Write an essay on research project.
The purpose and objective of this research project is exploring and understanding the challenges faced by the project managers in effective development of the construction project purpose and the way these challenges are managed. Determining or developing the project purposes is one of three stages in the definition process of project, which also include translation of purposes into specific criteria to assess alternative solutions or designs and to generate concepts for alternate design. Project purposes are determined by the key stakeholders of the project, who are intended to succeed the project to fulfil the individual needs and values. When these needs and values are properly understood and determine the purpose of the project, then only the design solutions can be generated.
This research explores and reports the management of creation and change of purpose in the complex construction projects. There is hardly any research done on the purpose development dynamics in the construction industry and also development of purpose. Even though there is some research is done, it is conceptualized as a development act, instead of discovery. This research project conceptualizes the project purpose development through active participation and group dialogue by the key project stakeholders. The research project discusses and describes of how best these group dialogues are structured, shaped and facilitated.
The research is approached from the primary and major project management prospective having a specific and clear focus on the building facility projects. According to the Project Management Institute (1996), a project is defined as “a temporary endeavour to create a unique service or product”. The consideration and objective of the project management is to be the primary means towards implementation of the organizational strategy (Grundy 1998, Kenny 2003). Organizations does function through strategy disciplines, processes, structure and projects and they depend and influence among each other towards performing (Van Der Merwe 2002). Projects are considered to be unique work units that implement the strategies and policies of an organization. Hence, the project management role is to become increasingly significant in the key areas, developing and executing the strategies of the organizations and project delivery.
The construction projects are well linked with the strategic mission and vision of any respective organization, directly. Construction projects the direct means to support the organizational goals, as far as the physical facilities and organization’s owner or operators are concerned. Construction organizations face challenges fo new demands on the physical facilities, consistently. The facilities owners reshape the designing ways and get their work practices organized that eventually impacts the physical facilities performance, directly.
Horgen et al. (1999) and Lambert et al. (2000) emphasize the workplace strategy importance. The real estate facilities are viewed as business strategy by-product that demand maintenance as well as the occasional upgrading, in many companies. These real estate facility strategies are to be aligned with directives, company-wide and objectives of service or business units. The present focus over the workplace strategic importance on the issues, like workplace efficiency, user satisfaction in terms of the work environment, workplace productivity and workplace cost management.
The emerging discipline, related to the Facility Design and Management is drawn based on the existing theories, like planning, design, architecture, behavioural science, management, accounting and finance (Teiholz 2001). This multidiscipline field has been exploring and developing and creating the relevant knowledge, in terms of how best organizational strategy can be supported through the physical facilities design and management.
The research conducted poses the following questions, with regards to purpose development effective management.
What are the implications of the construction project management?
And specifically, the research problem focused is,
Adaptive management processes are required in complex project organizations to support project purpose. Project manager supports the shared understanding of the group, learning and dialogue by facilitation and design of process of group. Purpose development can use purpose iterative cycle approach for solution development.
The research is focused in understanding the implications of the project manager, who develops the purpose in the project environment that is complex. The study provides new management insights for the same. The project manager’s challenges are described, while stakeholder purpose development. It uses a method of case study to reveal how purpose of project can eb framed by the stakeholders, process evolvement, impact of the overall project definition.
To answer the research questions, qualitative research study is developed, according to the objectives as the following.
The research and study is conducted in the following phase of exploration. It includes three case studies examination that is based in university of California public educational institutions, Berkeley, to reveal managing project purpose in project definition complexity.
Construction management research is an intersection of social and natural sciences. Two methodologies used here are interpretivist and positivist approach. The approach of positivist studies events and facts are established, adopting deductive method with and remain objective without researcher to have pre-conception. So, it has understanding limitation. The interpretivist approach includes study of events include observer’s events and thoughts. It is on the belief that one must interpret to understand the meaning (Love et al. 2002). It moves from specific observations to in-depth understanding creation about the study. In the research of construction, the central elements are people and so human activity is a significant study variable. So, this approach is used in the research. Qualitative approach is used in the study.
This research uses the research method of case study, to understand the project purpose development dynamic nature and is qualitative research based on the society and also surveys, analyses, histories and experiments of information archival (Yin 2003). The research is on purpose development in construction projects with the objective of the way sof project purpose emerges from the processes of stakeholders that include project managers’ collaborative issues. Can the process of group be managed for aligning the interests of the stakeholders for common purpose pursuit? If so, what are the strategies of management?
The following section consists of project purpose and definition theoretical background exploration, to identify the major and primary research developments, according to the management of the process. The next section structures the research in the learning theory and social collaboration realm. Then the next section consists the research methods implanted in this research study. Chapter Five consists of the exploration of the case studies and the respective findings analysis.
The final section consists of summary of the findings of the research and also discusses the project management theory implications. The future research is then proposed for supporting the project managers in project purpose process meta-planning. The future directions fo the research are finally outlined.
