A methodology to study the complexity of buildability in construction projects: Phenomenological research perspective.

Abstract

The construction industry is crucial to the economic development of any nation. However, the achievement of the project objectives has become challenging in the construction industry. Thus, research on improving the construction project performance is often appealed. One of the reasons for poor performance in the construction industry has been identified as lack of buildability. Buildability is expected to give a boost to construction project performance throughout the entire project life cycle. Even though the existing knowledge domain suggests various buildability guidelines, appraisal systems, and concepts targeting different phases or different elements of construction, there is no established set of practices or directives that can be incorporated into a construction project throughout its various stages to improve construction project performance. This is mainly due to the absence of clear identification of the deep meaning of the key drivers of the buildability concept. Therefore, it is important to obtain a clear picture of the key drivers of this concept. This challenge may be handled by obtaining perception from the industry experts with regard to their lived experience concerning buildability. This paper utilises works of literature related to research methodology to design a suitable research framework for this study. The research onion model was adopted for the framework development and phenomenological philosophy was proposed with Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The paper highlights the importance of adherence to micro-interactions and a systematic approach to research work throughout the research process to maintain the quality of the study.