Introduction

The traditional project management involves CPM/PERT which assumes static nature of projects (Pundir et al. 2008). With the traditional approach, distinct project life cycle phases are easily recognizable, assuming the projects to be static. However, projects are dynamic in nature. Tasks are completed one after another in an orderly sequence, requiring a significant part of the project to be planned up beforehand. For example, in a construction project, the team needs to determine requirements, design and plan for the entire building, and not just incremental components, in order to understand the full scope of the effort. Traditional project management assumes that events affecting the project are predictable and that tools and activities are well understood. In addition, with traditional project management, once a phase is complete, it is assumed that it will not be revisited. Certain project characteristics provide a basis for determining the appropriate managerial actions required to complete a project successfully (Baccarini 1996). Most of the research studies have suggested that it is difficult to manage projects using the traditional methods of project management and have proposed multiple perspectives to identify and manage such projects, Pundir et al. (2007), Baccarini (1996), Winter et al. (2006), Williams (1999), Turner (2006), Soderlund (2004, 2010). A study of previous literature suggests that there are several factors that are referred to as project success factors and different researchers have addressed different factors that affect the successful implementation of projects. Project managers and contractors in the construction industry describe some of the causes of project failures from their experiences as complexity of projects, uncertainty and risk in handling projects, directionless process, inability of the client to describe the project, poor project design and poor leadership, uncoordinated built environment professionals and inappropriate staff skills, unrealistic timescales and cost estimation, poor selection of building procurement methods, failure to plan and lack of pre-project planning (Paslawski 2008). While such research helps identify some of the criteria for project success, the results are more or less giving the same type of grouping of success factors whether there are any other factors that can be responsible for the project success is a big question in today’s dynamic environment, where the projects are not static in nature. This paper is an attempt to identify the role of flexibility for reducing risk and increasing probability of project success. The paper deals with the traditional critical success factors and makes an attempt to find out the role of flexibility for managing projects, and throws light on the advantages of flexibility in construction projects. The authors make an attempt through a thorough literature survey to find whether flexibility can be treated as an important determinant for the success of construction projects. The paper is primarily based on the literature search of flexibility management in construction process.

Literature Review

Despite a lot of research work done in the area of measuring project success, there still remains ambiguity in the question- what exactly project success is? Many models categorizing the success criteria were studied by the previous researchers, but most of them could not give alignment of the short term project objectives with the long term objectives (Al-Tmeemy et al. 2011). There are many stake holders involved in a project like user, owner, contractor, project manager, etc. The perception of project success may differ from one stakeholder to another. For instance, a project might be successful for user but the same project is a failure for the contractor and vice a versa (Belassi and Tukel 1996). Studies of project success are mainly concerned with two broad and related issues namely, the criteria that can help define or decide project success and the factors that influence the project success, viz., the so called critical success factors (Bryde 2008). Traditionally, the project success criteria mainly concentrated on three parameters, time, cost and quality of projects, described as the “iron triangle” by Atkinson (1999). These parameters are still commonly cited measures of project success (for instance, Fortune and White 2006). However, the traditional success criteria are inadequate to align with the long term success of the company and hence a framework was developed to incorporate the criteria that align with the company’s short term as well as long term goals and provide an appropriate judgment of success at all stages of the project (Al-Tmeemy et al. 2011). While such research helps identify some of the criteria for project success, the results are still ambiguous as there is no single framework considering the perception of all the stakeholders regarding project success. Davies (2002) differentiates project success from project management success. He explains the project success as effectiveness of the project in achieving the objectives and project management success as efficiency of the project in regards with cost, time and quality. Lim and Mohamed (1999) suggest that there are two levels of construction project success, the macro level and the micro level. The macro level deals with the effectiveness part of the project, that is achieving the overall objectives of the project, and is mainly concerned with the clients and user. The micro level deals with the efficiency part of the project following the traditional view of “iron triangle” and is concerned with the contractors and consultants. A construction project involves several stakeholders, processes, stages and phases of work and needs a lot of input from both public as well as private sectors for successful completion. According to Atkinson (1999), a construction project is said to be successful if it achieves the stakeholder’s requirements, individually and collectively. A stakeholder is an individual or group, inside or outside the construction project, which has a stake in, or can influence, the construction performance (Takim and Adnan 2008). Belassi and Tukel (1996) emphasise on grouping the success factors and explain the interaction between each of them, rather than identifying the individual factors. Chan and Kumaraswamy (1997) concentrate on the critical factors that caused delay in the completion of construction projects and identified 83 factors grouped into eight major categories related to project, viz. client, design, material, contractor, labour, plant/equipment and external factors. Davies (2002) tried to answer three basic questions in order to find out the critical success factors that affect the performance of any project, namely: What factors lead to project management success, what factors lead to a successful project and what factors lead to consistently successful projects. He identified twelve critical factors that affect the performance of projects. Pundir et al. (2006) studied the importance of success factors over a period of time that is how significance of factors changed with the change in time as per various researchers. Akinsola et al. (1997) examined factors influencing variations on building projects and have classified the factors into four main categories: client, project organization, project characteristics and environmental factors. Sauser et al. (2009) find that researchers are still trying to find out the critical success/failure factors for projects producing a typical list of factors that include project mission, planning, control, feedback, top management support, technical assistance, etc. without paying attention to the success criteria of projects. Sauser et al. (2009) also give a contingency theory to understand the project failure due to managerial reasons. Ika et al. (2011) suggest five sets of critical success factors categorized as monitoring, coordinating, design, training and institutional environment. Overall one finds that PERT/CPM based models contribute the most dominant tools and techniques that are still in use for managing projects (Pundir et al. 2008). These tools assume that the projects are static in nature. However the projects are much more dynamic. Traditionally, the scope of PM was majorly seen in unique, operational activities, mainly in industries such as construction and defence (Bryde 2003). Turner (2006) considers projects to be non routine, risky and uncertain. This suggests that there cannot be a rigid or routine method to manage projects. For managing such projects the methods cannot be created in advance but will emerge from the interactions among the elements of the projects and their environment (Pundir et al. 2007)