From the traditional practice by the planners and architects, project purpose in the construction management is extracted from client briefing, strategic facility planning, needs assessment, project programming and requirements processing. Project purpose and definition is also considered as prior process to final decision making for the investment (Kahkonen 1999). According to CII (Construction Industry Institute) (1995), based on the US, defines the project purpose and definition as one process to sufficient strategic information development for owners of facility towards addressing the risk that help deciding to go on committing the resources, so that the chances of the project success can be maximized. Feasibility tests are then conducted to determine the project objectives are met or not, with the resources available and with the operating environment constraints.
Project purpose determination is the process that formalizes the closer and tighter relationships in between the organization’s purpose and physical facility project’s purpose. The facility needs here are tightly associated and coupled with the business case of the client, like providing learning environment for the students, by the education institution.
Finally, the phase of project purpose determination identifies firstly, what the needs and wants of the stakeholders are, and secondly, defining the dependencies and differences between the needs and wants for developing a problem shared understanding and to develop the alternative solutions for the project subsequently.
The acknowledgement of the project purpose determination significance has been growing, by the industry practitioners and researchers and many researchers (Kelly et al. 1992, Green 1994, 1999, Smith et al. 1998, CII 1999, and MacMillan et al. 2001) highlighted its importance. The project purpose determination process is initiated by many disciplines, client requirements processing and briefing, process re-engineering, design methodology, collaborative planning theory, value methodology, rational problem solving, strategic management, behavioural decision making, rational problem solving and architectural theory and programming, etc. The initiatives from management include, creating systematic requirements processing, re-engineering processes, creating systematic decision support methods, increasing transparency as well as improving the collaborative relations and improving stakeholder coordination.
The project purpose process in the construction industry is subject to the continuous change conditions and uncertainty. The physical facilities needed to support the dynamically changing product and services of business processes and the organizational structures. The purpose of the project purpose determination includes determination of the property development, owner strategy, marketing, organization, capital investment, management, cost-benefit analysis, planning permission, property development and preliminary design. Since there are several perspective to manage, the project’s purpose development will be complex.
Project manager is responsible to bring all the stakeholders of construction to bring together in order to achieve common purpose, like the constructed facility development. The project team consists of distributed and multiple stakeholder groups. So, in the activity of the determining the project purpose, the key stakeholders include the facility owner groups, regulatory agencies and design specialists.
The facility owner groups are the facility end users, specialists, who define the function of the owner, financiers, owner personnel approving the project and internal owner groups. Construction knowledge is provided by the design specialists. Environmental development knowledge and issues and the respective compliance issues of the technical code are provided by the regulator agencies. There may also be public interest groups interested to participate in the project.
Figure: Project Purpose Stakeholder Groups
Researchers, Barrett (1999), Anumba and Kamara (2001) emphasise the problems associated with the purpose determination of the project. According to them, the common barriers in the industry towards the project purpose definition process are insufficient time that is allocated for purpose of the project, inadequate invovlemnet of parties, relevant, inadequate owner perspectives considerations by the team fo the project, poor communication established and continued among these parties and inadequate change management in the requirements of the project. All these issues of management usually result in collective project values and needs misrepresentation, lost opportunities for creating innovative values for owners of facilities and stakeholders of project, group indecision and bounded rationality.
The project manager is tasked to identify the processes or means, by which the resultant decisions for the purpose of the project would be collectively made by the groups of the stakeholders, where interests of multiple stakeholders have yet to be reconciled, the resultant process will be ill-structured and the purpose of the project stays to be ill-defined. According to Simon (1984), ill-structured problem is defined as a problem, for which the structure does lack proper and clear definition. The problem will then have unknowns related or associated with the means, which are set of decisions rules and process actions and ends, which is project purpose of the solution during the process of problem solving.
The difficulties for the project manager to manage process of determining the project purpose, effectively, arise from the basic nature of complexity of the problem that has to be resolved, defining building facility purpose. According to the seminal work done by Rittel and Webber (1972), it illuminates that the design complexity and processes of planning that describe several problems related to design as so ill-defined and become complex and so they call them as ‘wicked problems’. Such problems and concerns are prevalent in the projects related to the construction, which consists of several stakeholders with competing and diverse interests.
Multiple perspectives and paradigms interrelate as well as compete with each other in the development of the project purpose. Stakeholder groups and multi-faceted clients understand the ‘purpose’ that is based over viewpoints, individually. Stakeholder groups consider own self-interests to operate. They rely on methods, tools and strategies, which are particular to background, experience and knowledge of the stakeholder. It is problematic for the project manager to manage the process for these perspectives, as interests of the stakeholders could conflict each other. Hence, it would be a great challenge for the project manager to manage the process of a common group, which includes interests of the diverse stakeholders. These interests are to be shared among the groups of the project and understood to determine the purpose and so the definition of the project.
