for use in actual projects remains a challenging task. This paper presents the authors' experiences of implementing an in-house 4D management tool at a large engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firm with a long history of design-build projects. A three-stage consulting framework of system evaluation, usability study, and management plan (SUM) was proposed and implemented for a firm of this size, which included three parts: (1) System evaluation: requirement analysis and performance evaluation of both hardware and software components of the 4D tool; (2) Usability study: usability tests and improvement of the 4D tool; and (3) Management plan: workflow re-engineering for the firm to be able to successfully implement and apply the 4D management tool to actual projects. We found that the SUM framework was able to effectively identify major problems when introducing a 4D tool to a large design-build project and helped to minimize its own impact on the firm's business processes.
Year
DOI
Venue
2010
10.1016/j.aei.2010.04.002
Advanced Engineering Informatics
Keywords
Field
DocType
workflow,usability test,large consulting firm,three-stage framework,efficient construction management,4d tool,actual project,construction industry,usability study,system evaluation,management plan,performance evaluation,management tool,engineering firm,software component,business process,construction management,requirement analysis,usability testing
Systems engineering,Heuristic evaluation,Usability engineering,Usability,Usability goals,Cognitive walkthrough,Usability inspection,Engineering,System usability scale,Construction management
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
24
4
Advanced Engineering Informatics
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
1
0.37
21
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Meng-Han Tsai1102.10
Shih-Chung Kang2428.21
Shang-Hsien Hsieh3374.22