Project owners in creating and deciding on project concepts in practice

Abstract

In a time where themes such as sustainability highly influence the built environment, it becomes ever more important that construction projects achieve strategic success. For securing a project’s long-term strategic success, the importance of the front-end phase is increasingly recognised. In the front-end, fundamental decisions are made under high uncertainty. One of these decisions is the choice of the project concept. The chosen project concept is the initial idea that responds to the problem/need of the client/owner (organisation). It sets the basis for strategic success, and should be aligned with the organisation’s strategies and users’ needs (strategy alignment). Although the development of project concepts in the front-end has long been recognised to be important, little is known about how project concepts are created and chosen in practice. As the project owner is responsible for the project within the client/owner organisation, this graduation research aimed to explore the project concept creation and decision-making process to identify critical aspects for project owners to focus on in creating and deciding on project concepts in practice for projects related to accommodating organisations. A theoretical framework was developed by performing a systematic literature search on studies about the project owner in relation to the project front-end and strategy alignment. This theoretical framework was used to analyse project concept creation and decision-making processes in two case study projects around accommodating organisations. Data was gathered through performing multiple interviews and reviewing documents. Finally, the findings of the two cases were compared in a cross-case analysis. Here it was found that project concepts are created on different levels/in phases, that take place consecutively or in parallel, covering most of the front-end phase of a project. It is a continues and iterative strategy alignment process where stakeholder management is key. By comparing and discussing the case study findings, three critical aspects for project owners to focus on in creating and deciding on project concepts in practice were formed. These aspects all revolve around creating and maintaining urgency and support for the project (concepts). Here it is first of all considered critical for project owners to understand the hierarchy, culture and history of the client organisation. Secondly, achieving strategy alignment requires project owners to be translational and communicative. Thirdly, who to involve, how and when, are important questions to ask concerning active stakeholder management/involvement and can and should be planned and evaluated in creating and deciding on the different project concept levels.