Project manager needs to understand the underlying paradigms, on which the project values and needs are to be established. These influences eventually determine or set up the main purposes of the project and relative constraints and so project definition. According to the suggestion of Rittel and Webber (1972), wicked problems can be best resolved by the argumentation and interaction by the group. Project manager has the job of managing the processes of collective groups to facilitate the interests voices that can lead to understanding sharing on the purpose of the project, ultimately, and also means for its satisfaction.
It is assumed that the determination of the purpose of the project is a social activity that requires the multiple stakeholder collaboration. This process could not be taken by the analyst alone. According to March (1983), purpose is described by the list terms, as ‘goods’, ‘values’, ‘needs’, ‘wants’, ‘tastes’, ‘utility’, ‘preferences’, ‘goals’, ‘objectives’, ‘drives’, ‘wants’ and ‘aspirations’. Dialogue is an effective medium that helps expressing the desires, needs, intentions and wants by the stakeholders and the conflicts and differences of interest can be revealed. These expressions of interests will in turn provide shared understanding and to new and shared purposes development. the research is conducted for better understanding of dialogue management that the stakeholders do frame interests of them and the way the learning occurs.
Ultimately, purpose of the project is constructed using the interconnected relationships, like project constraints, stakeholder values and needs. Purposes can be transformed as constraints and issues of project and understanding their relationships. This transition may go through several stats of definition and commitment levels or even advocacy done by the stakeholder groups of the project.
For developing sense of development of the way the shared understanding of the purpose of the problem and solutions for the project is developed, by the team, ‘frames’ must be understood, by which several members of team can structure the interests of them. According to Beach (1997), frame is defined as a ‘mental construct that has elements, relationships among the elements, associated with certain situation of particular interest. According to Beach (1997) the frames may be formed within the constructs of the experience or expertise of the stakeholders. Frame analysis consists of study of several ways, the roles and problems of the stakeholders can be framed and it helps to allow them to criticize and aware of their roles.
It is the responsibility of the project managers to facilitate the multiple stakeholders’ perspective sharing, to resolve the conflicting values and needs. The assumptions are to be queried to understand the interests of the stakeholders. Group learning processes are needed to be supported for adaptive and interactive management. Project managers’ actions can be referred by adaptive management and how the group processes are based on new realization issues in the group. Adaptive management helps to encompass, appropriate questioning and inquiry of assumptions of the stakeholders, stakeholder perspective facilitation and similar actions. Project manager needs to facilitate and it becomes a key to effective learning to the group. An adaptive process support reflecting the underlying assumptions of the group, according to the purpose fo the group and also leads to better alternative solutions creative development from innovative thinking for satisfying the interests that are individual and collective.
Project managers have need of methodologies that support in developing the basic purpose in complex construction projects, to understand the ways of emerging the project purpose from the groups that are collaborative. Project managers can manage the process of facilitation, once the emergence of purpose pattern is understood. This study is sought for identification of relevant and potential adaptive techniques that steer the creation of purpose effectively.
The research is focused on how action of project management supports the project purpose development effectively. For detailed understanding of how the project purpose determination can be helped by the project management, the current purpose theory development must be examined.
This chapter describes working project definition in relation to the theory of project management and concept of the purpose is clarified. Then the research of advocating project purpose is examined, as a generating process for value. Then the value management limitations are identified, as it is related to the development of the purpose. Then the issues connected to processing methodologies for systematic requirements for developing the purpose are examined. My argument over the need for integration of design process that are ignored by some of the methodologies is presented. Then the design theory thinking is incorporated, related to the complexity of the project purpose development.
I have examined the research developments that are process based done recently, that sought to transparency improvement of the process of project purpose and definition. The benefits associated with usage fo the performance indicators of the construction project towards values and needs of the stakeholder management promotion in the definition of the project. Later, the importance and need for understanding the barriers of the organizations, which inhibit the project purpose and definition effectively and the finally, I have established the significance and need to understand the purpose and definition of the project as a part of collaborative learning process.
The research uses and adopts the model for project definition considered from Lean Project Delivery System. According to Ballard and Zabelle (2000), project definition is defined as “the initial phase in the delivery fo the project and it consists of the following three modules.
Figure: Project Definition Delivery Model (Source: Ballard and Zabelle 2000)
According to the model, purposes will be transformed into criteria and the criteria becomes a translation to generate concepts by designers. From the perspective of the customer organization, purpose drives the criteria of the project and solutions of concept and hence the project delivery. And purpose is what the final project value delivery is determined, from the perspective of provider or stakeholder. It is important to explore how the purpose is originated from the facility stakeholder perspective.
