Driving Construction Project Success through Neutral, Trust-Based Collaboration

Dexter Bachelder
Aconex VP Americas

Few would argue with the proposition that in the construction industry, it’s difficult to achieve the level of collaboration necessary to consistently complete large-scale construction projects on time and on budget. These projects typically require the participation of hundreds of players in an intricate network of relationships, and tasks must be completed in an exact order with pinpoint timing. The problem is that working together efficiently in order to pull off this remarkable feat requires a level of trust usually developed only within a single organization or team, not among so many diverse companies with so many different agendas. Is there a way you can promote trust and enable true collaboration among all these different companies? Yes, but it requires understanding the forces working against trust and then developing a collaboration strategy and mechanism that will work for all stakeholders in a project.

The Forces Working Against Trust

Three fundamental characteristics of the construction industry today undercut trust, impede collaboration, and frequently create adversarial relationships.

Short-term relationships – Because of the way large-scale projects are contracted, rarely, if ever, do the same stakeholders work together consistently over many years and across different projects. Instead, cost, location, and availability dictate the particular players on each project, and it is often the case that partners on one project are competitors on another. Fear over losing future competitive advantage prevents the development of trust, and this makes firms reluctant to share information with each other in a way that promotes effective collaboration.

Organizational and cultural differences – In addition to sometimes being competitors, many stakeholders in construction projects are typically highly specialized organizations. They have very different work processes, systems, technology platforms and management practices, and their labor forces comprise different cultures, languages, and geographies. To work together efficiently, the firms must eliminate all these differences as barriers to trust and collaboration.

High-pressure, high-stakes – In every large-scale construction project, there are thousands of contingencies, with a very high and constant risk that significant problems will develop to put pressure on already shrinking margins. Add in the increasing scrutiny by regulatory bodies, and it’s easy to see why clashes between defensive stakeholders can quickly develop. Many engineering and construction firms have responded by adding costly layers of people, processes, and systems dedicated to ensuring transparency, accountability and compliance, but this has put even greater pressure on margins.

As a result of these forces, any instinct to share information and collaborate is suppressed, leading to an increasing number of misunderstandings and, frequently, open hostility. This in turn results in a proliferation of change orders, late payments, and rework. Arbitration, litigation and settlement payments can all increase the financial burden, and legal disputes can damage reputations and cause long-term bitterness, eliminating the possibility of future business opportunities. In the end, no one wins under the current system. Yes, many companies survive and some even thrive, but every organization has the potential to increase efficiency, productivity, and profits if trust and collaboration were to become the norm.

Is Technology the Answer?

 Many businesses in the construction industry understand the need for trust and that the building of trust requires transparency into actual behavior—the ability of participants to share information and validate the work of others without the fear of being taken advantage of or losing a competitive edge. The most effective way to develop this transparency is through the use of an online collaboration system, but a substantial gap exists between the widespread recognition of the need for collaboration and the low (but increasing) level of adoption of collaboration tools.

Even project owners who believe that project collaboration can help avoid disputes and miscommunication have been reticent to implement it.  They may view the software as too complicated or unfit for the systems they have in place.  On the contrary, most online collaboration solutions work with existing systems.  This includes dedicated tools for costing or scheduling, in-house document management systems like Documentum, or an enterprise content management server like Sharepoint.

The construction industry has been generally slow to adopt new technologies, but this alone cannot explain the resistance to adopting project collaboration technology, which offers so many benefits. The August 2007 edition of the Elsevier journal Automation in Construction, which included results of a study about the introduction of collaborative technology in a construction consortium, uncovered the real problem. Users didn’t trust the system or the significant changes in culture it was creating. Instead of sharing information, they began to withhold it. Eventually, their lack of willingness to accept the new framework interfered with coordination and destabilized their projects.

An online collaboration platform will only deliver value to a project when used widely and used well.

