Towards improving client-contractor communication in industrialised building

Criticism of the building sector in Sweden, concerning for example high cost and poor quality, has lead to a growing interest in industrialised building. However, the effect on the sector and the overall building market is still quite insignificant. One business challenge for industrialised building companies to face in order to become more competitive is to further improve client/market interaction, improve mutual understanding and to reduce uncertainties in client relations. In this ongoing work the communication between industrialised building companies and building clients is examined. The aim is to identify important points of client-contractor communication that affect project outcome and present barriers to effective communication. In addition to a literature review, with the aim to define effective communication , the client-contractor communication in different building projects has been studied. Empirical data was collected through interviews and workshops, observations and project-specific documentation, addressing both clients and contractors. The results indicate that, in order to improve client-contractor communication, it seems important to assess if a barrier to effective communication is client uncertainty, and concerned with lack of information, or if it is client equivocality, which requires richer information rather than more information. The barrier must then be addressed accordingly. In the industrialised building context, client-contractor communication is probably distorted by lack of market/client knowledge concerning the industrialised building process, but also by previous experiences from traditional building.