Tracking decision making for construction design and installation

[EnergyProfessional]

I'm looking for a good way to track over the course of a project what decisions were made and why. for example: someone decided a year ago a pipe should be increased for future capacity. Next year this will be installed and in the field someone wonders if the pipe could be made smaller... then it would be good to know that and what the reason was to begin with. or to track that a specific item was required by a specific person.

Most my projects are just designed by myself (and a structural engineer, I'm MEP) and a smaller circle of stake holders. but I also wonder about solutions for larger projects. Some of my colleagues manage projects designed by outside consultants.

My McGyver way would be to start with a spreadsheet and write that down per CSI-division or so. that obviously would have its limitations. I asked some project managers, but didn't find a good solution.

What do you guys use or recommend?

 

[miningman]

Formal change orders are very effective within contract administration. It should be quite easy to modify these to achieve your desired result. That or detailed minutes of project meetings.

 

[EnergyProfessional]

COs are during construction for larger changes. I was looking for something also in design and to track all small decisions.

 

[IRstuff]

We have what are called Design Decision Records (DDRs), which are single-page descriptions of decision decisions, such as you describe. All relevant disciplines sign off on them. Nevertheless, they're basically less formal COs.

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