A 12-person-sponsored research team consisting of three academic researchers and nine experienced practitioners conducted a three-year investigation into ways to enhance innovation within engineering-procurement-construction organizations. Data from the literature combined with over 150 surveys of active practitioners were used to identify and classify factors that influence an organization's ability to generate and implement new ideas that improve business performance. The salient factors were then identified and their relative impact was rated using the nominal group technique. Finally, these data were organized into a maturity model tool that was pilot tested on four active construction organizations. The results of this study can be used by construction organizations to identify and respond to their innovation-related weaknesses. The hundreds of hours of discussions of the 12-member research team and the fairly large set of empirical data collected by the team confirm the value of the existing constru...

In this paper, we seek to contribute to debates into new modalities of power within project-based organizations (PBOs), and specifically architectural practices. Using a targeted ethnography, we explore specific episodes within the workflow of an architectural practice. Here, we explore how imperatives for creativity and collaboration are reconciled alongside those for control and authority through specific relations of power. In contrast with other critical accounts of power in PBOs, we explicitly examine the influence of embodied and material registers of practice. This approach draws inspiration from studies across the social sciences, not least those of architectural practice, which have revealed how embodied and material practices shape organizational life. Our research reveals that despite an overt attempt to play down hierarchical modes of organization, management control and authority is still apparent, albeit it in a form that is highly embodied and intertwined with material relations. Thus, powe...

It is increasingly common that public construction projects are procured and managed with explicit intentions to establish closer collaboration between partners. Opportunities for negotiation and the freedom to choose partners are more restricted in a public setting than in a private one. Thus, many relational requirements that are generally considered essential to trust-based collaboration are more difficult to fulfil. Based on two case studies from the Netherlands and one from Sweden, we investigate how this formalized context, including formal partnering models to support relationship management, influences relational development in public sector construction contracts. Collaboration is primarily needed in projects where uncertainty is high and exchange conditions cannot be comprehensively defined. The contractual ambiguities, together with the limited opportunities for pre-contractual sense-making and relationship-building, imply that the early post-contractual phase is of significantly higher importance in public projects than in private ones. After signing a contract, it is important that the parties use the interpretive flexibility to signal trust and commitment and also that joint learning processes are organized to resolve ambiguities and enable joint learning. Formal partnering models are helpful in structuring this interaction, but also incentive arrangements may be important in shaping interaction and signalling trust.

Collaboration is seen as an essential business trait in the construction industry for effective project delivery.Collaboration occurs in two stages: stage one is the development of a collective identity engaged through discursive practices, followed by stage two, where the collective identity translates the conversations into synergistic action.The antecedent dimensions that foster collaboration are: shared direction, collective action, competence of the members, power distribution and equality, and trust and communication.The research methodology employed ethnographic interviews within a single case study of a healthcare facility construction project.The findings of the case study suggest that contextual issues arising from the public project set-up had profound negative impact on collaboration; specifically the development of a collective identity and discursive practices.It was identified that the approach to the service provider selection, hierarchical governance mechanisms and the political landscape influenced by the disposition of the client, contributed to: inadequate fees, unreasonable expectations, bureaucratic processes, concentrated power structure and strictly controlled communication.Collectively, this led to a negative impact on the dimensions of collaboration.The findings can assist project team members, specifically the clients, to proactively recognize how the context specific dispositions of team members are influenced by specific governance mechanisms and political landscapes, impacting on the extent of collaboration.

Given the quantum of infrastructure that needs to be developed in India over the foreseeable future, private sector participation in infrastructure development is inevitable. The Government of India has taken several steps to enable public–private partnerships (PPPs) for infrastructure development at the state and municipal levels. While these schemes are available for most Indian states, their adoption has varied considerably. Some states have embraced the notion of PPPs and have leveraged the incentives and schemes initiated by the central government to craft vibrant PPP programmes. Others have chosen to ignore PPPs or create hybrid institutional forms for project delivery. In this paper, we analyse how the institutional environment for PPPs has evolved differently in three demographically similar states—Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. We make use of a contested relational perspective of organizational fields involving the use of strategic action fields as a theoretical framework to understand the dy...

