Towards an agile approach for the management of changes

Construction projects deal with a lot of uncertainties in the design stage and therefore, changes in the design are sometimes unavoidable. There are various factors leading to design changes, however, the most frequent factor is the client. Clients often produce vague design briefs and as a result, design changes are expected at a later stage, leading to time and cost overruns as well as lower productivity. The objective of this research is to create a framework for design teams, in order to improve the management of changes initiated by the client in the design stage of a construction project. This objective is achieved thanks to the use of Agile Project Management (APM), which offers a proactive approach. The proposed Agile framework is validated on the basis of a single case study, and the findings of the validation show that the Agile framework offers benefits in terms of managing of client’s changes (e.g. potential for minimization of changes, improved visibility of changes, reduction of abortive work). However, there are also barriers that hinder the employment of the framework in practice, such as the contractual constraints and the number of stakeholders that have to be aligned with the proposed way of working. Further research should be conducted in order to investigate the real-world application of the framework.Civil Engineering | Construction Management and Engineerin