Spatial Cognition: A Sign of Successful Communication Representation between Professionals on the AEC's Design Process

The increase in the complexity of the AEC projects has made the design process more complicated due to the earlier need to embrace different professional requirements. Collaborative work is recommended where multiple individuals come together to resolve complex design problems. Hence, seamless communication between different disciplines, teams, and sub-teams during the collaboration ensures the eventual delivery of the projects. This study is the first part of a more comprehensive empirical effort to explain the effectiveness of communication on collaboration between design professionals during the design process. The study conducted a selected literature review to understand and document the best approaches in enhancing the communication, which would allow adequate spatial cognition, thus facilitating the participatory collaboration between multiple disciplines during the design stage. The results revealed that spatial cognition is a critical aspect of design collaboration in the AEC projects to improve professional-to-professional communications. The results are expected to contribute to determining a precise design process flow which could prevent potential conflicts and reworks during the later construction phase. In turn, integrated project delivery of complex IBS projects could be made easier, which thus would reduce material and financial wastages for the project owners.