Ranking and classification of construction coordination activities in Indian projects

The efforts of contractors, consultants and owners need to be appropriately coordinated in large civil engineering projects, whose success can be defined in terms of compliance to schedule, economy in cost, adherence to quality, and non-occurrence of disputes. Based on the hypothesis that coordination activities affect the different dimensions of project success differently, and that different stakeholders prioritize the activities differently, a questionnaire survey covering senior Indian construction professionals was carried out. For this a list of 59 coordination activities influencing successful completion of a construction project was drawn up. These coordination activities were ranked for the four success dimensions using statistical tools on the responses received. 'Regular monitoring of critical path activities'; 'monitoring the budget on all activities and taking corrective action'; 'application of sound technical practices'; 'implementation of all contractual commitments' are the most important coordination activities corresponding to schedule, cost, quality and no-dispute performance criteria, respectively. Results show that project coordination issues can be addressed by attending to essentially the four broad groups of coordination activities - resource handling, planning, team building and contract implementation. Findings presented in the paper could interest construction professionals and help them identify and concentrate on important coordination activities.