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BRAINSTORMING............. [BRAINSTORMING CONCEPTS AND APPLICATIONS ..........]
Contents
Brainstorming
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This approach aims to get people unstuck by their normal ways of thinking.
Steps to conduct successful Brainstorming session:
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Every individual learns differently and communicates in different ways but there are
three distinct types of learners and
Communicators :
Audible
Visual
Kinesthetic
You need to ensure your brainstorming environment and process will tailor to all
three by providing an audible setting (this is obviously most common in a meeting
style of environment). Also visual aids can boost the creative thinking. Provide
additional tools and visual guides like white boards, flipcharts, sticky notes and even
toys or gadgets can help people be more creative. For kinesthetic participants, they
need to interact with things and have feelings during the meeting so plan to include
interactive participation and ask specifically to brainstorm about feelings things will
generate as well, as those feelings will lead to even more ideas.
Not everyone works based facing others as it’s confrontational, while others will
excel from that if competition is their nature. Some will need to see the ideas, some
just hear them, so its best to let individuals arrange themselves so they are
comfortable and ready to participate in their own way that works best for them.
Facilitator
A good brainstorming facilitator ideally is experienced with the process and needs to
easily handle and follow the rules to ensure the brainstorming session is effective. All
these rules will be explored in the next article but in summary, the facilitator is
required to engage everyone, capture notes and lead the process to ensure ideas
are flowing, explored for branching and not holding up the process. The facilitator
doesn’t need to participate in the creative brainstorm but any good facilitator will do
so, since they are likely a very creative thinker themselves if they’d been involved in
a lot of brainstorming sessions.
People Diversity
This is an important one for creative thinking. You need to have a diverse group of
people, with different styles, experience levels ,positions, backgrounds or any other
way to diversify a group for brainstorming. The last thing you want for brainstorming
is a group of like minded individuals who all think the same. You simple won’t get
enough variation or “outside the box” thinking without diversification. Sometimes
people who don’t know much or anything about the topic can have the best idea so
you want to ensure you diversify the group.
Creative Warm-up
And finally, the last step you should do in preparing for an effective brainstorming
session is to be kick start the creative thoughts in the group by having a creative
warm-up exercise. Something simple and fun works well to gets warm up for a few
minutes with an exercise anyone can participate in. One I like is to have a common
everyday simple object and have the group list all the uncommon things that could
be used for. Use a pencil, rock, plant, shoe, door, toothbrush or any other common
object people interact with and list out other uses. This gets the mind thinking on
NEW ideas and it quickly encourages weird ideas, which is important to allow for
brainstorming.
Defer Judgment
This is the one thing that will or break a brainstorming session. It’s so hard to do and
absolutely must be a rule you follow to keep ideas flowing and to allow people to
contribute in their way without a filter applied or any kind of judgment on their ideas.
You shouldn’t moderate anything in brainstorming and really anything goes.
All ideas.Weird, difficult, unrealistic, and any other ideas must be allowed. These in
fact allow people to be comfortable with the creative process and you want to
promote and encourage ideas, not instill a fear of blurting out a dumb idea. There is
no reason to have any criticism in a brainstorming session and if you see that or
moderation of ideas at any time, put an end to that and reinforce that you welcome
weird and even what seems like bad ideas.
Everyone Participates
Make sure that everyone has a chance to participate and to be heard. The facilitator
should ask each person for their ideas and to expand on things. Take note of the
group, some people will start to lead and share more which is great but you don’t
want any one person to dominate the session or you lose the value of the diversity in
the group.
If the environment and tools tailor to audible,visual and kinesthetic people (as I
outlined in the first article) then you should be able to easily have everyone
participate. You just need to make sure that is happening in the session and limit
how much you let the dominate vocal styles contribute without leaving
room for others.
High Energy
Energy is important to activate the mind and so keeping the group alert, energized
and active helps with creative thinking. You can do this with expression, motion,
positive encouragement on every idea, toys and physical objects, and of course the
facilitator should be as energetic as possible.
Speak with passion about capturing ideas and push the group to participate, keeping
everyone’s energy levels up. Provide candies, or juice or other energy foods. Some
groups might like to brainstorm in an environment that energizes them. Perhaps
music on will help, or holding a session outdoors. Add something to the session to
ensure keep a high energy level.
