Assessment with 360° Evaluations of Leadership Behavior in Construction Project Managers

Although the literature documents substantial research on enhancing the performance of construction project managers, one central component has been inadequately researched: leadership behaviors. This study of a major construction company had two objectives: (1) to analyze the differences in leadership behaviors between a top performing group and a control group of construction project managers; and (2) to identify the causal influences for those leadership behavior differences. This paper addresses the first objective. Of 335 construction project managers, 40 were identified as top performers and 40 were selected randomly from the remaining 295 to serve as controls. The final two groups (35 top performers and 33 controls who completed the evaluation) were not significantly different in terms of age, gender, type/amount of formal education, or type of project experience. A 360° leadership evaluation found that the top performers had quantifiably better leadership behaviors than the controls. These findings may indicate a need in the construction industry for a comprehensive leadership culture, including leadership training and development programs.     

Developing Construction Professionals of the 21st Century: Renewed Vision for Leadership

The construction industry faces several technical, social, financial, political, and cultural challenges. Developments such as the growing volume of activity, increasing number of active stakeholders, advancement in technology, more intense global competition, and demand for fast-track completion, have created many distinct challenges for construction professionals. Consequently, there is a need to equip the professionals with hard (technical) as well as soft (management and leadership) skills. Construction professionals invariably work in teams and often assume leadership roles as the design manager, construction manager, procurement manager, contracts manager, or project manager. They deal with various project stakeholders and often get involved in sensitive decision making and dispute resolution processes. There is a broad sentiment in the industry that today’s new graduates are not adequately trained to deal with the soft issues on complex construction projects. In particular, academic programs do not prepare professionals with an appropriate blend of hard and soft skills. In this paper, it is argued that in order to develop competent professionals who have strong leadership skills, the universities, the construction industry, professional organizations, and the government need to form a broad collaboration. A conceptual model of this potential collaborative relationship is presented, and specific roles for the universities, the industry, professional bodies, and government in the lifelong professional development of the industry’s human resources are discussed.     

Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Behavior in Construction Executives

The study documented in this paper builds upon the concept of multiple intelligences by examining the need for a greater concept of intelligence within the construction profession. Specifically, the paper documents the study of 130 construction executives for their emotional intelligence (EI) as measured by their emotional quotient. In this study, the writers analyze the relationship between EI and leadership behaviors, specifically examining the relationship between EI and transformational leadership behaviors. The paper outlines the strengths and weaknesses found in executives in relation to developing transformational leadership behaviors. Through the use of established testing procedures, the researchers identify five specific components of EI that are related to transformational leadership behavior at a convincing level of statistical significance. Of particular importance is the identification of interpersonal skills and empathy as key EI behaviors that need additional attention during the development of construction industry executives. The writers contend that these traits are as important as classical traits of intelligence and experience in developing the leaders of tomorrow’s construction organizations.     

Leadership Behaviors in Project Design Offices

Leadership may be defined as the ability to collect a group of people around definite objectives and the achievement of said objectives. An architectural design team needs a leader, and in this paper, the owner of the office is the formal leader. Leadership behaviors of employer architects are directly related to the performance of the design team; therefore, effective leadership is key to a successful design process. Data were collected through a questionnaire on leadership behaviors that was distributed to 40 architects from different design offices in Turkey. Leadership behaviors were gathered into two main groups—delegation of authority and managerial orientation. The significant positive correlations are between authoritarian and task-oriented leadership, and between participative, achievement-oriented and employee-oriented leadership. The position of leader-architects and the age and size of offices are directly related to leadership behaviors. The results show that although leaders of project design teams indicated that participation was important, they actually preferred task-oriented leadership.     

