Design documents quality in the Japanese construction industry: factors influencing and impacts on construction process

Abstract Despite its technological advance, the Japanese construction industry is currently paying attention to the quality of its design documents. It acknowledges defective design as the most important risk for the success of a project. This paper aims to investigate the quality of design documents in the industry by presenting factors that may influence design documents quality, and then discussing design document related problems and their impact on the construction process. The result is based on a number of interviews and questionnaire surveys involving 105 designers and 91 construction personnel. The results show that designers and contractors have different perceptions of the quality of design documents. The study also finds that the problems of defective designs are complex and deep rooted, influenced by many factors operating at individual designer, company, construction industry and global or national levels. The paper discusses these problems and proposes possible solutions to improve the level of design documents quality.