Identification of Causes and Effects of Poor Communication in Construction Industry: A Theoretical Review

Abstract

Construction industry is characterized in nature as complex, fragmented, dynamic and involves many parties therefore effective communication is essential to overcome these challenges. Many researchers found that the industry faces major challenge to ensure effective and successful communication throughout the lifecycle of the project which therefore resulted to project failure. Poor communication in construction industry had been addressed in previous research studies; however, this paper presents and examines the identification of causes and effects which lead to poor communication. Further investigations on previous literature were conducted to extract the causes and effects which contributed to poor communication in construction industry. Similarity technique was applied to avoid duplications in the identified causes and effect of poor communication. Using the frequency technique, from the 33 causes of poor communication it was found that the most dominant cause is lack of effective communication. Whereas, out of 21 effects from poor communication, it was found that highly repeated effect is time overrun. These findings will serve a good platform for further investigation on the relevancy of causes and effects to the local construction practitioners. Keywords:Causes; Effects; Poor Communication; Construction Industry. Article History:Received: 25 September 2017Accepted: 10 December 2017 1-IntroductionConstruction industry defers from other industrial sectors by its distinctive characteristics and structures [1]. It is an expandable and complex sector in which it develops over time to accommodate and shelter the rise of population number it also involves many parties from public and private sectors [2,3]. These characteristics have resulted in more complexity and challenge to produce effective, sustainable and acceptable quality products [4]. Amongst these challenges is poor communication among construction teams. Poor communication is described in this context as ineffective, unsuccessful, and deficient and lack communication process of project information which should be avoided in construction industry [5]. As the key aspect to construction project success is effective communication [6,7].Poor communication has many effects and consequences in construction industry such as cost overruns, time overruns, dispute and finally project failure. It was proven that unsuccessful communication leads to unproductive outcomes [4].Project Management Institute [8] investigated communication in organization specifically in construction projects and found that by adopting effective communication during the construction of the project it can help in meeting the stipulated goals and objective of the projects. It also found that highly effective communication can achieve better time and cost management in producing successful projects.Poor communication in the construction workplace can be either in large scale or small scale. Large scale forms between construction parties such as consultant, client and contractor. Ho...

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