Case Study – A Construction Company in Sweden The empirical study is conducted at one of the leading construction companies in the Nordic region that is divided into seven different business areas of which one is Construction Sweden. The company's construction projects have been previously managed in a traditional way with a strong site manager, where the contractor has made up timetables for the project and their subcontractors have consequently been contracted to accept the time slot granted. This enables subcontractors to be less committed to their timeframe and that the site manager has to have a huge workload since he or she has to maintain the focus on all of the activities in the project. After a change in the management team in the construction company's southern region, an initiative to try out a new project management tool called Visual Planning (VP) was started. VP is originally derived from Toyota, and furthermore, adjusted to fit the construction sector. The physical attributes of VP is that activities and questions are posted on walls enabling a higher visibility, where all the involved coworkers are ensured to know when and where their contribution fits the overall plan and that they are updated on the current focus of the project. The purpose is thereby enabling a higher sense of commitment and morale. By studying the VP philosophy, management in the organization has recognized that the expertise of the subcontractors is not completely used. If they were to be more involved in the development of the timetable, they would recognize that the potential of shorter production times is feasible. The core idea behind this is that the subcontractors, as experts, should be better at estimating how long a specific activity should and will take. When actively posting the time-span themselves, a sense of commitment to the plan is supposed to exist instead of being able to blame the contractor that the allocated time was too short, thus resulting in a shorter total production time. VP has previously been tested in the company's central region, with mixed project-results, and at some of the major competitors. This case study will follow the implementation of VP in four projects and in different segments such as housing, roads, and infrastructure. Using Watzlawick's (1978) definition of first and second order of change, it is of great importance to define accurate borders of the system. This is because different systems within the same organization can be affected in separate extents to a change, thus resulting in both a change of the first and second order. VP implementation in a project organization is a second order change since the interaction and definition of responsibility of planning shifts from the site manager to the subcontractor, thus changing the way the project team works and think. If the system instead is defined as the company as a whole, the way of doing business is still the same, i.e., managing construction sites and delivering completed projects on time and budget and changing of the first order. Questions Q-2 Was the change controlled? What control procedure was adopted by the company?
Case Study – A Construction Company in Sweden
The empirical study is conducted at one of the leading construction companies in the Nordic region that is divided into seven different business areas of which one is Construction Sweden. The company's construction projects have been previously managed in a traditional way with a strong site manager, where the contractor has made up timetables for the project and their subcontractors have consequently been contracted to accept the time slot granted. This enables subcontractors to be less committed to their timeframe and that the site manager has to have a huge workload since he or she has to maintain the focus on all of the activities in the project.
After a change in the management team in the construction company's southern region, an initiative to try out a new project management tool called Visual Planning (VP) was started. VP is originally derived from Toyota, and furthermore, adjusted to fit the construction sector. The physical attributes of VP is that activities and questions are posted on walls enabling a higher visibility, where all the involved coworkers are ensured to know when and where their contribution fits the overall plan and that they are updated on the current focus of the project. The purpose is thereby enabling a higher sense of commitment and morale.
By studying the VP philosophy, management in the organization has recognized that the expertise of the subcontractors is not completely used. If they were to be more involved in the development of the timetable, they would recognize that the potential of shorter production times is feasible. The core idea behind this is that the subcontractors, as experts, should be better at estimating how long a specific activity should and will take. When actively posting the time-span themselves, a sense of commitment to the plan is supposed to exist instead of being able to blame the contractor that the allocated time was too short, thus resulting in a shorter total production time.
VP has previously been tested in the company's central region, with mixed project-results, and at some of the major competitors. This case study will follow the implementation of VP in four projects and in different segments such as housing, roads, and infrastructure.
Using Watzlawick's (1978) definition of first and second order of change, it is of great importance to define accurate borders of the system. This is because different systems within the same organization can be affected in separate extents to a change, thus resulting in both a change of the first and second order. VP implementation in a project organization is a second order change since the interaction and definition of responsibility of planning shifts from the site manager to the subcontractor, thus changing the way the project team works and think. If the system instead is defined as the company as a whole, the way of doing business is still the same, i.e., managing construction sites and delivering completed projects on time and budget and changing of the first order.
Questions
Q-2 Was the change controlled? What control procedure was adopted by the company?
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