Network Creation and Development for Repetitive-Unit Projects

Network scheduling is typically performed in three phases—network creation, analysis, and development. Although the critical path method (CPM) constitutes a well-established logic in network analysis, human intuition and experience are required for the creation and development of the network. Because of this, a variety of alternative CPM networks can be created in scheduling the same project. The use of the most desirable network can lead to a considerable reduction in the duration of the projects. This can be achieved by accurately identifying activities and linking them in an appropriate manner. Many researchers insisted that network scheduling lacks efficiency in scheduling repetitive-unit projects. Because of this, many scheduling methods have been developed to model such types of projects. However, most are not network based and require a large amount of input data, although most leading scheduling software remains network based and field engineers desire networklike forms of the schedule. In an effort to overcome this limitation, this paper presents a procedure for creating and developing networks for repetitive-unit projects. This network-based model incorporates a two-dimensional arrangement of activities, resource-space coordinates, for ease in creating a network and optimizes the activity linkage, thus resulting in the most desirable results. The model is applied to a typical repetitive-unit project to illustrate the use and capabilities of the model. The model can serve as an aid for inexperienced schedulers in creating a network as well as its optimization. An experienced scheduler can also check the desirability of his or her own created network via the use of this model.     

Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Styles in Construction Project Management

Human factors are of paramount importance to the success of projects. Although a lot of studies have been carried out on human factors in project management, not much research has been done on emotional intelligence (EI). Studies have shown that EI is beneficial to both the individual and the organization. The benefits of EI to project management were investigated in terms of the style of leadership. The study was conducted in Thailand by interviewing project managers and engineers (PMEs); and client representatives. The results showed that EI affected leadership behavior of the project leader. PMEs with higher EI tend to use open communication and proactive leadership styles. It is also found that EI generates delegating, open communication, and proactive behavior, which can bring positive outcomes to the organization.     

Management Thinking in the Earned Value Method System and the Last Planner System

Management theory has been neglected in the construction industry, which has rather focused on best practices. This paper investigates the theories implicit in two prevalent project control systems: the earned value method (EVM) and the last planner system (LPS). The study introduces two fundamental and competing conceptualizations of management: managing by means (MBM) and managing by results (MBR). The EVM is found to be based on MBR. However, project control based on MBR is argued to be inappropriate for managing at the operational level where tasks are highly interdependent. The LPS is found to be based on the MBM view. The empirical evidence from literature and case study suggested that the MBM view is more appropriate to manage works when it is applied to the operation level where each task is highly interdependent.     

Developing a Complexity Measure for Project Schedules

Several factors contribute to the complexity of project schedules, including the number of activities, the level of detail, and the shape of the project network. This paper presents a measure that assesses the complexity of project schedules in terms of the connectivity of the activities. Unlike similar complexity measures, the proposed complexity measure does not consider redundant relationships in the project’s schedule. In addition, the measure is expressed as a percentage and therefore has the advantage of being intuitively understand by project managers. The measure considers the degree of interrelationships between the activities in the project’s schedule. The measure has been implemented in a computerized tool to help managers assess the complexity of their projects. The tool is developed as an add-in to popular commercial scheduling software like MS Project.     

Project Time-Cost Trade-Off Optimization by Maximal Flow Theory

Time and cost are related on projects. Project managers are frequently required to make time-cost trade-offs. With the complexity of large projects and the schedule impact of time-cost modifications, decisions on time-cost optimization are usually done on a hit or miss basis. This technical note presents an innovative technique that can be used to automate and optimize the time-cost trade-off process. The technique is based on “maximum flow–minimal cut” theory. The method is an improvement over current practice.     

Factors Affecting the Success of a Construction Project

Different researchers have tried to determine the factors for a successful project for a long time. Lists of variables have been abounded in the literature, however, no general agreement can be made. The aim of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework on critical success factors (CSFs). Seven major journals in the construction field are chosen to review the previous works on project success. Five major groups of independent variables, namely project-related factors, project procedures, project management actions, human-related factors, and external environment are identified as crucial to project success. Further study on the key performance indicators (KPIs) is needed to identify the causal relationships between CSFs and KPIs. The causal relationships, once identified, will be a useful piece of information to implement a project successfully.     

Achieving Lean Design Process: Improvement Methodology

An improvement methodology is proposed for the design process in construction projects. Based on concepts and principles of lean production, the methodology considers the design process as a set of three different models—conversion, flow, and value. Four stages are necessary to produce improvements and changes—(1) diagnosis/evaluation; (2) changes implementation; (3) control; and (4) standardization. The methodology suggests the application of seven tools in accordance to specific needs (detected and desired) on five potential areas of improvement—client, administration, project, resources, and information. Results of an application included an increase of 31% in the share of value adding activities, 44% reduction of unit errors in the products, up to 58% decrease of waiting times in the process, and an expansion of the utilization in the cycle times. In this manner, not only did the efficiency and effectiveness of internal engineering products improve, but also the whole project, by improving one of the main suppliers of construction.     

