Design Decisions towards Minimizing Construction Waste in Building Projects—Reasons for the Information Gap: An Interpretive Structural Modelling Approach

This paper recognizes and investigates the critical reasons for information gaps in the decision-making process at the building design stage towards minimizing Construction Waste (CW) and develops an illustration based on mutual synergies between reasons using Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM). The paper further discerns the ‘driving factors’ as delineated within the study and the ‘independent factors,’ and ‘dependent factors’ using Matrice d’Impacts Croises-Multiplication Applique a un Classement (MICMAC) analysis. Through an extensive review of literature and consultation with fifteen experienced professionals in the application of CW in building projects, seven pivotal reasons contributing significantly to the existence of information gaps in the decision-making process have been considered for the study. Subsequently, ISM approach was employed to develop a comprehensive model, shedding light on the intricate relationships among these reasons. The findings of ISM suggest that there are five top-level reasons causing the information gaps. By employing MICMAC analysis, this study has successfully discerned two key driving factors, namely ‘gaps in the information itself’ and ‘time pressure.’ These factors are found to be self-driven and not significantly influenced by other variables. In contrast, the remaining five factors exhibit both high dependence on other factors and possess substantial driving powers. They effectively serve as pivotal links between dependent and independent variables within the system under consideration. This study helps the building design team members to identify major reasons behind the information gap in the decision-making process while understanding their behaviour towards an enhanced decision-making process to minimize CW mitigating the reasons or diluting them.