Large, global, cross-sectoral, multi-phased civil infrastructure projects tend to be one-off projects for which transactions have no strong 'shadow of the future', but where elements of relational contracting are still ubiquitous.Such projects evolve through discrete phases-financial and technical feasibility, conceptual design, detailed design, construction, operations and renovation/replacement-each phase of which can be viewed as a discrete transaction during which key participants and stakeholders rotate in and out of the project.This discontinuity of participation across phases in the project's lifecycle creates a heretofore neglected contractual hazard of 'displaced agency'.Similar governance challenges arising from displaced agency are found in longlived aerospace and defence programmes, large-scale software initiatives and other sectors.We review, integrate, extend and apply economic, legal, sociological and psychological governance perspectives on relational contracts to address the extreme governance challenges of civil infrastructure projects.The transaction cost economics literature has pointed out that such projects require relational governance, but has not spelled out strategies to attain and sustain such structures.We set out a framework based on institutional concepts that integrates a range of strategies designed to enhance the efficacy of relational contracts, drawing not only on 'regulative' institutional supports (e.g.laws, regulations, contracts and their enforcement through mediation, arbitration or litigation), but also institutional supports that are 'normative' (e.g.socially shared expectations of appropriate behaviour and social exchange processes) and 'cognitive' (e.g.creating shared identities, scripts or conceptual frameworks to bridge differences in values or interests).We present a set of propositions as a first cut at a contingent, integrated framework to guide future research on governance of engineering projects, and ultimately to help managers select and deploy the appropriate mix of regulative, normative and cognitive governance mechanisms for each project.

Developed from financial options theory and pricing models, real options have evolved to become a mainstream area of academic inquiry. This account traces the field generally from its origins to present day. Research has demonstrated the potential for real options to enhance project value by managing uncertainty through investment, structuring and design decisions. Despite this, real options theory is not widely used as a whole or within the discipline of infrastructure development and construction project management. The creation of infrastructure occurs almost exclusively in a project-based environment. Not surprisingly, project managers play a pivotal role in the success of such projects and make frequent decisions that shape and reshape implementation strategies. Perhaps, the path towards disseminating real options into infrastructure project practice is to improve the understanding of the managerial environment and behaviour. Hence, the characteristics of infrastructure projects and project managemen...

This paper reviews the principles, history, applications and current research issues associated with lean construction, in order to provide a foundation for future research in this area. Lean is a management approach that emerged in the automobile industry and spread initially to other forms of repetitive manufacturing and ultimately to service industries. Despite its success in practice, the lean philosophy and methods have not been fully evaluated and incorporated into the academic literature. The question remains to what extent lean management methods are unique and beneficial and how they are related to principles and models in management science, production management and related fields. One of the relevant issues is the adequacy of lean methods to the management of complex projects. As project complexity increases, emergent phenomena increase. Consequently, leadership must become more adaptive and less prescriptive in order to be successful. This paper describes some of the key lean management metho...

To boost project performance, managers of engineering and construction organizations are interested in sharing knowledge between employees across the organization. Global project-based organizations that operate in diverse markets are particularly keen to share knowledge collectively across projects and regions to gain a competitive advantage. Unfortunately, creating knowledge-sharing connections (KSCs) and knowledge-sharing networks (KSNs) can be particularly challenging for global project-based organizations. They face not only typical knowledge-sharing barriers of resources, organizational structures and individual motivations, but also physical and cultural barriers due to geographical distance. Although the benefits of global knowledge sharing are established, little is known about how KSCs and KSNs are established and maintained. In order to better understand the network structure and the formation of KSCs within these global organizations, the research analysed the KSC within a KSN focused on susta...