Multiperspective Approach to Exploring Comprehensive Cause Factors for Interface Issues

The severity of interface issues and the necessity of interface management (IM) have not received adequate recognition from both industry and academia. The understanding of interface issues is still insufficient and the proposed or employed measures are unilateral, which result in unsatisfactory IM performance in construction projects. After establishing IM’s importance in the construction industry, this paper presents a multiperspective approach that systematically explores comprehensive cause factors for various interface issues. From six interrelated perspectives, namely people/participants, methods/processes, resources, documentation, project management, and environment, hierarchical cause factors are identified and presented in a structured way. These cause factors are further converted into a series of interface management and control elements that allow for the development of an object data model and a systematic model-based IM strategy dealing with all interface issues. The multiperspective approach outperforms other research methods that analyze selected interface issues in a loose and isolated way. The findings contribute a holistic view of what causes interface issues as well as provide a solid theoretical basis for practitioners and researchers to seek all-around IM solutions.     

Leadership Flexibility Space

A model is proposed for evaluating leadership capability, which is observed on a grid called the leadership flexibility space. Questionnaires were prepared and responses were received from engineers of the Public Works Department (PWD) for an applied study of their organization. The model evaluates two basic parameters: (1) decision making capability and (2) information input by group during decision making. Five types of leaders are evaluated: consultative autocrats, complete autocrats, consensus managers, impoverished managers, and active managers. Results showed that 70% of resident engineers/area engineers and over 46% of project engineers could be categorized as falling in the impoverished manager’s zone. These percentages might be slightly reduced if certain gray areas are granted to the zones; however, any such impact is not significant. Demographic evaluations are made for age group, number of projects handled in one’s career, number of projects handled at PWD, years of experience, years with PWD, years of design experience, marital status, and family encouragement. Among other findings, it was discovered that older engineers, and those who had handled more than 20 projects at PWD, tended to fall in the impoverished manager’s zone more than other engineers. Remedial measures are suggested.     

Leadership and Cultures of Lithuanian and Dutch Construction Firms

This paper addresses both firm cultures and top leadership styles in construction firms in a West and an East-European country, the Netherlands and Lithuania. Human Resource managers filled in valid questionnaires during an interview on the premises of 16 construction firms in each country. The significant differences between the two countries pertain predominantly to the desired firm cultures and leadership styles. Construction firms in Lithuania strive toward more job autonomy, a more external orientation, an improved human resource orientation, a stronger interdepartmental orientation, and more of an improvement orientation in general. The Dutch respondents seek firm-culture improvements only in terms of a more external and interdepartmental orientation. Concerning desired transformational and transactional leadership, both leadership styles are significantly more desired by Lithuanian construction firms. Dutch top managers appear to rely already on transformational leadership with some transactional style components. Lithuanian managers have started to rely more on transformational leadership, whereas transactional leadership remains important in Lithuanian construction firms. Combining transformational and transactional leadership styles is highly recommended by current leadership research. Also, learning from “the best of both worlds” in terms of firm culture is recommended.     

Model for Fostering Trust and Building Relationships in China’s Construction Industry

Trust is an underlying psychological condition that can cause cooperation or risk-taking. Trust is considered as a predominant feature and a central mechanism in business transactions, especially among Chinese. Trust-based relationships create advantages in conducting business such as lowering cost, shortening duration, and improving performance. Indispensable conditions for trust to arise are relationships and risks. Different risks surface as a result of different levels of relationships. Sustained trust is therefore fostered by various means to counterbalance those risks. In order to assess the links between distinct trust-related features, a model is constructed and tested through a questionnaire survey in China. The findings generally support the model in terms of explaining the dominant relationships, inherent risks, and trust-fostering tools. It is recommended that firms adopt the refined model and utilize successful practices verified in this paper to foster trust and relationships and in turn secure project success.     

