Value creation in the House of Culture : values for clients, construction professionals and users

A municipality has an obligation to its citizens to manage and carry out political decisions. The challenge is often not only to conduct a successful project in terms of productivity and efficiency and thus not exceed a budget appropriation, but also to follow the policy and improve stakeholder values in the built environment. The purpose of this paper is to study how client's intentions have been achieved and what kind of stakeholder values have been created in a public cultural construction project. A literature review has been accomplished discussing the briefing process and how stakeholder values can be identified and analysed. Two perspectives have been discussed, economic value in terms of efficiency and effectiveness and social value in terms of building performance. From a case study of a construction project, the House of Culture, the clients' development and formulation of requirements, needs and desires in the briefing process have been analyzed. Data have been collected by interviews with stakeholders and by using secondary data (primarily the written brief). The results from the study show that the client's intention of creating a meeting place and a cultural house with different cultural activities such as a library, concert halls and an art hall for all kinds of people living in the community have been achieved based on the client's ability to develop a solution of how to combined different cultural activities; manage political rules; develop real and viable project goals and develop a written strategic brief with an overall vision and goals for the building and the building's performance. Shared goals regarding costs and time have led to a successful project and trust has been built between the client, designer and contractor in the project. End-users' values have been created when estimating building performance, such as social change, job opportunities, development of organisational and business activities, multitude of cultural activities in one building and social values related to form (easily accessible, beautiful, comfortable, safe) and place (for everybody). However, there are still questions to be answered about the client's intentions for the building. End-users' estimation of functionality and technical solutions and how these activities have been developed, the evaluation of cultural and building assets, and if the building and its performance can be valued as a symbol for the city and cultural hub for the region, are issues for further research.Godkänd; 2009; 20090629 (krilau)Samhällsnyttan av att bygga kulturhus/Value Creation in Cultural Constructio