The approach of the research of the project management is purpose development and project definition, based on the customer value. According to Womack and Jones (1996)d, ultimate customer only become the basis of value and the value can only be the meaningful, when it is expressed based on the service, product or both. According to Murman and Allen (2002), value creation is perceived to consist of three phases called identification of value, proposition and delivery of value. The basis of the framework is that the value can only delivered after identification and construction of the proposition of value.
According to negotiation researchers (Fisher et al. 1991) , value identification is considered as ‘interests’ and involves stakeholder identification with respective needs and values. Stakeholders are the ones, who have some stake or role in project and include producers, customers and interest groups. The values and respective judgements have dominant influence in the ways of transition of the purpose from needs to the requirements.
Project manager then moves the process to the phase of proposition, where the stakeholder needs are considered together. It specifies the project’s collective purpose and identifies the differences and dependencies among the stakeholders. This phase is sought for creation of alignment of stakeholder and their collective commitment towards the project.
According to Ballard (2003), the one that enables the purpose realization is the value. Solutions will then be assessed by stakeholders, to be or not valuable, based on their perception of the solution for purposes fulfilment. The resultant value systems (Thomas et al. 2003) have influence over how the stakeholders and customer needs are construed and the ways of making the preferences, based on solution selection for satisfaction of the respective purposes.
Checkland and Scholes (1999) developed an alternative approach for value management, based on the soft system thinking learning paradigm. This methodology is applied to facilitate learning to explore the needs and values of the customer. This process highlights the procedure for relevant issues identification and to learn the respective issues. It is necessary to share diverse perspectives of the stakeholders and make agreements on a collective project purpose.
Purposes are part of the values and needs of the organization that are expressed in policies and strategies that are ever evolving. The language terminology of the purpose, according to (March 1983), are described as ‘values’, ‘goods’, ‘objectives’, ‘drives’, ‘aspirations’, ‘needs, ‘preferences’, ‘utility’, ‘goals’, and ‘tastes’.
According to Altshuld and Witkin (2000), need is defined as a discrepancy that is measurable in between the desired status and current status for an entity. They identified the needs general levels, existing in the organizations, as in the following table.
|
Need Level |
Target Groups |
Organization (Healthcare) |
|
1 |
Direct products or service recipients delivered by the user |
Healthcare Patients |
|
2 |
Groups or individual delivering products or services to the Level 1 |
Service Providers: Healthcare professionals |
|
3 |
Inputs and resources into solutions for supporting levels 1 and 2 |
Products and services system, ex: facility of Medical building |
Understanding the operational and strategic needs in the capital facilities design domain becomes the basis for project purpose understanding. Considering the example of Healthcare services, the needs of the primary customers, patients of the organization are addressed in Level 1. Then the needs of the Level 2 pertain to the groups and individuals of the organization, tasked with delivering the services to the customers in the Level 1. The needs of Level 3 are surrounded to the resources, supporting Level 1 and 2 and they level within which, the professionals of construction operate normally.
Green (1996) performs identification of the construction specialists dilemma that attempt for understanding the organization fo the facility owner. Construction professionals have the supporting role in the needs of the level 3, but 1 and 2 are needs of the primary organization that are to be satisfied. Construction professionals understand the client needs, through specific professional values and confined to within the project. Levels 1 and 2 focus loss could result in project definition process outcomes.
Needs uncertainty is high, for the multi-faceted and larger organizations (Nutt 1993). Needs are changed in the dynamic environment, over time. It is necessary to look at timescales that vary, by the needs analysis, for implications identification for dynamic changes of the times. Nutt emphasizes the uncertainties consideration importance in the planning process of facilities.
Advocating the planning separation from the design can refine decision behaviour, however, I argue that the design value is for project purpose verification. Consistent with the tough or complex design task nature, it becomes tendency of the designers to focus on the solutions (Cross 2001). It may result in problem definition acceptance prematurely, channelling into shaping definition of problem, through possible exploration.
From the previous discussion, it is understood that the problem of the client can be understood with alternative solution isolation and then provided to engineers and architects for adequate solution development. an alternative perspective can be adopted by another thinkers group, that I endorse, are, that design will be an integral activity for supporting the project purpose development.
The project purpose determination process is approached by Macmillan et al. (2001), by design methodology understanding in the phase of the conceptual design. A structured framework is developed and verified by their research for supporting the design of interdisciplinary. A generic model including the terminology of framework that is based on tasks, activities, processes is proposed that support s project managers as design groups are managed by them.
