Key Elements to an Effective Building Design Team

Abstract

The building design phase requires intense collaboration between the participants. However, achieving this can prove difficult. The project often has a short time span, at the same time as the participants have limited experience from working together. This paper reports on the experience with teambuilding and collaboration from several Norwegian building design participants. The ambition has been to find out what characterizes a highly efficient building design team. In addition to a literature review and interviews with five key participants, a survey in a large Norwegian contractor firm was carried out. The findings identify twelve key elements that influence the performance of a building design team. The three most important elements are good collaboration between all project leaders, identifying the design team members’ role and trust between the team members, respectively. Having a highly efficient team is important for the collaboration between participants in the building design phase, and knowing what elements that influence the performance can help the industry to develop design teams on their projects.