The purpose of this study was to understand the effect of empathy in the project team on the outcome of the integrated design process of infrastructure projects. Despite years of experience, many infrastructure projects are still underperforming. Within the project lifecycle, the integrated design process has an important role in this. Empathy could be an important tool to improve the outcomes of the integrated design process through communication. This study represents one of the first steps towards a better understanding of this competency as an important tool for project success through the use of serious research gaming. The serious game Patchwork was designed and played for data collection. The research showed that empathy positively influences the degree to which people understand each other's information expectations and the communicative hindrance experienced due to logistical, interpersonal, or accessibility barriers. This is particularly determined by the cognitive side of empathy. In addition, this study shows that sufficient effective communication is necessary for solid project outcomes. Communication seems to serve as a prerequisite for a successful integrated design process. No demonstrable effect was found in the direct relationship of empathy and the outcome of the integrated design process. The line of empathy through communication is not reflected in the direct results. Additionally, this says that influences of empathy on the game results through other processes than communication cannot be demonstrated. However, this study cannot rule out that there was no positive effect of empathy on the outcomes of the integrated design process. Further research with larger datasets needs to conclude what the proportion is of other confounding variables being dominant in game success and how empathy relates to them. All in all, this research has taken first important steps toward recognizing the value of empathy in construction projects and it provides much reason for follow-up research into this topic.

The aim of this research was to investigate if and how the project performance of integrated construction projects can be improved by focussing on empathy during the preconstruction phase. Big infrastructural construction projects often face a poor project performance which causes the sector is aimed at searching for strategies to deal with this. Looking at what drives project success it is said the people involved and their competences are main factors of influence. These people need to integrate working processes and collaborate with each other to successfully deliver the project. Experiences from practice and a literature review resulted in a strong expectation that especially the competence empathy is important to this in construction projects. This would be important during the preconstruction phase in specific to support the alignment and integration between project team members. The research focusses hereby on the preconstruction phase of integrated construction projects and follows the Integral Project Management (IPM) structure to describe the structure of construction project teams. Empathy is defined as ‘the ability to understand and share the feelings of another’. The research adopts a difference in internal empathy ( = empathy between people within the project organization) and external empathy (= empathy with the client and/or stakeholders).

The research first investigated in interviews with experts from the industry if and where during the preconstruction phase it would be important for the involved people to be empathic. Second the empathic ability of a construction project organization has been measured to indicate how empathy is distributed across project participants. The results showed that the construction professionals on average score low on empathic competence and that in certain situations it would be important for project participants to be empathic for a good project outcome. This results in a gap in the construction sector between required empathy and actual empathic competence which demonstrates there’s room for improvement in this area.

Based on the results of the research it seems that the project performance of integrated construction projects can be improved by focussing on stimulating more empathy between client and contractor and towards stakeholders during the preconstruction phase (= external empathy). Especially in the relationship between client and contractor there’s room for improvement as there’s a gap in required empathy of the contractor. The reason that the performance of construction projects can be improved via external empathy is that when looking at what mostly causes projects to perform badly, it is said this is often related to a bad collaboration between client and contractor and/or insufficient involvement of stakeholders. The research results also showed that project performance can be improved by focussing on stimulating more empathy internally in the project organization within teams and between people from different disciplines. However, this has a lower effect on improving the performance of the project compared to stimulating external empathy. The research finally presents The Empathy Framework as a recommendation for the construction sector to be used as a strategy to improve project performance via empathy.

Many construction projects experience cost overruns (Flyvbjerg & Holm, 2002), which is the difference between the estimated cost and the final costs of a project. In Design & Build procured projects, the contractor is responsible for both designing and constructing the project (De Ridder, 2009). During the tender phase, the contractor creates a schematic design and a corresponding cost estimate (De Ridder, 2009), based on client’s functional requirements. After contract award, the contractor elaborates the schematic design into a detail design. Even though this detail design yet has to be created, the budget for the project is already fixed. It is often difficult for the contractor to keep track of the current cost position relative to the cost baseline (budget) during the design stage because of inadequate interaction between designers and actors with practical on-site expertise, often leading to exceedances of the budget, detected at a later point in the design stage (Kim & Park, 2016) The goal of this research was to improve cost estimation and cost monitoring of the contractor during the design stage in Design & Build procured projects to enable the contractor to keep track of the current cost position of the design, relative to the cost baseline (budget). This research’s literature study provided the following insight into the into the structure of both the design and cost management processes (cost management covers cost estimation and cost monitoring) of the contractor and their dependencies in Design & Build procured projects. In the tender, both the design and the cost estimation processes dynamically converge into a tender design with a corresponding price estimate. After contract award, the design is further elaborated upon through a dynamic and iterative process while the budget to build the design ‘outside’ is fixed. Potential differences between the fixed budget and the cost estimate of the developing design occur at different timepoints in the design stage. Only after the detail design is created the working budget is revised, based on a far more accurate estimate of the cost of the detail design. In this research’s case study, four main team members of three ongoing construction projects of Dura Vermeer infra landelijke projecten were interviewed, resulting in the following general findings in practice: 1) The difference between the costs of the design and the budget, is often inaccurate and incomplete as the responsible actors are not perfectly capable to make accurate estimates of the ever-changing costs for the design, neither to they make them for all design changes. 2) The responsibility for communicating the difference between the costs of the design and the budget is unclear within the project team in terms of initiative and frequency. 3) Designers lack background information of the material quantity’s that support the tender design even though monitoring material quantities is key for designers to keep their design within budget. This research delivered a framework that aims at improving alignment between the design, and cost estimation and cost monitoring processes by structuring actor responsibility and information sharing.