In a developing country such as Malaysia, one of the crucial sectors in promoting economic growth is undoubtedly the construction sector. The construction sector has provided an additional alternative for investors to diversify their strategies. However, the construction sector is plagued by ineffective communication management and a lack of understanding, impacting project performance, mainly cost and time. Consequently, research into communication management in the construction industry is critical to increase project performance and the knowledge and awareness among construction practitioners.
The foremost construction practitioners (client, consultant and contractor) are constantly being explored as a body to the communication management in most research. Yet, the contracting parties have a significant association with the construction performance, as the project execution accounted for more than half of the entire project progress. To fill in this gap, this study has therefore been conducted to investigate the effective communication management by the contracting parties has been closely monitored as an optimal strategy for improving project performance. As on that account in this way, this study was conducted to evaluate the importance of effective communication, factors of communication that impact
construction performance, and practical strategies to enhance communication effectiveness in the management of construction projects.
Consequently, a detailed review of relevant literature was conducted to find out the previous studies regarding communication management at the construction site. This had successfully identified 10 reasons, 20 factors of communication and 10 potential strategies. After that, closed-ended question surveys were distributed to collect the primary data from the contracting parties regarding their perceptions on communication management. In this study, the questionnaire survey yielded 120 valid responses from the contracting parties from the Klang Valley region. The reliability test and normality test were adopted to test the data reliability and normality before further statistical analysis.
All in all, the research questions and research objectives were answered and achieved, and the following section gives a summary.
5.2.1 Objective 1
The first objective was to identify the need for effective communication in the construction project delivery while the corresponding research question was, why is good communication significant in the delivery of construction projects?
All of the 10 reasons are deemed to be relevant and the top three significant reasons obtained from the mean test are:
(1) Reduce conflict
(2) Better collaboration between parties (3) Good problem solving
Besides that, he two respondent groups have a strong point of view regarding overall rankings, except for "better collaboration between parties".
This reason has been ranked slightly higher by main contractors because they are the main parties with the most contractual relationships between construction stakeholders such as clients, sub-contractorss, suppliers, and so forth. In addition, there was a contradiction of opinion between the respondent groups regarding the “better long-term relationship” by using the Mann- Whitney U test. It was deduced that the discrepancy was due to the competitive nature of the construction project.
5.2.2 Objective 2
Furthermore, the impact on construction performance due to the factors of communication was investigated through the second research objective with the research question asking, what factors of communication contribute to bad performance? The research findings revealed that the top five significant factors of communication that would significantly impact project performance are:
(1) Lack of effective communication techniques (2) Frequent changes to contract
(3) Lack of mutual respect and trust (4) Slow information flow
(5) Unethical behaviour
Interestingly, the Mann-Whitney U test revealed that all respondent groups do not have heterogeneity of perspectives on the degree of factors of communication that impact project performance. Moreover, factor analysis was adopted to examine the 20 factors of communication and five principal dimensions that explained the factors were revealed. The underlying elements that have developed serve to enhance the current understanding of communication issues in the construction industry and give more profound insights into how to establish effective communication management to improve project performance. The five dimensions were named as:
(1) Unique nature of construction industry (2) Supportive communication management (3) Communication’s knowledge
(4) Organisational gap and technological viewpoint (5) Organisational culture
5.2.3 Objective 3
In addition, the third research objective was to recommend measures to enhance communication effectiveness in the management of construction projects with the related research questions of how to improve communication effectiveness in the management of construction projects? According to the
summarised perspectives from contracting parties, the top three key strategies to enhance effective communication are:
(1) Understand client’s needs
(2) Use of effective communication channel (3) Maintain integrity and trust
Moreover, the Mann-Whitney U test revealed that “use effective communication channel”, and “partnering” found a significant discrepancy between the respondent groups. It is due to the different hierarchy levels between the main contractors and sub-contractors having different perceptions towards the effective strategies to enhance effective communication at the construction site.
Besides, Spearman’s Correlation analysis was conducted to investigate the relationship between the impact of factors of communication and practical strategies to improve the effective communication management at the construction site, and 140 relations were founded within the variables. The findings revealed that lack of mutual respect and trust (F10) is significantly correlated to the ability to maintain integrity and trust (S4). Particularly compared to other outlined measures, it is feasible to conclude that maintaining trust and integrity can dramatically enhance project performance that a lack of trust and respect has harmed.