Brian C. Lines

Support for Organizational Change: Change-Readiness Outcomes among AEC Project Teams

AbstractA major area of innovation within the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry involves the re-engineering of project delivery processes, yet successful implementation of such processes requires a significant organizational change effort. The AEC industry is often regarded as a laggard in the uptake of innovation, and personnel resistance to change is among the most commonly cited barriers to change adoption. The objective of this study was to understand the extent to which project level personnel change readiness is affected by a variety of antecedents within 16 AEC owner organizations, each of which independently implemented a planned strategic change in their project delivery processes. An outcome-oriented perspective of change readiness was incorporated to empirically document behavioral response to change at the individual level (n=96) among owner project managers and contracting officers. Change readiness outcomes were measured via an action research method in relation to c...

Drivers of Organizational Change within the AEC Industry: Linking Change Management Practices with Successful Change Adoption

In today’s rapidly evolving market, effective organizational change adoption has become a core competency of architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) firms in order to maintain their competitive advantage. Firms that more effectively manage organizational change adoption can position themselves as early adopters and are able to expend less resources in making the transition. The objective of this study was to collect a global sample of organizational change initiatives across the AEC industry in order to identify whether specific change management practices have a direct relationship with successful change adoption. Based on a data sample of 237 organization-level change initiatives, the results of this study establish that there are definitive – and learnable – change management practices that AEC firms can implement to increase the success of their change initiatives. The global data sample within this study is a meaningful contribution to the AEC literature, which is primarily consists of case-based studies that are limited to a single type of organizational change event. Further, this study contributes practical action steps for industry professionals to more effectively manage the adoption of new technologies, management strategies, and business practices within their organizations

Implementing New Project Delivery Strategies: Development of a Web-Based Multimedia Tool to Support Owner Project Team Training

For large public organizations, implementing a new project delivery strategy for architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) services requires significant organizational change. A key challenge is how to address the specific needs of multiple individual AEC projects while maintaining organization-wide consistency. Numerous barriers exist to hinder successful implementation, and the delivery of training content to various stakeholder interests must address role-specific modifications to work processes. The Delphi method is employed to develop the framework for delivering organizational training through the utilization of information and communication technologies (ICT) to create a centralized process training tool that can be accessed by multiple distributed AEC project teams. Key aspects of the tool are presented, as well as feedback from experts in the implementation of value-based project delivery regarding the tool’s effectiveness in distributing training content, minimizing key technical barriers to change, and optimizing the allocation of training resources between project- and organizational-level aspects of implementation. Application of the tool within a project delivery change effort was demonstrated to reduce the in-person training requirements needed for project teams to accomplish work tasks. The framework for an ICT-based process training tool is a key contribution of this research and may be considered by industry practitioners.

Best practices for organizational change management within electrical contractors

ABSTRACT Few studies have investigated best practices for organizational change management (OCM) within the electrical contracting industry. This study had two research questions: first, to determine whether there is a relationship between electrical contractor usage of OCM practices and successful change adoption; second, to identify whether electrical contractors have recommendations for how to effectively implement OCM practices within their companies. The first research question was assessed via a national survey of 94 electrical contractors who had recently adopted an organizational change. The second question was explored through 11 in-depth interviews of electrical contractors who had implemented organizational changes such as prefabrication, management team realignment, new software, paperless mobile technology, payroll automation, and entering into a new market. Results showed OCM practices were associated with successful change adoption. OCM practices that had a direct association with successful change adoption included change agent effectiveness, a realistic timescale, providing change-related training, senior leadership commitment, measuring performance benchmarks, providing sufficient resources, and effective change message communication. Interviewees recommended best practices for executing these OCM practices. Contributions include being the first study to investigate OCM practices specifically within the electrical contracting industry and identification of how practitioners can implement OCM practices for their change initiatives.

Implementing Project Delivery Process Improvements: Identification of Resistance Types and Frequencies

AbstractOwner organizations within the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry are presented with a wide variety of potential process-related improvements aimed at increasing project efficiency and performance. Implementation of process improvements can prove to be extremely difficult; previous research cautions that perhaps more than half of all planned organizational change initiatives fail to accomplish their intended objectives, oftentimes due to resistance exhibited by the organization’s own personnel. This study utilizes an action research approach to document and catalogue employee resistance across multiple owner organizations that were engaged in the implementation of new process improvements within their project delivery practices. An analysis of variance with Tukey post hoc testing was performed to identify a prioritized ranking of the most frequently encountered resistive behavior types within owner project teams. This study contributes empirical documentation of change resi...