6.3 Suspended Ceiling Design Process - Bilkent University

making that led to specific configurations often remains invisible. These
problems are probably due to the fact that building design is a very difficult
process to manage. It involves thousands of decisions with numerous
interdependencies in a highly uncertain environment. A large number of
personnel are included and each group has its own terminology and design
methods.
Process models of design aim to capture the complexities of the design
process explained above. Such models are based on the premise that
although designs may be unique in different projects, the process of
designing has an underlying structure which may not vary much across the
projects. Although they are valuable in many aspects, existing process
modeling methods in the AEC industry have considerable deficiencies.
First of all, traditionally, building design has been planned by the same
methods used to program construction. These techniques tend to view the
design process as “document production” rather than flow of
interdisciplinary information. Secondly, existing methods represent design
process at high levels and thus, they are not suitable for modeling multi-
parameter problems. Finally, most of the existing models are not capable
of representing and managing iterations which is a main characteristic of
design.
With a view to alleviate these problems, this dissertation proposes
parameter-based design structure matrix (DSM) as a system analysis and
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