Research on the life cycle design thinking for public construction projects

By and large, public construction projects require a host of investment and social resources, have long operation phases and a great number of users, and exert great influence on the environment, society and economy as well. Hence, in the design phase, it is necessary to pay great attention to the problems which are likely to take place in the construction and operation phases of public construction projects. Based on the review of the research on the Life Cycle Design for products in manufacturing industry, and taking the characteristics of public construction projects into consideration, this paper proposes the conception of the Life Cycle Design thinking for public construction projects, and enumerates nine strategies for the Life Cycle Design thinking, including design for reliability and safety, design for maintenance, design for human, and design for constructability, design for scale-enlarging, design for energy-efficiency, design for recycling, design for emergency and design for life cycle costs optimization. Moreover, this paper discusses the symbol of the final implementation of the Life Cycle Design thinking for public construction projects, and brings forward a process framework to carry out the Life Cycle Design thinking and fulfill the overall objective of the project. This process framework consists of the correspondence between the nine strategies above and the Objective Breakdown Structure of the construction project, the special requirements for the designers, the tendering strategies, the adoption of the constructive suggestion from constructors and even potential users, the effective and efficient communication, and the normal operation of public construction projects as well.