Application of Communication Management Technologies on Construction Projects
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Date
2021-05-17
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Abstract
The use of technology has become necessary in all human endeavours because of the benefits it
brings as the world continues to experience globalisation. The construction industry is one of the
industries that is most reliant on information to successfully execute its activities. However, it has
over the years been realised that the uptake of technologies is relatively low in construction as
compared to other industries. With the rapid innovations in technology in the world, participants
of the construction industry still do communicate with each other through conventional approaches
such as hardcopy printouts and face to face meetings. Construction projects have however been
evolving over the years from simple structures to complex projects and to that effect, a lot of
project communication must be done efficiently, which is one of the major benefits that
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) provide. Although there are a good number
of communication technologies which present numerous benefits to the user including increased
productivity, it is still under-utilized on construction projects. Against this background, this
research was initiated to find out the communication technologies that are used for project
communication management. The research further sort to find out the barriers that have hindered
the successful adoption of communication technologies on construction projects over the years so
that tailored measures can be put in place to enable their successful implementation which was one
of the objectives of this study. This thesis thus set the aim to identify factors that promote the
adoption of communication management technologies on construction projects in a bid to
contribute towards the increased use of technologies for communication in construction in Ghana.
A survey was thus conducted using a close-ended questionnaire to elicit responses from Project
Managers on construction projects who were chosen through a purposive sampling technique. The
collected data was analysed using the mean score and the Relative Importance Index. The findings
of the research show that mobile devices and the internet, Microsoft Office Suite Products (Word,
Excel, PowerPoint, MS Project) and electronic mail are the most used technologies. Lack of legal
enforcement support for the use of ICT, poor internet connectivity and inadequate ICT content in
construction education systems were found as the major barriers to the successful adoption of
technology for project communication. The results also show that the most important enablers for
the adoption of technologies for project communication management include the development of
a realistic and reliable electronic database in the organisations and good organizational
management support. Upon these findings, the study suggested the development of a database that
is very reliable in organisations to boost the ease of project information tracking. It was also
suggested that organisational management support should be increased to encourage the use of
technologies as well as increasing the technology content of academic courses so that graduates
would come out ready to use technologies in handling activities and more specifically project
communication management
Description
A thesis submitted to the Department of Construction Technology and Management, Kwame
Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the award degree of Master of Science in Project Management.
Keywords
Technology, Information Technology, Communication technology