Planning Construction Projects from a System-of-Systems Perspective

20.Jun.2025

​Decision-makers within government and industry are overtly facing problems of significant complexity. Managing complex systems, where multiple, heterogeneous, and distributed systems interacting at different levels calls for effective analysis tools that support decision makers. While the tools available for support are plentiful, they cannot be utilized effectively since people who developed such tools all speak different languages. In this context, the purposes of this paper are to introduce the class of problems, termed System-of-Systems, applied to the planning of construction projects, the traits that qualify the industry to be a SOS type, and establish a unifying lexicon to facilitate communication between professions and non-professions. It is found that tackling the construction industry from a System-of-Systems frame of reference is an urgent need since such problem type typically involves interconnections within systems, and more importantly, it accounts for the unintended consequences, in either the success or failure of systems.

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