Grasping project complexity in large engineering projects: The TOE (Technical, Organizational and Environmental) framework

This paper presents a framework for characterising project complexity in large engineering projects, which can be used to adapt the front-end development phase of engineering projects to the particular complexity. Recently, a large number of project complexity related papers were published, demonstrating the evident importance of “complexity” in current project management research. However, no generally accepted framework is available to support the characterising and understanding of project complexity that appreciates the richness of project complexity in large engineering projects. Therefore the TOE (Technical, Organizational, and Environmental) framework was developed, based on a literature survey building upon existing work and on new empirical work consisting of eighteen interviews about six projects in the process engineering industry. As a result of an inductive approach, this framework presents the elements that contribute to project complexity from a theoretical as well as a practical perspective. The framework can be used to assess the complexity of engineering projects, and subsequently adapt the front-end development phase of projects in order to better manage the complexity of the project.