Conceptualising actors' information behaviour: An investigation into project information dynamics

Research into information technology in construction has received considerable attention in recent years. However, information behaviour (IB) of actors' in the project environment can be undefined, unstructured and suboptimal. The way information is obtained and shared to support project design development, organisational management and site operational activities continue to change rapidly. Major problems that continue to affect actorsÕ performance are their exposure to different information sources and channels, unstructured Information Seeking Behaviour (ISB), and the large amount of time they spend sifting through these sources and channels to obtain context specific information just-in-time for use. Hence, this research uses comprehensive review of IB literature and interviews to investigate the information seeking activities of industry professionals in the project environment. It was found that project actors exhibited five distinct ISBs during the project delivery process which are presented and discussed with a conceptual framework to establish an agenda for future study into effective IB culture. The significance of this research is to investigate the current practices of actorsÕ ISBs in order to define strategies to help improve performance in information seeking, project design and delivery process.