Leading the project team in construction projects through team development stages

Abstract

The importance of teams in construction is an issue of international relevance. For example, several influencing government reports in UK have highlighted this. However, effective teams cannot be created at a stroke, and, they need to be managed effectively to foster successful teamwork and team performance. Construction project management literature is heavily targeted on offering tools and techniques to manage a project to achieve the set project goals. However, it is very superficial on detailing how the construction project team should be led towards the project goals. Drawing on case studies conducted in Sri Lankan construction industry, this paper reports on how project managers lead construction project teams when they go through forming, storming, norming and performing stages. The findings revealed that due to the independent nature of construction project team and mostly the construction project managers acting on behalf of the client rather than the project leader, their leadership role deviated from a general project leader. More case studies are required to compare and contest these findings in different settings. However, since the findings were quite similar across the three case studies, which had different procurement arrangements (separated and design and Build) and different types of clients (public and private), it is expected similar trend would be observed in other construction projects.