Faster is Better
Faster is related to high energy in that if you run the session quickly, you must do
this with high energy to encourage people to be quick. However, faster also means
that you want the initial ideas and reactions from people as soon as they come to
mind. You don’t even want individuals filtering or moderating their own ideas before
they share them (see #1). Spontaneity and speed is what makes brainstorming really
work so do everything you can to keep the group moving quickly and going fast.
Keep on Track
This one requires a delicate balance. You must allow ideas to diverge to new areas
that might seem off topic (at least a bit) in order to let the creative process thrive and
to not stifle people’s participation, yet, at the same time, you must control the group
to stay on tasks so that the focus is to solve the problem at hand. Depending on the
group and individuals, things can often lead into other problems, design work on an
idea or even to evaluating what will and will not work with any of those ideas (which
is also judging them again). Anytime things diverge too far, ask the group to come
back to a previous idea or new ideas back on the original problem and don’t allow
any further discussion on those areas off topic. It is the not the time nor place for that
and so you must keep things on track for the brainstorming itself.
Short Discussions
Inevitably, the will be some discussions going on for some of the ideas and while you
can’t eliminate these, you can ensure they are brief. Discussion generally leads to
designing solutions or confrontation between individuals, neither belong in a
brainstorming session. Use discussions with the purpose of exploring a subject
further and to lead only to new ideas and things to capture, instead of any evaluation
of an idea. Remind the group of these items when it happens and bring it back to
generating ideas.
Capture Everything
Capturing and recording the ideas is critical to a good brainstorming session as well.
The way you do this first of all is important and you must have a method that works
live in the meeting. You want everyone to see it as many will require that visual aid to
help their own creative thoughts. I recommend using a flipchart or whiteboard as well
as sticky notes for individuals to add thoughts onto that can quickly be put up in front
of everyone. When other point of capturing ideas is to capture EVERYTHING.
This again goes back to the most important rule of deferring judgment because if you
choose what to capture and not to capture from people’s ideas, you are really
filtering them out and you impact those who’s ideas that were not captured and they
will be less likely to keep contributing if you have “filtered” out their ideas.
Source : Wikipedia
Who is customer?
What Level of Quality do they need?
Are they purchasing to Some Quality Specification?
Any Safety Considerations?
Future Litigation?
WHY-WHY DIAGRAMS
A systematic representation of causes of why some occurrence happens.
Used to guide brainstorming sessions
Ethical Issues
Example and effect of WHY – WHY diagram is that we can identify the cause and
analyse the effect of the identified cause.
Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management,Vol. 12 No. 1, 2005
Achieving client satisfaction has been identified as one of the most important
challenges facing the construction industry in the 1990s , with Latham (1994)
emphasising achieving client need and Egan (1998) focusing on the customer as a
driver for enhancing performance.
Clients are likely to be satisfied when the final product matches or exceeds their
expectations The need to achieve client satisfaction coupled with the dynamic
,changing and fragmented environment of the construction industry results in the
need to investigate the factors that drive the development of the brief
The net result is a set of major challenges that the Project Owners, Consultants,
Contractors and Suppliers have to face jointly and overcome at each stage of a
project .
• Delays
• Management of risk
• Resource Constraints
• Sustainability
The Brainstorming session to frame a strategic Planning model need to address the
following issues :
1. Assessment
2. Baseline
3. Components
4. Down to specifics and
5. Evaluate.
This tool acts as a background tool to analyse the situation and strength and
weakness opportunities of the existing process.
Brainstorming session can be conducted at each and every stage ,to improve the
overall performance and quality of the deliverables
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Example :
Brainstorming Session
Example :01
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Goals : To address the sustainability issues and verify the process program
sequence of the preparation of sustainable construction Management Practices
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Process :
Substructure works
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Identify & address the practices that can reduce the resources at the
construction phase
Amount of raw material & Primary energy consumed by building over its life
with respect to project type and location.
Pre stressed structure not permitted near Heritage structures as it does not
have proper demolition method.( Sustainable methods of demolition should
also be addressed.
