PDRI for General Building Projects (Best Practice)

PDRI–Buildings is limited to developing scope for building projects, excluding residential houses, performed in both the private and the public sector and has limited applicability to the infrastructure sector. Therefore, the findings from this research are most applicable to the multi-story or single-story commercial, institutional, or light industrial facilities. (RS155-1, p. 1)

This research identified 64 critical elements for the building projects scope definition package and grouped them into the following 11 categories: (RS155-1, p. 3) 

• Business Strategy – 8 elements
• Owner Philosophies – 4 elements
• Project Requirements – 6 elements
• Site Information – 8 elements
• Building Programming – 13 elements
• Building/Project Design Parameters – 8 elements
• Equipment – 3 elements
• Procurement Strategy – 2 elements
• Deliverables – 2 elements
• Project Control – 5 elements
• Project Execution Plan – 5 elements

Proper scope definition during pre-project planning will improve both the cost and cycle time needed to design and construct capital facilities. (RS155-1, p. 19)

PDRI is best used as a tool to help project managers, project coordinators, and project planners organize and monitor progress of the pre-project planning effort (RS155-1, p. 9). Lessons learned include:

• Scoring should ideally be done several times during pre-project planning. A minimum of two times is recommended.
• Using the tool is an excellent way to align a project team
• PDRI–Buildings is effective even when used very early in the planning process. Individual planners can use the tool at this point to identify potential problems and to organize their work effort.
• The PDRI is of little value unless the user takes action based on the analysis and uses the score in managing their projects.

This PDRI tool can be customized to fit the needs of almost any organization. Elements that are not applicable can be zeroed out, thus eliminating them from the final scoring evaluation. (RS155-1, p. 17)

IR155-2, PDRI: Project Definition Rating Index for Building Projects

This tool is to be used to measure completeness of scope definition and to manage the pre-project planning process by evaluating whether the project is ready for design.

The PDRI can benefit owners, developers, designers, and contractors. Owners can use it as an assessment tool for establishing a “comfort” level at which they are willing to move forward with projects. Designers and constructors can use it as a method of identifying poorly-defined scope elements. The PDRI provides a means for all project participants to communicate and reconcile differences using an objective tool as a common basis for project scope evaluation.