Front-End Design and Value Generation: A Housing Project Analysis

There is an increasing interest in the role of Front-end Design (FED) as one of the vital stages of design processes. It is the stage in which project purposes and goals are defined, requirements captured, refined, and managed and trade-offs are made considering each consequence. It is also the stage where project requirements are transformed into design requirements for implementation by professional teams. FED sets the earliest opportunities for project collaboration to facilitate value generation and delivery. Decision making in this stage often affects most of the later processes in a project. Yet, little evidence and literature exist to support FED design process. This paper examines the role of FED in housing projects, and more specifically investigating one contemporary housing development case study in Porto Alegre-Brazil, exploring how FED facilitated value generation. The research found some evidence of value management in FED processes in the case study. It is also found that more research into user requirements capture and how these facilitate value generation is still required. This paper adds to the growing body of literature in this vital area stage of the design process.