According to Lawson (1980), design is perceived as iterative process of synthesis, analysis and decision making. Analysis explores the relationships, in terms of patter from the available information and objectives classification, so is the organizing and structuring of a problem. Synthesis is considered as solution generation for a problem. Evaluation is suggested solution appraisal, against the objectives present in the phase of analysis.. at the design problem/solution state, decision is taken and then sequence of process is proceeded. Return loop do exist for most of the steps in process sequence. The design activity classification can support management to understand the design process and in action for coordination. Design can be viewed as a process of decision making, according to many researchers (Beheshti 1993, Manning & Matter 1994, Ganeshan et al. 1994). According to Behshti, design management role is described as a accounting process for known constraints chain, design constraints, emerging from other design values, criteria, values, variable or prosperities interactions; unknown design variables impacts introducing uncertainty, alternative courses consequences of actions that interact atih the unknown or known decision factors. The constraints realization by designers is, there are competing and multiple performance criteria for satisfaction.
According to the suggestion of Kalay (1999), the design paradigm, that is based on performance usage to assess the ways of designing to be carried out. Quality is possibly achieved from determination of performance evaluation objective of multiple criteria that comprise a satisfaction sum and design solution selection trade-offs subsequently. Design based on the performance is interrelated with function, context and form of the situation of the design that determines the proposed solution behaviour.
Locating a project purpose is a challenge for project managers to address, especially, in the system of open society. The facility purpose may initiate from need level changes. Project managers have task to locate the purpose and to provide the solution. The challenge is in formulation of the purpose by the stakeholders and design of the solution to satisfy it. A wicked problem understanding information depends over the idea of one to solve it. It needs reasoning with the resolution to advance the problem understanding, to solve the problem. A problem exploration with solution in parallel can discover new issues that discount or validate the possible problem perception earlier.
Project managers face the issues, like formulation of the problem, expressing the individual’s purpose and then reconciling the interests conflicting among the stakeholders. There is a restriction of limited time and resources for the project manager, to develop purpose that limits the purposes and solution search. The manager is limited with the prediction in the future, like facility users, supporting services and structures of the organization, and the technology facility, each with uncertainties, as the way needs are changed with time. The project managers are usually, limited with changes prediction capacity.
An argumentative process is advocated by Rittel and Webber for dealing the wicked problems, in understanding or problem and solution course emerges from the stakeholders, gradually. The following table identifies for design activity analysis from principal approaches identification.
|
Description |
Rational Problem-Solving |
Social Argumentative Process |
Experimental Process Learning |
|
Designer Model |
Information to be objective reality processor |
Argumentation participants (Rittel) |
Practitioner Individually (Schon) |
|
Macro-level |
Problem decomposition to be ill-defined and ill-structured into well-defined and well-structured problem and then solve it |
Wicked, too tough or complex by an individual, to move to consensus |
Uncertain, unique value-laden problem, made by an individual – converging to fitness |
|
Micro-level |
Analyse-generate-test-evaluate – Search Cycle: |
Issue support / denial by arguments. |
Entering a cycle of construction: frame-name-move-reflect |
|
Design Methods and Techniques |
Control mechanism and sub-processes formulation |
Construction and negotiation making, argumentative structure shown by rationale |
Openness to talkback – learn by doing |
According to Rittel (1984), investigating is suggested as ‘designing to be a process of argumentation; where beginning should be for developing procedures, rules and settings for argumentative process open-ending, understanding design as raising issues counter-play and dealing that raise new issues in turn. Process impacts can be understood necessarily at levels if group, individual and organizations for learning of procedures and structuring appropriate settings. According to Schon (1983), reflection notion allows the groups ‘towards criticize and surface the tacit understanding, that are grown up over a group repetitive experience and also makes new uniqueness or uncertainty situation sense.
The notion is also supported that problems solving has to include the perceptions of ones, who is tasked with problem solving.
Process Protocols for Project Purpose and Definition
According to GDCPP (Generic Design and Construction Process Protocol), the process is mapped into eight processes, ten phases and four broad stages, as in the following table (Kagioglou et al. 1909).
The focus of the process re-engineering is on important key principles to improve the project delivery quality. These include (Kagioglou et al. 1999) full life-cycle of product, whole project view adoption, consistent process application throughout the life cycle of the project, progressive design fixity application, procedures of review and planning application by using coordination, stage gates, teamwork, stakeholder involvement and providing feedback finally or future projects learning.
The protocol provides the project manager with a clear directive to manage the process of project delivery. According to the project purpose and definition, the phases of process have detailed deliverables on achievable for moving to following stages. However, it does not address the way of learning in group process and does not detail the complexity of purpose of project manager understanding.
Industry research is focused on performance measuring of projects. CII (Construction Industry Institute) (1999), based with US, developed tool for project management to support the project purpose and definition phase. It shows PDRI (Project Definition Rating Index) for project predictability performance improvement. It is used by Gibson and Gebken (2003) to administer project purpose and definition workshops for participants. This tool allows the team of project to rate, quantify and assess the scope development level over projects, before initiating construction document development.
