A model for analysis of emergent needs during front end design decision making

Construction projects such particularly those with social perspective are increasingly a focus of debate because of the increasing need for value delivery that has become intertwined with the changing needs of society. The delivery of such projects, however, is often complicated by the many of stakeholders involved resulting in design challenges on account of conflicting needs. This paper presents a theoretical conceptual model 'The Design Decision Support Model' based on utility theory; for front end design in the face of emergent needs from multiple-use scenarios defined by the multiple stakeholders. The proposed model demonstrates the use of probability theory in accounting for requirements changes thus allowing for forecasting using probabilistic hidden Markov modelling. This paper's novel contribution is to demonstrate the theoretical basis for quantitative modelling of changing user requirements during front-end design decision making. The paper also contributes to knowledge of requirements forecasting in during design in the face of emergent needs in project contexts.