Process design
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Example 02 :
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Goal :
Towards reliable, green, safe & smart and human infrastructure in Europe
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Process :
Began in 2004, continued in 2005, this phase was designed to clearly identify future
user needs and expectations. It had consisted of enquiries, surveys, focus
workshops and brainstorming sessions, to build the vision. In parallel, state of the
art reports on innovations in urban, interurban and civil engineering have been
provided.
During this phase running to the end of 2006, innovations, feasibility studies,
preliminary models have been carefully assessed and the most promising have been
selected for further development
Running to the end of 2007, innovations selected in phase 2 have undergo detailed
design, laboratory tests and when possible site pilot tests, leading to specific
recommendations. Finally, in the continuity of the NR2C vision concepts, and taking
in account Europe concerns, emblematic future research projects have been
identified.
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Findings :
The nuisance mitigating road Infrastructure solutions defined as ERS, are composed
by three subsystems.
2.Barriers Subsystem (i.e, Antinoise ,Air depollutant ,Safety and green Barriers)
3.Auxillary subsystems (ie, Air cleaning unit, ventilation unit ,Ground catalyser
,Photo catalytic material and TIO2 coating
1 - firstly, to provide long term perspectives for the road infrastructure (vision 2040),
which reconciles future transport needs, expected users and social demands, and
sustainability goals; this means to develop new concepts for the road of the future
(high quality, cost-effective, low noise,environmentally friendly, safer, risk mitigating,
low maintenance, while facilitating traffic mobility and inter-modality)
The nuisance mitigating road infrastructure solutions defined as ERS, are composed
by three subsystems:
- Pavements subsystem (i.e. resilient, resonant and reservoir pavements);
- Barriers subsystem (i.e. anti noise, air depollutant, safety and green barriers);
- Auxiliary subsystem (i.e. air cleaning unit, ventilation unit, ground catalyser, photo
catalytic material and TiO2 coating).
- The euphonic and ecotechnic types of the SIRUUS pavement concepts are
variations of the resonant typology that consists of two layers of porous asphalt
(constituted by a porous wearing course 0/6mm and a porous base course 0/16mm)
connected to a concrete road base course with localised Helmholtz resonators. The
third layer can be obtained also as transition or disconnection layer carried out by
diffused resonant cavities obtained by light-weight cement mortar.
The Helmholtz resonators are designed to absorb noise over the range from 100 to
250 Hz widening the absorption range of 400 Hz – 1200 Hz carried out by the double
layer at the top.
- The Ecotechnic pavement which was originally developed for street traffic, is a
multi-layer pavement including a top layer of porous asphalt 0/5mm, a base layer of
porous asphalt 0/24mm, and a metallic panel disconnection layer.
Barriers: innovative barrier solutions have been developed - coupling the traditional
antinoise barrier types, eventually with self adaptive height and inclination with
acoustic changing characteristics by folding panels, and restrain integrated road
safety system, eventually with dirty avoidable characteristics by sprayed TiO2
(screen close to source);
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Goal :
Analysis of factors that drive brief development in construction Ayman A.E. Othman
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Purpose :
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Design/methodology/approach –
A total population of 266,434 units for the survey was identified, reduced to a random
stratified sample of 530. The response rate was 49.2 per cent and the responses
were analysed using a weighted relative importance index.
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The process :
The total population of 266,434 units was classified into seven different strata
including
Client organisations,
End-users,
Design firms,
Constructors,
Suppliers,
Funding bodies.
Stratified random sampling was adopted to ensure that the resulting sample would
be distributed in the same way as the population in terms of the stratifying criteria.
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Findings :
The findings lead to the conclusion that there is a need to set out a detailed brief
development management system that incorporates both value management
and risk management.
This system should enable the appropriate project participant to make informed
decisions at the right time for the benefit of the client. The system must facilitate
feedback to both client organisations and construction professionals to enable
lessons to be learned.
Understanding the relationship between the factors that drive brief development and
the various project team members will facilitate managing brief development in a way
that increases client satisfaction and enhances the performance of the project.
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Conclusion :
Hence Brainstorming always acts as a nerve tool to bring in new concepts and
thought process also to change the existing process or to improve the current
practices. We can incorporate this tool in our professional practice to improve the
quality of the delieverables .
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