Construction project teams have been criticized to be incapable of delivering projects in a predictable and reliable manner. A major issue is contemporary construction practice doesn't encourage a closer cooperation among project participants. Hence as addressed by a variety of industry wide reports, the real challenge of the construction industry is to move from the current modus operandi to a more collaborative approach. To achieve this goal, knowledge should be advanced to fully capture the processes of cooperation in construction settings. This dissertation is intended to provide an innovative insight into the dynamics of cooperation in construction that we couldn't access before. The basic hypothesis of this dissertation is that cooperation at the individual level among construction project team members can significantly affect team performance. In particular, diverse cooperative behaviors of project participants and corresponding micro-level processes may determine project team performance in certain scenarios. To test this hypothesis, a conceptual framework was developed to capture relevant components of interpersonal cooperation; then an ABM (Agent-Based Modeling) simulation platform, named VOICE (Virtual Organizational Imitation for Construction Enterprises) was developed for exploratory simulation experiments. VOICE allows the investigators to design an artificial construction organization just like engineers designing a bridge. It is also able to visualize project team performance by real time performance dashboards and 3D graphs. Two case studies were conducted using VOICE to illustrate its capacity in investigating realistic cooperation related issues in construction. The first case study investigated intra-team cooperation in an estimating team. Specifically, certain cooperation related management actions -- job acquiring, coordination, and team communication -- were examined to check their influences on the estimating team performance in DBB (Design Bid Build) projects. The second case study extended the investigation to a cross-functional context where conditions become more complex. Simulation experiments were performed based on a real case between a proposal team and an engineering team in an EPC (Engineering Procurement and Construction) construction enterprise. The effects of goal congruence, as well as the implications of time pressure, task dependence and micro-management were examined based on a series of uncertainty analyses. The findings have supported the basic hypothesis of this research that cooperation at the individual level plays a vital role in affecting construction project team performance. It was also found the investigation of cooperation in construction settings to be nontrivial because of the complex interactions of cooperative behaviors and processes. This research is anticipated to constitute a stepping stone for further investigations of cooperation in construction: for academics, it is expected that the simulation approach and findings of this research would attract more scholars' attention to the behavioral and attitudinal aspects of cooperation in construction settings; for industry, the simulation platform VOICE could be used as a decision support tool for decision makers of project management to tackle with cooperation related issues.
Read
