With increasing competitive pressures in today‟s market, it has become critical for businesses to recognise the significance of satisfying their customers so as to ensure their economic stability. Various studies have emphasised on the need for customer focus and project satisfaction in the construction industry sector. The industry, however, has not fully embraced the practice of project satisfaction, which is grounded on meeting the needs of the customer. Though most research on project satisfaction has focussed on the client, it is essential that the satisfaction of the project delivery team and in the wider context, the stakeholders be considered. In this case, the client is the centre of gravity of the project team. In order to satisfy the project team, there are challenges in assessing their requirements. This necessitates the need to develop a unique and robust method for capturing and analysing the level of integrated project team satisfaction. In this research, the project delivery team and the stakeholders have been lumped together as an integrated project team. Therefore, integrated project team satisfaction entails recognising the client and project participants‟ requirements that guarantees project successful completion and acceptance by the team. In view of this, this research presents a framework, which has been developed to plug these needs and challenges. The framework, known as the Satisfaction Assessment Integrated Framework (SAIF) involves an integrated approach that considers the participants of a construction project as a tree structure, and each member of that tree as an intermediate or top element. Relationships and interactions of the elements, and how these affect the overall satisfaction levels of a single project, are analysed based on understanding their requirements and invoking modern satisfaction attainment theory. The framework includes a method for understanding and identifying the satisfaction attributes; multi-attribute analysis for prioritising the satisfaction attributes of the clients and project participants; fault tree analysis strategy for defining the satisfaction relationship in a particular project team; and an assessment scoring system (a combination of multi-attribute analysis, and failure mode and effects analysis methodical approach) that evaluates how much each member of the project team meets the requirements or satisfaction attributes of other participants. Hence, SAIF, a novel assessment methodology, investigates and identifies possible links and the influence of integrating the construction project team and their satisfaction attributes with the aim of improving their satisfaction levels as a team. Through the findings of this research, recommendations are made to further explore the implications of satisfying a given participant against dissatisfying the participant; and subsequently improve the satisfaction assessment process.

Mémoire en recherche par le design / Étant donné que les problèmes en développement de produits sont de plus en plus complexes et difficiles à résoudre, le rôle des designers est en changement continu. Ils sont de plus en plus impliqués dans les équipes multi-disciplinaires dès le début d’un projet. Des compagnies adoptent une approche de travail d’équipe qui réunit plusieurs bases de connaissances (disciplines, expertises) différentes dans un seul groupe. Tandis que ces groupes donnent accès à plusieurs bases de connaissances différentes, les membres de l’équipe doivent surmonter le défi de communiquer, négocier et développer une compréhension partagée des objectifs à travers leurs raisonnements différents et parfois opposés. En tant que designer junior, ces dynamiques peuvent intimider, puis faire le pont entre les points de vue différents peut paraître difficile. Afin d’améliorer l’intégration dans une équipe, une réflexion sur les dynamiques mêmes est nécessaire, mais il semble y avoir peu de moyens pour bien expliquer les interactions. Cette recherche se penche donc sur la question de comment décrire et mieux comprendre l’intégration dans une équipe en tant que designer nouvellement impliqué dans un projet et une équipe multi-disciplinaire. Afin d’y répondre, cette recherche créé d’abord un cadre théorique centré sur l’implication d’un designer dans le processus, la gestion de la complexité, le travail en équipe, puis l’intégration efficace à travers le développement d’une compréhension partagée. Une étude de cas qualitative est menée par une approche nommée Research-through-Design (recherche par le design dans le contexte d’un projet) qui permet de jouer le double rôle de chercheur et designer. La collecte de données se fait surtout par journal de bord et observations participantes afin de documenter les actions et réflexions d’un designer qui s’implique dans une équipe multi-disciplinaire menant des projets de développement de nouveaux produits. D’après les données recueillies, cette recherche tente décrire et mieux comprendre le cas en utilisant les catégorisations empiriques des facteurs qui influencent le développement d’une compréhension partagée proposées par Kleinsmann, Valkenburg et Buijs (2007). Grâce à ce cadre d’analyse, la description et réflexion sur l’intégration dans l’équipe furent un succès. Toutefois, cette recherche propose quelques précisions au cadre d’analyse ayant pour but d’y améliorer et faciliter l’observation, la description et la réflexion sur les dynamiques d’équipe pour des futurs designers juniors. Cette recherche espère donc proposer un appui aux designers pour développer leurs compétences à mieux travailler en équipes multi- disciplinaires. / As new product development continues to change, designers appear increasingly involved in multi- disciplinary teams from the outset of project inception. This is due to the progressively challenging, multifaceted, and complex problems design must resolve. After all, no single individual possesses the knowledge to create most new products. Companies depend on the teamwork of individuals with different knowledge bases who come together as a single design group. In breaking down silos and creating these integrated teams, overall effectiveness is threatened by their ability to communicate, negotiate, and develop a shared understanding of their goals and means of achieving them. As a junior designer, team dynamics can be intimidating. Bridging different and sometimes conflicting individual views is challenging. Tougher still is reflecting on and describing dynamics as they happen in practice. Without the ability to explain dynamics, identifying and improving team integration seems nearly impossible. As such, this research aims to address these constraints by finding a way to describe and better understand team integration in action. To accomplish this, a theoretical framework is developed to explore designer involvement, managing complexity, teamwork, and effective team integration. From this, a qualitative case study is conducted to reflect on teamwork in action using a Research-through-Design approach. This places design practice in the centre of research and allows the researcher to also play the role of a newly integrated designer. It relies extensively on journal entries and participative observations in order to create a story of designer involvement in new product development. In interpreting the data through an empirical categorisation of factors that are said to influence the development of a shared understanding (Kleinsmann, Valkenburg, & Buijs, 2007), a working description and reflection of team integration was achieved. In addition, this research proposes some amendments that aim to improve the framework and enable other junior designers to better observe, describe, and reflect on team dynamics in the future. This research therefore hopes to contribute by supporting designers in improving their ability to work effectively within multi-disciplinary new product development teams.