MANAGING PROJECT CHANGE IN CONSTRUCTION:

THE DEPENDENCY FRAMEWORK

A. Fleming, S. Senaratne, M. Sexton, M. Sun*, G. Aouad

Research Institute for the Built and Human Environment, School of
Construction & Property Management, University of Salford, Salford, M7
1NU
* Faculty of the Built Environment, The University of West of England
E-mail: [email protected]

ABSTRACT: Unplanned changes during the construction phase of projects are inevitable,
with potentially adverse implications for project cost, time and quality. Rework that is due to
changes can cost between 10-15% of a contract’s value. By managing these changes more
effectively, these disruptive effects can be minimised or even avoided. This paper reports on
ongoing research, which is developing and testing a toolkit to guide construction practitioners
in managing change in construction projects. The Process Protocol Framework is used to
contextualise the research and is extended to capture the complete change process, as
presented in the “dependency framework”.

Keywords – Project Change, Process Protocol, Dependency Framework

1 INTRODUCTION

According to the Egan Report (1998) one third of major construction clients are dissatisfied
with how their construction projects are being delivered to them by the UK construction
industry. They are unhappy with contractor performance in three key areas; cost, quality and
time. Consultants also drew criticism in the areas of team co-ordination, design and
innovation, timeliness, reliability and value for money. Couple these factors with the statistic
that fifty percent of construction projects suffer from delay and over expenditure and that
over thirty percent of completed projects have quality defects and the client’s have a
reasonable expectation that the industry will take measures to improve. Change is a major
contributor to the problems raised above, in the construction industry.

2 BACKROUND RESEARCH STUDY

The background study identified the research problem; that disruptive direct and indirect
consequences of project change require effective management methods. Lazarus & Clifton
(2001 p10) view construction project change as “an alteration or a modification to the pre-
existing conditions, assumptions or requirements.” These project changes are the additions,
deletions or revisions within the scope of a project contract that alter the cost, duration (CII
1994) or quality. Change management in construction is central to the project management
process.
The CII (1994) and Lazarus and Clifton (2001) both state that unplanned changes
occurring during the design and construction phase, may cause time, cost and quality
deviations that directly hinder project success. For example when change results in rework
there is often a direct cost, which can amount to 10-15% of a contract’s value (Brurati et al,
1992; Love & Li, 2000). An indirect manifestation of change may result in claims and
disputes that interrupt schedules, cash flow and lower team moral (Cox et al, 1999).

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Similarly, it was revealed by Hanna et al (1998) that as change orders increase productivity
declines.
Effective change management allows change to take place in a controlled way so that
viable alternatives are identified, developed and their impact assessed before implementation.
Construction decision-making takes place in a team setting. Therefore effective project
change management should not rely solely on the project manager; it should integrate input
from all of the relevant team players.
Previous studies have attempted to approach construction project change management
from different perspectives. The approaches and work of the CII (1994) and Lazarus &
Clifton, (2001) are significant. They provide best practice guidelines for project change
management that are based on five principles:
ƒ The anticipation of change
ƒ Recognising change
ƒ The evaluation of change
ƒ Resolving change
ƒ Learning from change
These change management systems introduce proactive and reactive measures. When
these measures are incorporated into a design and construction framework they should
mitigate the disruptive effects of change. However, the success of these guidelines depends
on how effectively the project team communicates and collaborates during change events and
how well the systems are in place for effective management.
Other studies have considered change management from a process management
perspective. The Generic Design and Construction Process Protocol (Kagioglou et al, 1998)
considered the function of change management to be “responsible for effectively
communicating project changes to all relevant activity zones and the development and
operation of the legacy archive”. Change information is managed as part of the phase review
process and is deposited into a central project information repository that is accessible by the
project team. However at present the Process Protocol change process does not provide a
mechanism for capturing and considering the tacit knowledge and experiences of team
members gained during change events. Further, the level of granularity of the Process
Protocol change process is not fine enough to consider change events in terms of cause, effect
and characteristic at different stages in a project cycle.
Drawing from these previous approaches to project change management, it is evident that
existing solutions only address the problem partially. To reach effective construction project
change management, it is important to first gain a complete understanding of the change
process throughout a project cycle and second to suggest solutions combining both hard and
soft issues of team collaboration and knowledge management.

3 MANAGING CHANGE AND DEPENDENCY (MCD) RESEARCH PROJECT

The Managing Change and Dependency in Construction project was initiated to address the
issues discussed in section 2. The project is funded by the EPSRC and is being undertaken
collaboratively between The University of Salford, The University of The West of England
and Loughborough University.

