Collaborative Flow of Work in the Construction Industry

Effective collaborative working and workflow have become more significant in the digital age due to their contribution to project success, stakeholder satisfaction and performance. Underlining this significance is the need to improve collaborative workflow in project delivery. By exploring the theoretical foundations of collaborative workflow, this chapter makes a case for human behaviours, business working environment and ICT tools adoption as key factors that can engender effectiveness in collaborative workflow in construction project delivery among teams, workgroups and inter-organisations. By the following governance, administration, organisational autonomy, mutuality and norms as the five dimensions of a workflow process, workgroups, teams and inter-organisations can develop strategic behaviours, create favourable work forms and environments and adapt ICT tools that enable integrated planning, process efficiency and performance effectiveness in collaborative workflow in project delivery. Based on the five dimensions of the workflow process, the theoretical foundation of these three factors is that they have become vital elements of task functions, activity planning, process management efficiency and relationship improvement in collaborative workflow. With the understanding of these factors, workgroups, teams and project organisations can optimise collaborative workflow performance and effectiveness through the right application of human behaviours, adapt working models and environment to group dynamics and norms and operationalise ICT tools to suit project attributes, task functions and boundary-spanning challenges. This can improve micro and macro levels of collaborative working in project delivery.