Genn et al. (2003) based with UK, developed DQI (Design Quality Indicator) tool to improve the building design. Its conceptual framework consists the aspects of three, firstly quality considers building like construction, engineering and performance, next, issues incorporated by functionality, like access, use and space. Finall, Impact considers, like form and materials, charter and innovation, urban social integration and internal environment. The tool provides performance measuring methods, through feedback and perception capturing from the stakeholder, in terms of design quality. The tool creates a forum for value thinking and also stands as a mediator among end-users, customers, producers and designers.
The tool is sought to complement and develop the KPI (Key Performance Indicator) (Egan 1998)for the construction projects, like satisfaction of client with product, service, product defects, cost predictability, time predictability, time of construction, cost of construction, profitability, productivity and safety. These indicators give useful variables for project development course for the project manager. Project managers can use them templates in the work routines, upon which discussions can be facilitated with stakeholders. Still, empirical research has to be done for understanding of how they foster groups’ shared understanding.
This section addressed the project purpose and associated customer value relationship. Here, I identified the values and needs to be project purpose understanding basis. the principal research as purpose development support. Methods of systematic requirement processing can be traceable and transparent, during the determination of purpose and definition process, but has limitations in complex environments. Design activity integration is advocated with development of purpose. The understanding purpose process is complex, because of the organizational barriers, like process and organizational design and so is characterized in terms of wicked problem, with the basis of literature.
The following chapter identifies the purpose development process, as an adaptive and complex process. after the learning issues in the complex system are reviewed, collaborative learning is proposed for purpose development.
Systematic processes give structured framework to develop the requirements of the project, according to Kamara et al (2000), they are found to lack, when decision making organizational and human aspects is managed, in project purpose determination and project definition. Wicked problem identification existence is identified in design and planning processes, in the previous chapter. Uncertain and complex environments reveal the situations that can be messy or wicky for resolving and managing. Collaborative approach is an alternative approach for methods of traditional problem solving.
My research hypothesis made for this study is,
“The project purpose emergence can be managed effectively by project purpose and definition understanding as an adaptive and complex process”.
In this research study, I present argument that the purpose development can be managed with learning and collaboration is needed for a project. The argument is advanced in this chapter for group learning and collaboration towards the project purpose development support.
Design is viewed as a collaborative, collective and community process, as found by Scrivener et al. (2000). The argument is supported by Bucariarelli (1998), considering the activity of the design as a social construction or process. According to Kalay (2000), collaboration is defined as an argument among the project manager, facility owner, regulatory agencies, design specialists and interest groups to share the abilities of them for achieving the project’s larger objectives as a whole, defined by the stakeholders. Group processes importance is emphasized by various terms, cooperative, user-cantered, socio-technical, concurrent, participatory, community design, socio-technical, collaborative, etc.
According to Booher and Innes (1999), consensus planning is both producing plans and arguments as well as about learning, experimentation and building of shared meaning. The collaborative capacity notion is central to take emerging opportunities advantage towards value creation in the phase of project purpose determination and definition.
The collaborative design process is the first step to understand the project purpose understanding. The problem’s uncertainty and ambiguity is increased, without stakeholder interest facilitation adequately. Process criteria specified by them towards an effective collaborative process that involves relevant stakeholders. Participants are engaged in the common purpose and interest in the process is maintained. It is a self-organizing process, as it allows effective group work for functioning. The process challenges the status quo and assumptions, and is creative. High quality information is used, which is diverse and stakeholders representation. After the process explored the needs and interests of stakeholders consensus is sought. Project manager stands responsible to create collaborative conditions. The management style used for collaborative conditions fostering is a vital consideration for the project managers.
Characteristics of both adaptive management and directive management approaches are described by Nishiguchi (2001) and Stacey (1999).
The role of project manager for various complexity levels in the environment is illustrated as below.
Figure: Styles and Complexity of Project Management (Source: Sracey 1999)
Directive approach’s decision making is a unilateral and top-down approach and is deployment of result information and functional skills. A directive management style stands good for low level complexity organizations; however, many organizations that owe operating facilities are built with higher complexity levels.
So, adaptive management is required in such complex environments. The project managers will be able to learn as unfolded actions in such management style, along with new emerging issues (Graham & Kruger 2002). Stakeholder entities are dependent among them for decision making and need interaction requirement to needs and values understanding for and by each other. The capability of the project manager to guide the process of group, is dependent on recognising and understanding ability of emerging purposes of project and for gaining feedback timely from the respective stakeholders. The adaptive approach makes use of relational skills, interactive processes in real-time, like commitment building, information based on process for developing an action that is meaningful. It is well supported by penetrable boundaries of organization and cross functional organization. It is an open ended approach and structure is organic, opposite to closed structure and mechanistic, emphasizing directive approach. According to the view of Cartier and Ruitenbeek (2001), an adaptive process manages changes of project on learning, based on group learning.
