Investigation of the Effect of Communication between Project Team Members on Construction Project Schedule. Case: Jimma Zone

Abstract

This study is about investigating the effect of communication between construction project team members on the construction project schedule. Construction projects that involve all client, contractor, consultant were considered as population of the study. Since the population was very small, the census type of sampling technique was used. The questionnaire was used for data collection from the population. A total of 60 questionnaires in which 20 for each party were distributed and a total of 59 questionnaires were collected which gives us a response rate of 98.33%. The study shows that 74.6% of the total projects were delayed with an average percentage of 24.32% to the original duration. The five leading delay factors in the construction projects were poor communication and coordination by contractors with other parties, poor communication and coordination between consultant and other parties, ineffective planning and scheduling of the project by the contractor, poor communication and coordination between the client and other parties and change orders by the owners during construction with relative importance index (RII) of 0.692,0.651,0.647,0.637 and 0.614 respectively. Casting of concrete was also leading categorical activities which needs good communication between project team members with relative importance index (RII) of 0.81. This study also shows that the schedule of construction projects was strongly correlated with communication between each team member. But the highest correlation coefficient was with communication between consultant and contractor with a correlation coefficient of 0.795. This study recommends to integrate communication management in their day to day project management. Especially the communication between contractor and consultant should be carefully monitored.