A Conceptual Study of Key Barriers in Construction Project Coordination

Abstract

The complexity of the nature of construction makes it one of the most adverse businesses that has ever existed. Construction projects have often suffered from high fragmentation, large waste, poor productivity, cost and time overruns, and conflicts and disputes for a long time. Thus, many new and innovative management and procurement systems in construction are introduced such as partnering, joint venture, alliances, supply chain management, enterprise resource planning (ERP), just in time (JIT), and total quality management (TQM) to meet these challenges. However, these construction management and procurement systems are meaningless without coordination, a vital managerial principle and activity, which provides the best cooperation among team members. Although coordination plays crucial functions throughout the building process especially during the design and construction stages, some failures in construction projects adopting coordination principles are still observed. Hence, a study is carried out to investigate the key barriers of coordination in construction project. Through the literature review, five groups of key barriers are established in this paper, including the nature of construction, traditional contractual arrangement, construction participants, characteristic of organization and construction management approach. The investigation of these key barriers is expected to assist the construction players in coordinating their projects towards a better implementation of the innovative management and procurement systems. Lastly, worthwhile new research topics are suggested by this paper in developing the coordination key performance indicator (KPI) and critical success factor on construction project for further studies.

Initial findings on perspectives of local contractors on waste minimization barriers and incentives on construction sites

“…Finally, legislations as waste minimization incentive have a relative important index value of 3.32. Thefindings from this study differ from[16] that identified legislation and financial rewards as the two key drivers for waste minimization incentives.…”

The characteristics of coordination process in construction projects

“…On the other hand, facilities shortage as communication channels and tools was less than 1 %, which is not significant. The above numbers mean that, more training and awareness need to be implemented to overcome the ability and willingness problem, respectively [17]. The adversary relationship between construction parties diploma can be reduced through the well-prepared contract and the early responsibilities distribution [1,13].…”

“…Several relevant studies were reviewed to derive the coordination characteristics on construction projects. Hai et al, [17] states coordination process is an actual synchronization of the prearranged work efforts within citrine characteristics. The most important characteristic is the knowledge level about coordination process in construction projects management, which represent the general awareness of the coordination process [14,18].…”

“…Ability and willingness are personal obstacles and depend on the actor abilities and skills. Adversary relationship between construction parties is one of the industry dilemma that affect the coordination process negatively [1,5,17]. However, lack of facilities as communication channels tools is another obstacle from the project management commitment and support.…”

An Analysis of Construction Failure Factors to Stakeholder Coordinating Performance in the Finishing Phase of High‐Rise Building Projects

“…e main concern and principle of coordination focus on the organization, interdependent links, relationships, information exchange, and common objectives between involved parties [17].…”