Teaching Choosing by Advantages: Learnings & Challenges

Abstract

Choosing by Advantages (CBA) is a promising lean tool for fostering collaboration, value generation, cost optimization and reduction of waste in the design phase of construction project. This paper describes the experience with teaching of this tool to the students of masters programme in Construction Engineering and Management in an Indian university. As part of the exercise of Choosing by Advantages, the students were asked to select design problems for a construction project. The students group comprised of engineers and architects, which facilitated the role play of real life industry stakeholders contractor, designer and client. A participant observation of the role play was conducted to understand their learning from this CBA exercise. The analysis indicated that the students learned about necessity of collaboration, design complexity and systematic decision making. Although, the concepts can be articulated in much better manner after overcoming the cognitive barriers and perceptions about prevailing construction industry environment.