This thesis has its emphasis on collaboration and communication. The motivation for the project comes from the problems that occur in the construction industry. This is, in particu-lar, based on the authors' experiences from their internships at construction companies. The authors have a feeling that collaboration and communication isn’t put to its full use, thus it may impact on the low productivity.
In many years the Danish construction industry has been criticized on many levels - specially the mitigation in relation to productivity. This can be seen both nationally and international-ly, where the productivity in the Danish construction industry is worse compared to other industries, and also compared to construction industry in other countries. For this reason it must be assumed that there is potential for improvement.
Collaboration and communication is the foundation for a great deal of what happens in the construction industry and is therefore probably one of the major factors in the problem con-cerning productivity. This applies to both simple exchange of information, and whether this is practiced fully, and also the way it is done. Other factors may affect both collaboration and communication as well.
From the report's overarching theme, the following fields are examined, as it is assessed that there is potential for improvement in these eight areas: Expectation Polls, Working Environment, Conflicts, Trust, Knowledge Exchange, Project Evaluation, Changes + Respect and Recognition
The areas above is expressed in the eight hypotheses, and analyzed through literature stud-ies and a questionnaire survey. For further analysis the subject conflicts is chosen as the most interesting topic. One of the big problems concerning collaboration and communica-tion is, when it doesn’t work, and conflicts occur. It is not desired that conflicts extinct, since these help to inovate, but it is important to manage conflicts properly and make sure to fo-cus on the project and not the person.
The desired problem to explore reads:
How can good cooperation between the construction industry’s parties in the execution phase be ensured, seen from a construction/project managers point of view in a main or turnkey contract, so that the extent of conflicts between parties can be reduced? And how can the contractor as construction/project manager contribute to solving / coping with these?
The main analysis is the product of the results of the questionnaire survey and from inter-views and case studies. The analysis examines how and why conflicts arise, and the course also focuses on the approaches and tactics when communicating.
The solution presents which approaches and methods may be of assistance in conflict situa-tions. The focus of the solution is how conflicts is kept on the lovest level on “conflict stair-way” so no escalation occurs, and conflict can’t be handled by the involved parties alone. There is explaned various approaches which may prove fruitful, depending on what the indi-vidual is interested in gaining from the conflict.
The implementation suggestions describe how conflict management can be incorporated into construction/project manager’s everyday life. It is also described how successful imple-mentation can take place, including how employees can be involved and thus hopefully be more motivated to change.