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3.1 Aim and Objectives of the Project

The aim of this research project is to examine the way in which all of the project elements
(for example human resources, design and delivery) are co-ordinated towards managing
change and to propose a more flexible project co-ordination system that supports the total
change management process. In the course of achieving this, the project will consider both
hard and soft issues covering the change process. To achieve the research aim the project’s
objectives will be to:
ƒ Identify the key task dependency variables for the change process
ƒ Identify strategies adopted in practice
ƒ Propose an integrated project coordination system to deal with changes

3.2 Literature Review

The research commenced with a comprehensive literature review of the issues and
implications of unplanned change in construction. The team then captured and represented
the attributes of the change process in a taxonomy. Internal workshops validated and grouped
the elements of the change process as follows:
1. The nature of change in terms of scale, timing and need.
2. The root cause of change in terms of project specific, organisational and wider
environmental causes.
3. The consequence of change in terms of direct and indirect effects.
4. The tools and techniques of change management in terms of proactive and reactive
measures.
In order to sort and structure the research material relating to these four elements, it was
necessary to develop the dependency framework. This framework provides an effective way
of presenting a process view of the four elements of the change process.

3.3 Empirical Study

The research team chose to conduct exploratory interviews and workshops with industry
practitioners to develop, refine and test the framework. For validation and to satisfy project
objectives, in-depth studies of real life change events are being performed. Construction
projects were identified according to criteria drawn up as part of the case study methodology.
Selection criteria included projects that have escalated in cost, suffered from delays and/or
high degrees of rework. A unit of analysis was defined as “construction projects”.
Project team interviews and project document reviews were the selected data collection
methods. The data collected is reviewed and the interim findings are shared with the project
team. The interviews have been designed to examine:
ƒ The decision-making process during change events.
ƒ The recording of change event information.
ƒ The cause and effect of change.
ƒ The measurement of change effectiveness.
ƒ Project control methods.
ƒ Specific techniques used for decision-making.
ƒ Attitudes towards an integrated system to deal with changes that occur.

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 It is anticipated by the research team that consideration of the above points should help to
assess the impact, identify problems during change, identify key task dependencies,
investigate different means for expected changes, simulate the problems arising from changes
on projects and finally develop a mechanism to synchronise the decision making of a project
team when dealing with change and rework.

4 THE MANAGING CHANGE TOOLKIT

An interim result of the research has been the conceptualisation of a change management
toolkit that incorporates and contextualises the dependency framework, see Fig. 1.

Construction Processes
Project Management

Knowledge Module Support Tools Module

Generic Change Process Workflow

Project

Dependency Framework

Level 1 Change
Project
Prediction
Level 2

Figure 1. Change Management Toolkit

The Change Management Toolkit as illustrated in Figure 1 provides the concept for the
integration of a suite of components that are being developed as part of the Managing Change
and Dependency research project.
The toolkit’s knowledge module contains a high level generic change process that
interfaces with the dependency framework to identify, evaluate and approve changes. This
knowledge is interrogated and manipulated by the project management support tools. These
comprise a change prediction application that assesses the likelihood of changes occurring
and a workflow application to assess the effect of change on the project programme. To
enable users to visualise the toolkit’s place within the design and construction process, an
interface has been defined with the Process Protocol.
The Process Protocol presents a generic process for design and construction. The
Protocol’s processes were reviewed and a suitable interface was identified within the standard
group processes. These are not phase dependent and are applied at the start, during and end of

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a phase depending on when the project requires them. The interfacing processes occur during
the phase and are referred to as “ongoing phase, standard group” and consider deviations
from the project phase and programme, their causes, and impact. This Process Protocol
Framework is used to contextualise the research and is extended to capture the complete
change process, as presented in the “Dependency Framework”.

5 THE DEPENDENCY FRAMEWORK

The Dependency Framework (subsequently referred to as The Framework) has been

developed to consider the cause, consequence and project characteristics in greater detail. The
Framework enables users to produce a rich description of the change event, see Figure 2. It is
suggested that project management activities at all phases of the construction process will
benefit. Especially since research has shown that projects with a high degree of change,
experience lower productivity (Ibbs 1994). Therefore by using The Framework to consider
and manage change an improvement in productivity should be achieved.

Change Event

Post Change Review

External Indirect
Consequence
Cause Consequence
Organisational
Direct
Consequence
Project

Project and Change Characteristics

Project Scope, Project Change

Organisation and Controls Controls
Delivery

Figure 2. Change Event

5.1 Causal Factors Propagating Change

The modern construction project is subjected to influential forces from a multitude of

sources. These forces can be classified as global/external pressures, organisational pressures
and project/internal level pressures (Stocks 1999, Ibbs 2001), Figure 3. It is these forces that

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can cause a change event to occur. By describing the applied force and its relationship with
the project a root cause can be defined. It is very important to attempt to identify and
understand this cause. A good understanding will help when planning future projects and
should reduce the number of future changes that occur.

External / Global

Organisational

Project

Figure 3. Causal classifications

5.2 Project Characteristics / Conditions

The project characteristics comprise the form of a project and include complexity, scope,
delivery and the project controls (Ibbs 1994). In addition The Framework considers
organisational and project team issues. Therefore, the characteristics considered by The
Framework are project scope, team, delivery, execution and control see Figure 4.

Project and Change Characteristics

Project Scope, Project Change

Organisation and Controls Controls
Delivery

Figure 4. Project and change characteristics

Change events can cause substantial adjustment to a contract’s duration and the total
direct and indirect costs (Tiong 1990; Ibbs 1997; Ibbs et al. 1998). It is therefore important to
consider the project’s characteristics to determine if the project itself is acting as an incubator
for change to occur. For example, if a change originates due to a design documentation error
and the project in question has an extensive design team and a complex design then the
change may be exacerbated if the project has non-effective communication protocols. In this
case it may be possible to re-configure the project to reduce non-beneficial changes by
focussing on the design team, complexity and communication.

