The ‘voice of the client’ within a Concurrent Engineering design context

Clients are crucial to the construction process, since they initiate and pay for projects. Although they were traditionally not considered to be part of the construction industry (Fellows et al., 1983; Marks et al., 1985), their active involvement is crucial for project success, and is also considered to be a key strategy for accelerating change in the industry (Kometa et al., 1995; SFC, 2002; CCC, 2004). The Clients’ Charter of the Confederation of Construction Clients (CCC) in the UK makes it clear that clients should provide effective leadership of the construction process ‘through making their main project requirements fully transparent and creating the right environment for the supply-side to meet those requirements in the most effective way’ (SFC, 2002).