Collaborative Design Management – A Case Study Production Planning and Control 627 COLLABORATIVE DESIGN MANAGEMENT – A CASE STUDY Ingvild S. Fundli 1 and Frode Drevland 2 ABSTRACT The Last Planner System (LPS) has been successfully implemented in both design and construction phases of projects, but there have been raised questions if LPS in design needs to be changed to better suit the nature of design, due to the inherent differences between design and construction. The Norwegian contractor Veidekke has developed a method based on LPS for use in design called Collaborative Design Management (CDM). This paper looks at how CDM works in practice by doing case study of two projects where the methodology has been employed. We found that the use of CDM led to better communication and cooperation within the design team and a better understating of and commitment to the project. There are also indications that the methodology should lead to a more efficient and controlled design process which in turn would benefit the following construction process. Although we have seen positive effects from the use of the methodology, we have also found it lacking in some areas. Specifically the lack of a formalized weekly work plan, approach for constraint analysis and PPC measurements. KEYWORDS Design Management, Last Planner System (LPS), Collaborative Design Management (CDM), Percent Plan Complete (PPC) INTRODUCTION The Last Planner System (LPS) is a method for improving the reliability of work flow in production and design, and has been developed by Glenn Ballard since 1992 (Ballard, 2000a). To get the full benefits of using LPS in construction projects there is evidence that it should be implemented from the design phase, both in order to coordinate and manage the design process as well as to get construction information into the design in the form of buildability and construction methods (Fuemana et al., 2013). Although there have been successful applications in both design and construction phases of projects, there have been raised questions if LPS in design needs to be changed to better suit the nature of design, due to the inherent differences between design and construction (Ballard et al., 2009). Koskela (2000, based partially on Giard and Midler 1993) describes the difference between design and production in the characterization of design, from the operations management point of view: 1 Master student, Department of Civil and Transport Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology – Trondheim, Norway, ingvildsf@gmail.com 2 Assistant Professor, Department of Civil and Transport Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology – Trondheim, Norway, frode.drevland@ntnu.no