Constructability and safety performance based design: a design and assessment tool for the building process

The theme of this contribution fits astride two strands of Construction Management Studies: “health and safety risk management” on construction site and “constructability” design approach. Specifically we faces two problems usually considered separately: the lack of specificity, synergy, effectiveness between safety planning and construction process and the lack of concurrence between design and construction process. The proposed approach assigns to design the key role of optimizing both constructability and safety planning in a unique and simultaneous procedure. The purpose is to improve “working plan” design level by specific construction simulation and the related safety assessment in the perspective of the better constructability performance and final building results. The proposed method is a Construction Management Approach supported by design tool based on working directly on design drawings. Starting from the representation of construction details, their construction can be simulated. This is obtained analyzing construction details by means of progressive drawings that express and simulate the breakdown of construction phases, chronologically processed and logically related. In these specific drawings all the elements of the construction site are graphically placed. The procedure allows both to perform the specific and detailed safety assessment for the realization of construction detail components, and to verify the constructability of them. The safety and constructability analysis is so performed in a graphical way during the design process not waiting the construction phase. So we are still able to intervene, if necessary, with amendments under the designer control.