Neutrality Is the Key to Adoption and Trust

The key to implementing online collaboration that works for all stakeholders is neutrality. Consider some recent large, complex public and public-private projects where the RFP included specifications for a project collaboration platform that’s operated by a neutral third party—not owned by a single stakeholder in the project ecosystem. Such a platform creates “neutral ground,” so each participant has complete control over how, when, and by whom their sensitive information is accessed. This is critical to developing trust in the system and encouraging more companies and individual employees to use it. In fact, the owners and builders mandating the use of such systems have discovered that the level of control and trust enabled by the neutral ground quickly allows stakeholders to stop competing and start collaborating. It also enables a higher level of accountability required for high-stakes projects and ensuring regulatory compliance.

I’ve also gathered anecdotal evidence from several firms suggesting that stipulating a neutral platform is especially helpful in joint ventures and similar structures, and that having project data controlled by an independent third party has proven invaluable in resolving disputes.

Ensuring User Adoption

While neutrality removes key obstacles to the adoption of a collaboration platform by firms, it does not ensure adoption by individual users. The only way that users will see that the system can support their specific workflows and communication needs is by offering training and support to all partners in a project, especially during the “ramp-up” phase. Such training builds confidence in the system and ensures consistent and optimal use of it. It’s also vital that the solution provider demonstrate that the platform is reliable, secure, and continuously managed, ensuring that all records will remain private and available at all times. Without easy access to training and a high level of confidence in the reliability and security of the system, adoption rates may never reach the critical mass required for collaboration to have the hoped-for positive impact on projects.

Successful adoption cannot be measured only during the initial deployment. Users can easily revert to old habits if use of the system isn’t reinforced regularly, and new organizations often need to be brought into the system during later stages of a project. Because of this, usage needs to be monitored throughout the life of the project. Having already established its neutrality and commitment to all participants with regard to the collaboration tool, the third-party operator must also offer fair and equal treatment in the areas of training, service and ongoing monitoring.

Finding a Service Provider: Ask the Right Questions

When you decide to build trust through an online collaboration platform, make sure you ask the right questions—and consider sharing the questions and detailed answers with the other stakeholders that will partner with you on future projects:

• As a neutral third party, are you fully independent of any construction and engineering firms?
• Do you support broad construction and engineering industry-specific project management and communication needs?
• Do you provide the appropriate levels of security to protect against external threats and maintain confidentiality of each organization’s information?
• Do you offer fair and equal treatment of all stakeholders—clients, architects, engineers, project managers, suppliers, contractors, and facilities managers—no matter their role, size or level of usage, throughout the life of the project?
• Do you protect the rights of each stakeholder to ownership of their own information?
• Do you perform regular health checks of project usage and recommend process improvements when needed?

Maximizing the Return

An independent 2006 study, undertaken by UK firm Benchmark Research, surveyed collaboration technology users from 195 companies and found that 96 percent of collaboration technology users believe it has benefited their business. More specifically, 98 percent of users felt they benefited from having information held centrally; 90 percent said collaboration technology enabled geographically dispersed teams to work together more effectively; and 86 percent reported an overall improvement in communication. Interestingly, 74 percent of asset owners said they have a distinct preference for working with contractors that had experience of using collaboration technology. This indicated that these systems not only improve productivity and streamline collaboration, but also improve inter-company relations.

You cannot build trust among engineering and construction industry partners without a neutral collaboration platform built around the principle of fair treatment for all. By linking project partners on a single, secure platform, you can encourage stakeholders to trust the collaboration system with even their most sensitive documents. This, in turn, makes their information more accessible and drives even greater adoption. Finally, through increasing the adoption by more stakeholders, all parties can gain greater control over schedules, quality, and costs, minimizing the inherent risks and maximizing the return to each participant. The result is that every stakeholder now has the opportunity to increase efficiency, productivity, and profits.

About the Author

Dexter Bachelder is the vice president and general manager of Aconex’s Americas operations. Mr. Bachelder has been working with construction and engineering companies for over 12 years in designing and delivering technology solutions, and has been engaged on some the largest and most complex projects around the world.  He can be reached at dbachelder@aconex.com.

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