Multiproject Planning and Resource Controls for Facility Management

Facility managers face the challenges of managing many different types of small, geographically dispersed construction projects. Depending on the complexity and distribution of projects, the time required to prepare for production consumes a large percentage of the total time required to complete the job. Increasing crews’ productive hours is a key objective when planning multiproject schedules. Existing methods, however, lack the effective means to explicitly model, analyze, and optimize resource utilization for these multiple concurrent projects. As a result, few facility managers fully exploit the potential to better manage their often limited budget and resources. This paper presents an explicit model of the mobilization requirements of multiple crews performing a variety of different activities over a geographic space. The model allows the facility manager to explicitly investigate the impact of crew composition, crew specialization, and depot locations. Using work rule decisions regarding alternative crew allocations, facility managers may dynamically allocate resources to optimize resources and to complete projects in a minimum amount of time. To verify and validate this new model, a computerized system, called FIRS (Facility/Infrastructure Resource Scheduler), was created to analyze the multiproject resource plans with data from two military organizations and a university campus. FIRS utilizes a new genetic algorithm that was developed specifically to work with multiproject scheduling. Using FIRS, facility managers can develop and test alternative crew allocations based on the qualifications of the crews available and the type of operation being performed.     

Leader Orientation of Construction Site Managers

This article briefly reviews the ways in which leadership is conceptualized and taken into consideration in the context of construction projects. Data are presented that derive from a study of 43 site managers in England and Wales and that take Fiedler's Contingency Model as the point of departure. The results indicate that variations in leader orientation have an impact on project effectiveness and that this relationship is contingent upon a number of factors, including project length, value, and the extent of reliance on sub-contract labor. In particular, the results indicate that an emphasis on relationships in site managers' leader orientations is more likely to enhance project performance than an emphasis on tasks. The implications of these findings for the study of construction management are examined.     

Measuring Effectiveness of Materials Management for Industrial Projects

A measurement of the effectiveness of the material management process is needed in order to analyze problems, suggest solutions, and assess the impact of modifications to the process. Such measurement is also required for any benchmarking effort. Research was conducted to apply a set of key effectiveness measures on 17 ongoing industrial projects. This research showed that most of the measures were easily obtainable, but some were difficult to obtain. Research also showed that it was possible to obtain the highest score on all measures, indicating that best practice in industry is achieving highly successful results. Most of the projects appeared to have a highly effective materials management process, as indicated by the fact that median values of these measures were much closer to the best values than those of the mean values. A utilization plan for the measurement of the effectiveness of the material management process is presented.     

Framework of Success Criteria for Design/Build Projects

Success has always been the ultimate goal of every activity, and a construction project is no exception. Due to the ambiguous definition of project success and the different perceptions of participants toward this concept, it may be difficult to tell whether a project is successful as there is a lack of consensus. Time, cost, and quality have long been the success criteria used to evaluate the performance of a construction project. However, such a list has been criticized as not being comprehensive. Even studies of the project success of a particular construction method, such as the design/build procurement system, are lacking in most previous research considering construction projects in general. This paper sets out to establish criteria for project success for a design/build project in construction, first by identifying relevant measures of project success for a construction project in past studies, with particular emphasis on design/build projects, and then by establishing a comprehensive assessment framework for project success for design/build projects. The significant impacts on the construction field of study, in terms of educational value and practical use, are also presented. With little research in the project success of design/build projects, the writers suggest a research focus for the study.     

Owner–Contractor Work Structures: Process Approach

This paper describes a process to assist project managers, within owner companies, define work relationships between owners and their contractors for capital project development, and execution. The owner–contractor work structure process was developed by the Construction Industry Institute as a step-by-step process for making rational decisions about the most appropriate owner–contractor work structure for capital projects. A work structure is described by a set of project competencies and the extent of involvement of the owner and contractor in performing, leading, and/or providing input with respect to those project competencies. The process is described using a formal process modeling technique. Three case studies, conducted to validate the owner–contractor work structure process, are discussed. The results from these case studies suggested some basic changes to the process that would enhance its use in practice. A modified owner–contractor work structure process is then presented.