Construction Matters: The Qualqulative Role of Project Management

Deltagere
Kjell Tryggestad

Nøgleord

Within the literature ‘project manager’ is often referred to as a rational and powerful person with a clear objective. The project manager and other actors in the building process are recognized when performing these roles. The roles and their internal structure are assumed to be stable properties of the actors. This paper aims to enrich prevailing assumptions about the role and identity of actors in the building process by providing some answers to the following questions: What is the role and identity of project management? How do roles and identities within construction emerge? How do new role design transforms into effects? The questions are based on the assumption that identities and roles are not properties that the actors possess or can define for themselves but are emerging through time. The proposition is that the roles and identities emerge and are dependent on what kind of material-textual devices people are equipped with. The architectural drawing and the project budget are relevant examples of different kinds of material-textual devices pertaining to construction. As such they are examples of construction matters. But it remains to be investigated in a more precise way how they matter. Is the devices just matters of fact to be used by the project manager as a means towards the project objective? Or should the devices (instead) be considered as matters of concern, for example in the more active role of redefining the project objective? The proposition here is that the material-textual devices are better considered as matters of concern since they can enact and transform the construction project in unexpected ways. The inquiry is furthered by a case on the construction of the skyscraper Turning Torso in Malmö city, Sweden. At least two different roles for project management are accounted for, i.e., 1) the role as innovative mediator making a qualitative difference, and 2) the role as intermediary making a quantitative difference. The ways in which material-textual devices like the architectural drawing and the project budget participate in enacting and defining these various roles are accounted for. It is concluded that construction matters: Architectural drawings and budgets not only participate in defining emerging roles and identities in construction, simultaneously they also assume an important coordinating role in managing the construction project, perhaps most notably in negotiating emerging concerns regarding the qualitative and quantitative properties of the building under construction. The notion of qualqulative project management summarizes these findings. The arguement is that the managerial challenge is one of innovation rather than control and that construction management can benefit from taking into account the different roles of the budget. 

Provides an enriched understanding of the various roles and identities of project management in construction