Strategies for overlapping dependent design activities

Overlapping activities that are traditionally performed in a sequential manner can significantly reduce project delivery times. Overlapping, however, should be approached in a systematic manner to reduce the costs and risks. Information gathered from sector-based case studies and from the manufacturing domain suggest a formalised framework for identifying overlapping opportunities and strategies can be successfully implemented for infrastructure projects. This framework considers activity characteristics, such as evolution of upstream information and sensitivity of downstream activities to changes in upstream information, to identify appropriate overlapping strategies. Overlapping strategies, such as early freezing of design criteria, overdesign, and early release of preliminary information, are selected based on activity characteristics. These strategies operate either by speeding up the evolution of upstream information or by reducing the sensitivity of downstream activities. By aligning overlapping strategies with activity characteristics, project managers can make better decisions on when and how much to overlap sequential activities to reduce overall project delivery time.