Addressing discord in the team: Beyond third party management

Latent inter-professional conflicts exist within the building design team that run too deep to be influenced positively by a Construction Manager. Strict adherence to an organizational process that seeks to promote a specialist third party to oversee professional contribution, appears to advocate treating the symptoms of discord, instead of seeking a cure for a problem that has been found to have serious implications of cost and time. That problem must be traced to its root, beyond the practice stage. Effective communication occurs where source and receiver have a high level of empathy. Current dissatisfaction with the processes of the building design team suggest low levels of empathy. This in turn links with cultural dissonance, which influences detrimentally both communication and innovation in building. Two of the three factors that dictate formal and informal communication, the environment and the organization of project-specific building design teams, are constantly in a state of flux and open to influence from the construction manager. The third factor of communication, the role of the individual, is seldom addressed. This role is formulated by education. Research is presented that explores the factors influencing the nature of interdisciplinary relationships in the construction-design team at its formative stage.