Factors Enabling Collaboration in Management of Risks in Construction Projects: Stakeholders Perspective in Tanzania

Abstract

Increasingly effective management of risks in construction projects demand collaboration among contractual parties. This is evidenced by growth of literatures advocating for collaboration as an effective means to improve risk management in construction projects. Consequently different factors to enable collaboration have been suggested in literature. 24 enabling factors were identified through literature review. This paper evaluates these suggested factors with the purpose of identifying those which are critical for successful collaboration. The study then conducted questionnaire survey and pilot studies in construction industry to establish perception of practitioners on the enabling factors suggested by literature review. A questionnaire was sent out to 33 owners, 21 contractors, and 17 consultants. 14 factors were perceived to be critical enabling factors for collaboration. It was found that mutual trust, open communication, skills and Competence, commitment and information sharing among key project participants are highly perceived by respondents to be critical to successful collaboration in construction risk management Keyword: Critical Enabler Factor, Risk Management, Collaboration, Construction Project 1.0 INTRODUCTION A construction project usually involves a significant amount of work and a large number of participants; hence some sort of management and administrative framework is required to organize work and all of those who are involved. Much of the traditional project management (PM) literature has its focus on coping with risk and uncertainty in order to successfully deliver a project according to plan (Flanagan and Norman, 1993; Zwikael and Smyrk, 2015). Parties engaged in risk and uncertainty management (the project owner and/or representative, the design team and the project delivery entity) have usually done so separately and in isolation (Krystyna, 2015). The nature of complexity and competitive environment within the construction industry has proven these traditional approaches ineffective and led to increasing need collaborative approach. The management approach where all key players in any construction project in a multidisciplinary team at both project management and design implementation levels collaboratively manage risks. This paper presents the factors which are considered critical to enable the required collaboration to haven. It uses literature to identify factors which have been empirically established to enable successful collaboration in management of risk in construction projects. It then discusses how these were rated by stakeholders in Tanzania. The paper eventually ranks these factors and 14 enabling factors were rated to be critical for enabling collaboration in management of risks. 2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW Baiden et al. (2006) and Forques and Koskela (2009) state that the construction industry is composed of several types of organisations and groups of individuals with different characteristics, different cultures and style of management but with complementary skills and expertise needed for the delivery of a project. Alshawi and Faraj (2002) assert that a typical construction project involves the collaboration of a number of organizations, which are brought together for the duration of the project to form the 'project team'. Effective collaboration between the client, design team and contractor has been shown to enhance addressing risk and uncertainty through improving the dynamic capabilities of project participants (Davies et al, 2016). From a whole project perspective, co-coordinating and integrating different project parties is the most important task for project success. This can be facilitated by close and effective collaboration. Klemetti (2006) has identified collaboration as a key to construction success, but indicated that detailed methods of measuring collaboration performance are usually missing. This paper refers to critical enablers as factors that contribute to making it possible for collaboration in management of risk in construction projects. In general, collaboration and teamwork studies in construction have looked into various factors that enable collaboration between project team members, such as trust, team flexibility and seamless operation (Ibrahim et al