Managing construction project conflicts: a different approach to resolution.

• Author: Owens, Tom
• Position: Column

Oxford Fellow Richard Pascale and two management consultant colleagues wrote a best-selling book about complexity theory and the management of organizations titled "Surfing the Edge of Chaos." That title also could be an apt description of managing a construction project.

Reduced to its essence, successful prosecution of a construction project involves creating a plan for the project and then following--and getting a diverse group of others to follow--the plan. It certainly sounds simple, but the initiated know that it is not. As the project is planned and as it proceeds, conflict among participants in the project almost always arises. These conflicts can be beneficial--when they lead to elegant solutions to problems that arise; or destructive--when they lead to disputes that must be resolved through some sort of adversary proceeding. The processes used by the participants to manage conflicts can determine the success or failure of the project. This article suggests a non-traditional approach to managing these conflicts, based on considerations of systems theory and complexity theory rather than the legal rights and power relationships of the parties involved in the conflict.

A CONSTRUCTION PROJECT VIEWED AS A SYSTEM OF INTERACTING SYSTEMS

It helps to conceptualize a construction project as a system of interacting systems. An electrical subcontractor is a system. Likewise, a municipal building inspection department and the architectural/engineering firm that designed and is overseeing the project are systems. A construction project--itself a system--involves a diverse array of systems that are regularly interacting with other systems involved in the project.

A traditional approach to managing construction projects views these interacting systems as parts of a machine, each with an assigned function. Planning, designing, managing and executing projects proceeds in accordance with this machine metaphor. Managers operating with the machine metaphor anticipate that each "part" of the machine will perform its assigned function in accordance with the design and the overall plan for the project. But, as the old saying goes and we all know: the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

A different metaphor for conceptualizing a construction project can be called the living system metaphor. Each entity involved in the project--A&E firm, general contractor, subcontractors, government--is viewed as a living system, functioning in the same way as...