Information management and sharing practices within a construction project process

Information can be seen as one of the most important assets that an organisation can possess. Utilised correctly, information can allow an organisation irrespective of its industry or domain, to communicate, operate, plan, and make decisions that would ultimately be beneficial to itself, its clients and any other entities that interact with it. Although there are many different types of systems, policies and procedures an organisation could implement to manage and share their information, these are not always used consistently and it ultimately comes down to an individual’s experiences and preferences in handling the information. Through the lens of an information audit, the following study investigated the information management and sharing practices between a team of stakeholders as they cycled through the defects inspection process for a complex, purpose-built, multi-million dollar educational building for a prominent Australian university. It explored how the stakeholders’ experience, personal and enterprise information management practices, tacit and explicit knowledge played a role in the management and sharing of information. Data was collected over an intensive fourteen-week period whereby the researcher made use of a combination of techniques, which included: document analysis, on-site observations and one-on-one interviews. Academic rigour was maintained through the triangulation of the data collection process where experienced researchers who possessed specific domain knowledge in information management and construction were invited to participate in order to validate the primary researcher’s observations. The results from the study revealed several key findings. The first alluded to the fact that although enterprise information management practices were in place to deal with the volume and complexity of the information presented, these practices were often supplemented by the personal information management practices adopted by the stakeholders. The second indicated that stakeholders who possessed greater amounts of experience tended to rely upon the use of their tacit knowledge to manage and share information. Whereas stakeholders who possessed lesser amounts of experience had a tendency towards the use of explicit forms of documentation. Finally, from the perspective of information management practices within the construction industry, the findings suggested that stakeholders perceived information management under the premise of construction management as this was their primary area of domain-specific knowledge. Having a greater understanding of these factors could facilitate a decrease in the number of defects and re-work that often occur in every construction project. If the amount of re-work in construction projects can be reduced or eliminated, then the construction process effectiveness could be improved.