Wood, H and Ashton, P (2009) Factors of complexity in construction projects. In: Dainty, A R J (ed.) Proceedings of 25th Annual ARCOM Conference, 7-9 September 2009, Nottingham, UK.
Abstract
Construction projects are often described as being complex; however, the relationship between project complexity and other key project components such as risk and uncertainty is not widely established. As part of a global research project aimed at establishing the impact of project complexity at the pre construction stage, research has been carried out to investigate this relationship. Interviews with industry experts were conducted to establish a current definition of project complexity in the context of the construction industry as well as to identify the factors of project complexity and other aspects of a project. At this stage in the research the definition has been established and factors have been identified but there is a need to develop a method to measure the effect of these. A function has been developed to show the importance of each factor to the complexity of a project which will aid in future work developing a methodology for measuring complexity and its impact upon projects.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | complexity; project complexity; risk; uncertainty |
| Index terms: | construction industry, project complexity, complexity, construction project, methodology, pre-construction, global research, interview |
| Subjects: | project delivery, data collection methods, industry analysis, systems engineering, organizational theory, production management, professional development, research methods |
| Topics: | Information Management, Engineering Principles, Project Management, Research Practice |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTE |
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