Representing causal mechanism of defective designs: a system approach considering human errors

Takayuki Minato

Construction Management and Economics, 2003, vol. 21, issue 3, 297-305

Abstract: Reducing design defects by proactive actions requires comprehensive understanding of how and why they happen. To achieve this, it is necessary to know the causal relationships of inherent factors, by which design defects arise. This paper represents a causal mechanism of defective design occurrence by considering interactions of underlying factors in designing process. The mechanism draws on the system approach to human errors to describe defects in design caused by designers' active failuresand failures of design reviews as defences to catch defects. It portrays the causal process of the failures with workplace factors and organizational factors as influencing factors. Workplace factors arise from designers' working conditions and include internal and external factors to the actors. Organizational factors comprise elements due to client and designer company's conditions. Then, two failure pathways are discussed to show how the factors lead to design defects. Two case studies are presented in this paper to clarify and explain the mechanism.

Keywords: Active Failures; Defective Design; Defences Failures; Human Error; Latent Factors; Mechanism; System Approach (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0144619032000056135 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:conmgt:v:21:y:2003:i:3:p:297-305

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RCME20

DOI: 10.1080/0144619032000056135

Access Statistics for this article

Construction Management and Economics is currently edited by Will Hughes

More articles in Construction Management and Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().