Project governance as a means to enable project coordination and communication: A BSF case study project

This paper intends to illustrate the significance of project governance as an approach to align all construction supply chain activities to facilitate information exchanges within project coalitions. The coordination of construction supply chain activities and communication within construction project networks are widely considered as areas that requires improvement to enable efficiency and effectiveness in the construction industry. A major impediment identified for managing task interdependencies and project teams' integration is that a number of construction organisations use centralised models for organising and coordinating design, construction and the whole supply chain. It implies that the traditional approach is not adequate to control construction supply chain as such there is need for supportive approaches. The integration and connectedness of project partners is necessary to foster condition for knowledge sharing and enabling condition for innovative approaches. The key purpose of governance is to allocate resources, to coordinate and control actions across project networks. In this study, the paper investigates how governance structure affect project teams information exchange relationships and coordination in the course of delivering a construction project. As such data is gathered from the exchange relationships between project actors of a BSF project in the United Kingdom. All the information exchanges are analysed with UCINET 6 software to investigate the varied relationships. The results indicate that a good mix of project governance influences project actors exchange relationships and cooperative activities. Furthermore, the study also suggests that governance ensures service outcomes are realised but if well defined and guided.