AN ANALYTICAL STUDY OF THE KEY BARRIERS IN CONSTRUCTION PROJECT COORDINATION

The complexity of the nature of construction makes it one of the most adverse businesses that has ever existed. Construction projects have often suffered from high fragmentation, large waste, poor productivity, cost and time overruns, and conflicts and disputes for a long time. Thus, many new and innovative management systems in construction are introduced such as partnering, joint venture, alliances, supply chain management, enterprise resource planning, just in time and total quality management to meet these challenges. However, these construction management systems are nothing without coordination, a vital management principle and activity, which provides best cooperation among team members. Although coordination plays crucial functions throughout the building process especially during the design and construction stages, some failures in construction projects adopting coordination principles are still observed. Hence, a study is carried out to investigate the key barriers of coordination in construction project. Through the literature review, five groups of key barriers including the nature of construction, traditional contract agreement, construction participants, characteristics of organization and the management approach are grouped. A detailed study is carried out by collecting data and analyzing them. Suggestions are given to better implementation of the management principles.