Exploring Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Construction: Phases and patterns of interaction in detailed design meetings
- Publication Type:
- Thesis
- Issue Date:
- 2021
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The research adopts a practice-based inter-organisational perspective to study interdisciplinary collaboration in the detailed design phase in construction projects. The detailed design phase is critical due to the large number of important decisions made to develop the conceptual design into a set of construction documents. It requires input from diverse participants such as contractors, architects, design consultants, and project managers in order to improve value for the client. These participants each bring different backgrounds, skills and expertise and also have differing perspectives that can make the collaborative process problematic. The detailed design phase involves confidential discussions of design tasks and monetary issues, which makes it difficult to gain access to study this environment, and there is little in-depth research in this area. The aim of this research is to understand interdisciplinary collaboration in the detailed design meetings of construction projects and develop insights that guide organisations in improving collaboration in such environments and how it is managed.
This study proposed and refined a model of collaboration phases incorporating two theoretical perspectives: an inter-organisational practice-based approach and a framework for group interaction. The model underpinned the design of a novel data collection approach including non-participant observations and other complementary methods that allowed capturing a broad range of contextual and complex views reflecting multiple realities about interdisciplinary collaboration. The results demonstrate that participants have different ways of viewing their collaboration and reveal patterns of interactions that are associated with positive and negative collaboration. The findings also highlight a range of process and social-reaction factors that may be relevant to the success of the collaboration and provide examples of management approaches to resolve collaboration problems. These findings suggest a need for a holistic and systematic approach to monitor and evaluate both processes and social reactions to enhance interdisciplinary collaboration in detailed design meetings.
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