The Communication In Design Process Between The Employers And Consultants

Construction industry in Vietnam has grown up quickly since 5 years ago. The Vietnam government is striving to attract foreign investment by altering the Foreign Investment Law and developing the tax system in the country. This has caused the development of the global construction since 2006.

Professional construction management is a major force for change in conventional practice, predominantly to manage the design process in a better way. By Pareto approach, if we can find out and solve the design changes and design errors, every rework in construction can be solved.



Design is a complex process that combines with varieties of special knowledge, such as aesthetic, technology, economic, management. Within the modern period, architecture design has borders with as many as twenty – one different disciplines and fields. The knowledge is diversified and fractured into many sub-disciplines.

From its own characteristics and disciplines, it has many problems by itself. How to solve and avoid these problems? The answers come from the nature of design process which comprises of stages such as interpretation, generation, comparison and choice.

At any point, for moving to another step, it is necessary to interact and evaluate it to understand the original problem, and so the process is continually cycling between and within the parts of the thinking process. For the thinking process move smoothly and the problems are solved thoroughly, the designer needs to have a good strategy of communication with perfect communication tools. As the practice of management and nature of design characteristics had proved, communication is a priority issues to solve all problems of design.

Ms. Tran Thi Nguyen Cat made a study which focused on the communication between Employers and Consultants in design process. The objective of her study is to investigate the communication during design process which involved the following:

1. Develop the framework to investigate the communication practice between owners and consultants during design process.

2. Investigate the communication problems with regards to:
- The expectation between the employer and the consultant
- The project organization in terms of the communication roles and responsibilities on the managerial levels and the effects of project team leader backgrounds on communication.
- The stages of design process.

3. Prepare the recommendations for input of communication in design process.

Conclusion

The Design and Construction in Vietnam is in state of globalization. The relationships in the project organization are more and more complicated, so the role of communication in design process is considered. In this study, it focused on the communication interface between the employer and the consultant design team, and among the consultants in term of function, timescale, finance and aesthetics. In there, the communication problems that can exist between expectation and realization in design process are considered, such as:

 Problems between employer’s expectation and foreign consultant’s expectation.
 Problems between employer’s expectation and local consultant’s service delivery.
 Problems between foreign consultant’s expectation and local consultant’s service delivery.
 Problems between interior design consultant’s service delivery and local consultant’s service delivery.
 Problems between the design progress and construction progress.

These problems happen because of the main reasons such as:

 Lack of understanding of client requirement by design team
 Insufficient input brief by design team
 Inappropriate composition of client briefing team
 Lack of expertise by client team leader and briefing team
 Form of brief inappropriate for communication of requirements
 Inappropriate design team experience as a whole

By using the frameworks, the components to investigate the communication problems in the relationship between the employer and consultant during the design process are as follows:

a) The communication problems in project organization regarding to
 The communication roles and responsibilities of the levels of managers
 The effects of project team leader backgrounds on communication

b) The communication problems at each stage of design process.

Throughout the frameworks of research and defining the communication problems, the recommendations have developed to achieve the success:

 Find out the barriers of communication. These barriers should be taken out and innovated to improve the communication skill.

 The communication roles and responsibilities have to set levels according to the levels of organization. These roles and responsibilities have to be clear and obvious. The intra- and inter-communication frequently need confirmation and delegation in appropriation, to avoid the lack of information.

 The backgrounds of project team leaders at each stage of design process have to be appropriated to the scope of work.

 The most important agenda of communication at each stage needs to be discussed in sequence carefully and formally. It cannot move to the next stage until the previous stage is thoroughly understood and approved.

The table below is the list of the key communication problems, recommendation to solve it and also show the person who create most problems.

The list of key communication problems and their solutions



For achieving the design success, the communication management takes an important role. Based on the investigation, the communication problems and the recommendations of communication management have been proposed. In this study, the tools of communications are not concentrated. However, for improving the communication skill, both employer and consultant need to develop a complete procedure of communication.

A further study should be:
 Tools of communications in design process.
 Procedure of communications in design process including the design checklist establishment in Vietnamese case.

Her thesis abstract is copied and posted.

Abstract

Design is the activity of turning a ‘need’ into a solution, a ‘concept’ into a reality throughout the process of human interaction, consequently, the result contains the interpretations, perceptions and suggestions of the people involved. During the design process, communication acts will occur in many channels, but in there, the main channel deciding the success of project is the communication between employer and consultants.

By reviewing the issues and knowledge regarding to communication between employer and consultant in design process, the frameworks to investigate the communication problems are establish. The literature is reviewed in two fields, one are about the communication problems and the source of communication failure, one are about the design process including the organization, leadership, tactic for developing a project culture.

Throughout a case study of the office building project in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam, the communication problems that exist in the interface between employer and consultants during design process will be investigate and analyze based on the frameworks. The frameworks of investigation are related to the expectation between employer and consultants; the communication roles and responsibilities of the levels of managers; the affects of project team leader backgrounds on communication; the communication at each stage of design process. In according to the common problems would happen in practice, some proposed recommendations will be discussed to improve the communication management in design process.