Contractor-led design risk management in international large project: Korean contractor's perspective

In contemporary international large-scale projects (LSPs), where heavy responsibilities are placed on the contractor, the contractor needs to manage all design-related issues for production activities, unlike traditional design management. To mitigate the contractor's design-related risks from the bid stage, this study identifies the design risk management (DRM) factors and analyzes them in terms of importance weight and application preference. Through the questionnaire survey and statistical analysis using SPSS, "Integrated design management team on-site [F11]", "BIM application/ simulation [F27]", and "Design-related value engineering [F04]" are recognized as the most important factors with over the 4.00 mean value and their application preferences are ranked 6th, 4th, and 17th, respectively. And then, the factor interrelationship analysis is carried with 18 high-rank DRM factors in order to investigate the structural features of design-related project elements. Overall, high application preference factors have diverse relationships with other factors, whereas high importance weight factors show a strong and direct relationship. Factor interrelationships of the high-rank application preference factor (5.16) show more than twice of the average factor relationship (2.29). Finally, a causal loop diagram is generated using System dynamics based on factor interrelationships to verify the interrelationship structure among DRM factors. With the awareness of detailed DRM factors and their interrelationship structure, the contractor can understand how the design-related risk issues are interconnected with various production activities on site and prepare suitable management methods according to the project's situation from an early project stage.