??Perceptual Blindness [For Civil Engineers & Architects & Contractors]

?? Perceptual Blindness [For Civil Engineers & Architects & Contractors] - #0H007BC0B

??? Ever wondered how you could miss some visible data on drawing? or could not spot mistake or change in drawing at first place? Obviously yes! everyone does. Same thing happens when we are too focused on one task or internal thought, we are not aware of surroundings just like driving on long roads or doing tasks without proper attention. There is term called “Inattentional blindness” or “Change blindness” where due to lake of proper attention the person can not do the task effectively. Majorly it causes due to too much work on hand, multi-tasking or stressed mind or repetition of tasks.

?? Hello, my self is Vijaykumar Parmar ↗? , as a practicing engineering professional, during work I often missed out important information while reviewing drawings, tender document or during site visit!!! I thought making checklist or Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) will solve the issue; but the problem occurs again when I do repetitive tasks. I talked to my seniors in circle everyone has faced the same thing. I thought there should be something that may solve this problem in AEC industry. I have just listed few AEC profession and problem that happened to them in below:?

?? Site Engineer: Often missed?information from drawing and realizes when get stuck in shuttering that there is something wrong; and do make live changes with labour to solve problem.

?? Senior Site Supervisor: Often finds mistake after execution! As not attentively supervised before execution.

?? Construction manager: Mostly don’t have time to read in detail, observes drawing and assumes the other details from experience and make mistake in resource planning.

?? Safety manager: Forget to track routing safety checks, improper assessment, and missing our important safety issue on site while site visit.

?? Architect: Many times, forget to consider important service tubes or to update data in drawing or changes plan after getting problem during execution.

?? Draftsman: Usually makes mistakes in making manual elevation & sections or normally forgot to update details during revision.

?? Structural Engineer: Normally forgets to comply codal provision or makes mistakes during giving details based on common sense.

?? MEP Engineer: Missing important information on drawing, forgot to carryout clash detection, mistakes in space planning in shafts and cable trays.

?? Estimator: Missing out important quantity, considering wrong item rates and giving wrong project costing.

All these mistakes are happening normally in AEC industry, and everyone starts blaming junior person or makes excuses! These problems occur at first place due to Inattentional blindness as one does not get time to think process in mind with “Thought experiment” before starting the task.?

?? While hunting the solution with cognitive psychology I came to know that these things caused mostly by:

1.?????Cognitive conspicuity [Data has lake of details which does not draws attention of person] [Normally Architects & Structural engineers create clouds around revised details to get attention of reader in drawing]

2.?????Mental workload & working memory [Just like physical resource it is persons cognitive resource, it is limited. Person handling multiple works or doing multi-tasking often makes mistake] [Normally AEC industry uses project management and task management softwares like Bitrix24 / Asana / Clickup to track overloading and redistribute the work to achieve milestone on time]

3.?????Expectation [When person expects certain things to happen, he/she blocks other possibilities!] [This is the reason why selected IT graduates get very high package! As compared to experienced person, IT graduates does not know the limitations and do the unexpected to solve the problem that experience person cannot do due to his expectations based on experience]

4.?????Attentional Capacity / Neurological salience [One has limited attention/focus to complete the task, checking 500 details in 5 minutes is not possible]

Primary Solution: Making SOP & Checklist might minimize the errors but not to zero. Industry should have minimum inputs and maximum standardization to mitigate the above problems. Using smart BIM based software to minimize mistakes in documentations and Using powerful ERP software to track the process and tasks

Secondary Solution: Carryout one task at a time, Spare dedicated time for critical works and keep things organized for easy track..        

???Inattentional Blindness is evolutionary product of human, and it is beneficial to avoid storing unnecessary information in mind as we have limited mental capacity. ?? So next time when you make mistake, just observe if it happened due to Perceptual Blindness or what? just resolve it with proper task management.

?? Note: Btw, Magicians knows inattentional blindness, they use “cognitive blindness” in their profession to do the tricks and magic behind word “Abara – ka -Dabra”!

#?? TAGS

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?? Resources for more details

1???Pick the Mindfulness [Guide to improve mental health] by Prathvi Bhatti : Link for Book

2?? Psychology tutorials : https://psych.hanover.edu/javatest/cle/cognition/cognition.html

3???Cognitive psychology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_psychology

4?? Inattentional Blindness National Geographic [brain games]:

5?? Selective Attention:

6?? TEDx Talk on Inattentional Blindness :

7?? Psychology of Attention:

8?? Remarkable Experts & Researchers : Dolcy Dhar Neetu Dalal Deeptimayee Senapati Tirthesh Kotkar Ritika Dhall @aishwarya gawate Kanishk Chitransh