Antoniadis, D N; Edum-Fotwe, F T and Thorpe, A (2006) Project reporting and complexity. In: Boyd, D (ed.) Proceedings of 22nd Annual ARCOM Conference, 4-6 September 2006, Birmingham, UK.
Abstract
All project life cycles from the shortest to the longest demand from the project teams some type of reporting. Currently the construction industry perceives reporting as a bureaucratic contractual process that occurs as and when demanded by the Client or the Senior Manager. It does not contribute to the degree that it should to the decision making process and frequently the fast pace of the project makes the reporting process redundant. Reporting, as part of the written form of communication within the project system, is considered as the means of interconnecting the numerous activities that contribute towards the delivery of the project and the actors that are involved in the project. The interconnections or interrelations are established through the report writers (encoders) and the recipients of the reports (decoders) and these are affected by a number of factors. These factors and the number of interconnections introduce complexity. In this paper the authors will review current literature in project reporting and will present examples of reporting features that contribute to project complexity. They will discuss some of the key reporting attributes under the context of complexity and will propose a conceptual approach to minimise complexity driven in projects through reports.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | communication; complexity; information management; project reporting |
| Index terms: | project reporting, manager, life cycle, decision-making process, complexity, project team, project complexity, construction industry |
| Subjects: | professional development, organizational theory, systems engineering, industry analysis, decision analysis, practitioner, value management, project delivery |
| Topics: | Research Practice, Project Management, Engineering Principles, Information Management, Risk Management, Roles and Professions |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCT |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here