Understanding and reduction of cross party conflicts in housing development projects from systems engineering perspective

In housing projects where many parties are involved, it is common to observe reduction of project success in the form of cost overrun and schedule overrun. In most literatures, such adverse effects are partly attributed to requirement incompleteness, misinterpretation and misunderstanding. However, there isn’t enough information on the mechanisms between requirement conflicts and adverse effects. There is also lack of specific remedies for the reduction of such conflicts. In this research project, general theories of such mechanisms were tested on the Dutch housing development sector. Furthermore, the applicability of systems engineering remedies in the reduction of requirement conflicts was checked. The research accounts for a broad theoretical review of literature materials around the topic and a single case study as a source of emperical input. Pattern matching was used for the analysis process. Th result of this research shows that the propositions that relate requirement conflicts with adverse effects partially hold. Nevertheless, they require refinement and further emperical support for better generalization. The findings also support the capability of systems engineering remedies in the reduction of requirement conflicts.