According to Argyris (1999), learning occurs after what is intended is achieved by the organization, and when identification of mismatch and correction and turned into a match. The extended process provide double loop learning, for determining how the goals and criteria are established and set of design of the original project are determined. The focus of the single loop learning is on changing actions. Thermostat model is a classic example for both single and double learning.
The stakeholder purpose intentions are challenged in double loop learning. Governing variables usually include initial problem in purpose of client, stakeholder needs, team assumptions and project constraints. Learning the purposes and the relative constraints are resolved after determining by the stakeholders. The project manager’s challenge is in creating a group process with double-learning support.
Figure: Project Purpose and Definition Learning Model
The process of project purpose and definition is vital, as it helps to identify the constraints by the stakeholder groups, in the early stages and help analysing the implications to achieve project purpose. Constraints are relationships help enforcing and marinating the relationships of processes and objects in the context (Mayer et al. 1995).
Clear project constraints understanding determine whether the purpose will be achieved or not by the stakeholders. These constraints are identified and judged to retain or removed to create better stakeholder value. Purposes are remained tested, when the constraints are unearthed. So, the project manager should have enough capability to reveal constraints and working is proposed with such constraints.
Complexity results emergent properties features, which are whole system properties, though are not the parts (Axelrod and Cohen 1999). Emergence behaviour arises from the parts interaction and can’t be predicted only parts knowledge (Corning 2002). Emergence of purposes is based on the interactions of project manager group of facility owner, design specialists and remaining stakeholders.
A key issue related to purpose understanding is the synergy, created by the collaborative process. the manager has to understand how the purposes do emerge from the stakeholder agents interaction in the system. This research includes control of project manager is understood as an effective facilitation, in terms of participation, interaction and dialogue promotion. The basic purpose premises are to be iterating continually by project management, based on incremental learning and feedback cycles by the group of the project.
Purpose transition can be supported by the facilitative actions, from the need to requirement. Project variables changed by the purposes are defined further and the relationships are understood better. Purpose is propositioned start to emerge, after progressing to consensus by the stakeholders.
The research assumption is that shared understanding can lead to problem purpose and definition more effectively, by planning group. Shared understanding is considered as a wider construct that describes group members mutual expectations and to the extent of teams to establish task common platform. Shared understanding is established by group language development (Cohen ORIAL MINING BUILDING PROJECT
The Heart Memorial Mining Building is UC Berkeley Campus and designed in 1908, by architect. It has four-story in 130,000 sq. ft. and reflects tradition of Beaux, so listed in Historic Places in National Register for history and architecture. a campus wide study performed in 1973 about the seismic safety revealed the condition of the building to be ‘very poor’ rating for safety and needs seismic strengthening.
Management conducted feasibility study to improve retrofitting and workplace program of building for seismic safety.
Primary Stakeholder Identification
The project management identified the stakeholders of the project, as in the following figure.
The seismic retrofit feasibility study is conducted by the consulting engineering firm. The study phase presented PPG (Project Planning Guide) in 1994. Then the project is initiated.
The purpose of the project is defined by the architect as “further criteria exploration and development for seismic reinforcing, developing design concepts that are alternate respecting the building historic significance and evaluate the cost of the construction totally”.
The architect has undertaken the meetings with program committee established that comprise college of engineering members. New information is elicited through group interviews for confirming workplaces purpose, by the architect. The outcome is culminated with mission and vision statement.
|
VISION |
The HMMB will become a place for sustaining, nurturing engineering education inspiring for the following century. |
|
MISSION |
· To provide seismic upgrade and architectural design and programmatic needs balance · To ensure that budget, scope and schedule of the project are met · To represent the entire stakeholder group · To reclaim building’s architectural heritage, according to the original architect intensions, by John Galen Howard |
Based on the evaluations performed by the architect, the main features are summarized with multiple concepts as the following table.
|
CONCEPT |
RANKING |
ISSUES OF CONCEPT PERFORMANCE |
|
Initial Concept |
5 |
· Project goal rating to be fair to poor · Less program area · Less efficiency than the other concept, A · Cost and gross area, greater than the concept A |
|
A |
3 |
· Project goal rating to be fair to poor · Less program area · Efficient concept after B · Cost and gross area to be lowest |
|
B |
1 |
· Goal rating to be good to excellent · Program area exceeding · Efficient concept · Concept with lowest cost |
|
C |
2 |
· Rating to be fair to good · Less program area required and initial concept compatibility · Lowest efficiency, because of mechanical basement to be inefficient · Comparable costs to B |
|
D |
4 |
· Goal rating excellent mostly · Exceeding program area · Comparable efficiency with A, because of extra area of program · Costly concept, for full and new basement |
Table: Multiple concepts of HMMB
The project manager and designers team preferred the Concept B. But the team of project concerned about crossing budget and gone for further resolution and then produced a new scheme E for cost reduction, but is of poor performance.
