The strategic role of the functional analysis in the inclusive and participatory design of the built environment

The objectives of sustainable development and social cohesion have become in the last decade a key element for development and innovation in the construction industry. Therefore, the design process has to face essential issues of inclusion and participation to reach effectiveness and efficiency in the use of the built environment. In this regard the functional analysis can be considered as one of the strategic factors aimed at supporting the design of the built environment, in a perspective of sharing knowledge and integration of skills. In literature and standards, the issue of the functional analysis has been mainly addressed and developed in the Value Management, method of project management that aims to maximize the performance of processes with particular regard to the relationship between satisfaction of needs and use of resources, highlighting a clear relationship with inclusiveness and sustainability topics. With reference to these premises, the paper proposes a functional analysis method applied to the design and management of the built environment, developed with the aim to make it coherent with the use of physical and functional decomposition methods (breakdown structure) applied, at different scales, to the built environment. Functional analysis develops in a collaborative context between different actors involved, in various capacities, in the construction process and is a supporting tool of the design able to translate client (and other key stakeholders) needs in functions directly referable to spatial and technical elements of the building. The paper presents a proposal of application of functional analysis techniques - particularly Function Breakdown Structure - transferred from practices mainly developed in the manufacturing field and contextualized within the building process. The FBS technique is combined, in an original way, with the contextual application of two techniques of building breakdown: Space Breakdown Structure (SBS) and Product Breakdown Structure (PBS) (Paganin et al., 2012). The proposed methodology allows: on one hand to allocate functions to elements in the design phase, allowing for a better monitoring of performance; on the other, the association functions/elements can enable the building manager to plan maintenance operations of different building elements more accurately, with benefits in terms of long-term efficiency and optimization of overall cost.