5.3 Change Characteristics

There are tools / strategies available to construction projects to help manage change. When
these are applied, the project will assume certain change characteristics. Construction projects
vary in terms of client, contractor, location, team, budget and schedule. Therefore different

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projects will have different drivers and therefore require different tools / strategies. For
example a retail client may require the contractor to be able to incorporate design changes at
very late notice. Therefore it is important to understand the context in which the project takes
place when designing the change characteristics. The framework considers several
approaches that can affect the change characteristics of a project.
Changes may be proactively anticipated and incorporated into the programme, or they
may be reactively considered as and when they arise (Ibbs et al, 2001). Change may be
implemented gradually or radically. Gradual implementation over a period of time may be
chosen to minimise disruption, align with budgets or simply because the change cannot be
implemented immediately. A radical implementation will change fundamental aspects of the
project, often unexpectedly, for example, upon arrival of an unscheduled component changes
may need to be made to save the schedule from disruption. The evaluation of change as either
essential (involuntary change) or non essential (voluntary change) to a project’s success. By
prioritising changes it will be possible to allocate resources to the most essential changes
(Ibbs 1994).

5.4 Change Consequences

The change event consequence is concerned with the change event after it has been caused.
The New Shorter Oxford Dictionary, states that consequence “is the relation of an effect to its
cause” therefore, if the consequence of a change event is understood it will allow the project
to be planned and the change to be successfully integrated with the minimum of disruption.
This will enable key decisions to be made, for example whether to abort the change because
the consequences are too disruptive. Considering the consequence of a change in this way
will be a departure from the common industry practice of quantifying the amalgamated
changes at the end of a project (Akinsola, 1997). The Framework identifies direct and indirect
consequences.
Direct consequences are directly attributable to a change event and will have an
identifiable and clearly defined effect on the project. They will often have quantifiable
metrics. Failure to meet quality standards and alterations to the project budget or schedule
may be viewed as direct consequences. The Framework also considers work additions,
deletions and revisions to the project (Ibbs, 2001).
Indirect consequences can be attributed to change events that occur during construction
projects. They differ from direct consequences in that those can be measured by quantitative
methods. Indirect consequences are often intangible and require qualitative measures to
assess them. For example, lower morale amongst the project team could be a consequence of
change and to measure this would require developing a measurement method especially for
this. It is important to consider the indirect consequences. Often they are not immediately
apparent and may appear insignificant, however Merna (Merna et al 1996) states that
“variations having only a small direct cost effect can sometimes have a large indirect cost
effect.” This suggests that indirect consequences can eventually have a direct consequence.
The Framework identifies several indirect consequences that may occur on construction
projects; disputes, coordination failures and errors, uncertainty, lower productivity, indirect
time consequences, intangible human issues, rework, wastage of resources, lower profit
earnings and interrupted cash flow.

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5.5 Change Review

A change review mechanism enables errors and mistakes to be identified and corrected.
Depending on the project and the management system in place, reviews can occur during the
pre project, ongoing project or post project stages. This will provide information that can
adjust and improve the current project or be used when planning the next one. Change events
may be reviewed individually or collectively to determine how they have been managed by
the project. The review must use appropriate measures to determine this, as inappropriate
measures will draw the wrong conclusions. The remedies will be wrong and current or future
project performance will be lowered. A measure of change performance may be indicated by
the amount of down time or inactive work periods that a change event has caused. Another
indicator may be the level of work that is ineffective, for example work that has to be redone
or repaired.

5.6 Framework Representation

The content of The Framework consists of the elements previously described; the causes, the
consequences, the project/change characteristics and the change review. These elements are
illustrated on templates that have been designed on Visio. The templates show four levels of
decomposition see Figure 5.

Cause Level 1

External Inter organisational Project Level 2

External A External B External C Level 3

Level 4
External A, 1 External A, 2 External C, 1 External C, 2

Figure 5. Example of framework component decomposition to four levels

A key requirement for representing The Framework is that no special or technical

skills should be required for interpreting and using The Framework. The key was in the
representation (Cheung, 1998) of the process and it was felt that none of the tools available
met the project’s requirements. Therefore it was necessary to develop an original process map
template. A map was created that represented all of the information that the project required.

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6 CONCLUSION

The Framework aims to provide construction professionals, academics and others associated
with the management of project change with a tool that will enable them to consider and
analyse the changes that occur on projects from cause to consequence. To determine whether
a change is feasible and to provide a result that is favourable to all parties. What may be
beneficial to one member may not be to another and it is important that this knowledge is
available to support the team decision-making process.
The causes may be examined to help with forecasting and planning activities. The
consequences may be examined to help identify changes that have occurred and to aid
understanding. The Framework also prompts consideration as to how the project is equipped
to manage change. Over the course of several projects a library of change events could be
developed that can be integrated with an IT application to compare future scenarios against
past cases.

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