After it is presented to larger community of project, there is an overall negative reaction, as they felt that it destroy the historic character and fabric of the building. The college of engineering concerned about the issues of fund raising opportunities, as there are limited resources from the administration of the University. Hence, the project manager faced legal and political issues.
The team has redesigned the concept, resembling mostly Scheme B that included shared lab concept and this concept is liked by the committee. Finally scheme B is accepted and budget augmented and the project was approved in 1997.
The redevelopment phase rlated to the development of mission, vision, objective structure and goals provided the solid bassis for the designers to define the problem. The final value structure allowed stakeholders of the project to group dialogue development with which their soft and hard values are articulated. In project manager perspective, “expanded values” are developed in the confirmation stage of the project and became the basis for decisions during the construction and design phases.
Alternative design options are evaluated using the objectives and goals laid out in the confirmation report of the program. The goal driven approach is used by the design team and got benchmark that was effectively used for merits determination of initial design that led to process of re-design and selection of the final concept design. The design team assessed the chosen concepts with some questions, like is the design stands within the program requirement boundary? Is the design promoting historic preservation? How are electrical and mechanical systems affected by the proposed special configuration? How the structural scheme does impacts the fabric of the building?
The HMB case study shows the significance of the reveal of the constraints. The main constraint is the historic preservation and got major impact to the final design scheme. Limited preservation was the assumption to carry out the initial design work. At the outset, project management has not experience the preservation on other buildings of the University. Testing of how well the goals of preservation can be met was unexplored until then.
The initial assumptions of preservation goals that ware limited, have become ultimately, a contentious issue among the project stakeholders. Testing fo the alternatives have brought risks related to legal and political. The search by the designer, for alternatives evaluated performance impacts range acros the assosciated criteria of budget, function, preservation satisfy structural integrity form and schedule of the project to a lesser extent. Here, preservation is considred as an enabling constraint on the barrier or project that depends on the interest of the stakeholder. Preservation is viewed as an enabler and conservation advocates perceived then the building’s historic character is maintained. If the preservation is considered as a barrier, purposes of project are impacted, for instance, the structural solution would not be viable, as it has got impacted on the building’s fabric that is existing.
According to the project manager, once the values of preservation are identified properly and incorporated into the brief of the project, then stakeholders embraced and convinced with it as important as a goal to be fulfilled. The testing performed for the alternative concept schemes shown the ways to understand how constraints fo the stakeholders could be impacted on the purpose of another stakeholder.
Case Study Conclusion
The study of HMMB project has shown the insights into the purpose determination of the project, for a building facility. Finally the project was completed in 2003 and gained high value in the community. Though project costs are higher than the original budget, the general consensus of the project is that the purpose of the project is fulfilled.
The research is conducted for the implications faced by the project managers in the construction management to determine the purpose of the project, by coordinating the needs and values of various and diverse stakeholders in the project. The project has specific focus on the construction projects. Research questions are presented, in terms of project purpose as the implications of the project manager. Research direction and approach are discussed, using which the research is conducted. The literature review is conducted for significance of the project purpose and definition, managing the processes of project purpose, development of the project purpose and based on customer value, purpose based value, development of the needs based purposes, design importance in the purpose development. the project performance indicators are addressed and then collaboration and learning processes are explored in the development of the purpose. Finally, a case study is conducted for the Heart Memorial Mining Building Project.
The report is concluded with the findings that the values and needs of the stakeholders become the key points and aspects to define the purpose of the project, which is considered to be a social activity. Justifying all the needs and values in usually, spread in multiple dimensions and sometimes contradicting to each other would be a challenging task for the project manager. Eventually, the key stakeholders, specifically, the authorities of the project or sponsor, funding stakeholders and the feasibility of the project management team become the key inputs representing their needs and values.
References
Essay Writing Service Features
Our Experience
No matter how complex your assignment is, we can find the right professional for your specific task. Contact Essay is an essay writing company that hires only the smartest minds to help you with your projects. Our expertise allows us to provide students with high-quality academic writing, editing & proofreading services.
Free Features
Free revision policy
$10Free bibliography & reference
$8Free title page
$8Free formatting
$8How Our Essay Writing Service Works
First, you will need to complete an order form. It's not difficult but, in case there is anything you find not to be clear, you may always call us so that we can guide you through it. On the order form, you will need to include some basic information concerning your order: subject, topic, number of pages, etc. We also encourage our clients to upload any relevant information or sources that will help.
Complete the order form
Once we have all the information and instructions that we need, we select the most suitable writer for your assignment. While everything seems to be clear, the writer, who has complete knowledge of the subject, may need clarification from you. It is at that point that you would receive a call or email from us.
Writer’s assignment
As soon as the writer has finished, it will be delivered both to the website and to your email address so that you will not miss it. If your deadline is close at hand, we will place a call to you to make sure that you receive the paper on time.
Completing the order and download
