A three-stage framework for introducing a 4D tool in large consulting firms

The increase in the use of 4D management tools in recent years within the construction industry has been phenomenal, partly due to the increasing support available in commercial software packages, and partly in response to a greater demand for efficient construction management. However, successfully implementing a 4D management tool in an engineering firm for use in actual projects remains a challenging task. This paper presents the authors’ experiences of implementing an in-house 4D management tool at a large engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firm with a long history of design–build projects. A three-stage consulting framework of system evaluation, usability study, and management plan (SUM) was proposed and implemented for a firm of this size, which included three parts: (1) System evaluation: requirement analysis and performance evaluation of both hardware and software components of the 4D tool; (2) Usability study: usability tests and improvement of the 4D tool; and (3) Management plan: workflow re-engineering for the firm to be able to successfully implement and apply the 4D management tool to actual projects. We found that the SUM framework was able to effectively identify major problems when introducing a 4D tool to a large design–build project and helped to minimize its own impact on the firm’s business processes.