Liminality roles in construction project practice: Opportunities and challenges

Construction projects are becoming increasingly complex (Chan et al., 2004). Typically, temporary organizations are set up for each new building project, which put pressure on communication, collaboration and coordination (Dainty et al., 2006). This includes the challenge of making sense of ones own work as well as the work of others while working in turbulent and constantly changing projects (Weick, 1995).There is an increased interest for collaborative approaches such as project partnering, project alliances etc. (Bygballe et al., 2010; Eriksson, 2010). These approaches support for example integrating supply chains (Eriksson, 2015) and challenge traditional relationships (Kadefors, 2002). Collaborative approaches open up for the emergence of new practices and new project roles (Karrbom Gustavsson, 2015) as well as new ways of communicating (Karrbom Gustavsson & Gohary, 2012).What traditional project roles are responsible for is typically defined in standards and practice based handbooks, such as for example the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOOK). However, while project roles are standardized and clearly defined in literature, they vary and change in practice and the individual construction project worker deals with blurred organizational boundaries, multiple affiliations, ambiguous organizational belongings and “in-between-ness” (cf Borg, 2014).This study combines findings from a case study of a collaborative construction project with interviews and literature. The concept of liminality is used as analytic lens. Liminality, meaning “betwixed and between” (Turner, 1967 in Beecht, 2011) is in organisational literature commonly taken to mean a position of ambiguity and uncertainty (Beecht, 2011) and for example Garsten (1999) sees the temporary worker as being in a state of liminality while Czarniawska and Mazza (2003) see consultants as liminal in constantly being in the midst of organizational change. The findings contributes to the discussion on process perspectives on projects, focusing on temporary organizing (rather than the temporary organization), and the discussion on collaborative approaches and their role for construction work transformaton.