Need for Flexibility in Managing Construction Project

Construction projects are more complex and dynamic today as compared to earlier times in terms of the requirements of technology and financial structure. Previously the construction process was very structured following the traditional tools like CPM/PERT. In most of the previous literature, success of construction projects is said to be “within time and within budget” thus mainly focusing on the efficiency of the project. Hence the failure factors that were considered for the construction projects in the previous literature were grouped into those factors that cause either delay or cost overrun like project management related factors, client related factors, procurement related factors, contractor related factors, etc. (Belassi and Tukel 1996; Shaikh et al. 2010). However seeing the increasing complexity and dynamism of the construction projects it is not only efficiency but the overall effectiveness of the project which is the need of the client. Hence there is a felt need for a flexible project management approach.

Role of Flexibility in Managing Construction Projects

Making flexible arrangements in managing projects is not a new concept. Many studies show that to manage the effects of uncertainty in planning, the project plan should be made flexible. There are examples of many projects where changes were made in spite of the “foolproof” planning to address risk of cost overruns (Pundir et al. 2008). Hence if during the whole period of the projects, some room for flexibility is given, it will surely be utilized. In construction industry, flexibility has often been viewed negatively making construction projects as “one piece projects” such as bridges and tunnels, based on the ‘we do not build half a bridge’ approach (Olsson 2006). Flexibility as an ability of projects to adapt changes within short response time has been emphasized in strategic and supply chain management studies by many researchers (Olsson 2004). However most of the research studies explain that it requires a clear and well defined scope and definition for a construction project to be successful (Miller and Lessard 2000). This means that construction project management focuses on stability of project whereas the other management disciplines strongly emphasize on flexibility, Olsson (2004). This is mainly because the construction projects are mainly focusing on efficiency of the projects, that is, completing the projects within time and cost. The effectiveness part of the project is being neglected. Flexibility is primarily an approach to improve effectiveness of projects rather than efficiency. One reason perhaps for flexibility is not being considered important in construction projects is because it reduces efficiency. Flexibility was seen as a threat to delivering the project on time and within budget (Olsson 2006). But in today’s dynamic world, the project success is dependent not only on efficiency but majorly on effectiveness of the project.

Flexibility as the Critical Success Factor for Projects

The traditional success criteria focusing on efficiency is inadequate to align with the long term success of the company and hence a framework was developed to incorporate the criteria that align with the company’s short term as well as long term goals and provide an appropriate judgment of success at all stages of the project (Al-Tmeemy et al. 2011) thus focusing on project effectiveness. The traditional success factors still are (i) being on schedule, (ii) below budget and (iii) delivering a product meeting the needed quality, (Turner 1999). But what is the answer to do well in effectiveness of the project? Flexibility can be the answer for this, where “flexibility is the ability to change or react with little penalty time, effort, cost or performance”, Upton (1994). This means that flexibility describes the ability of the project to cope with changes in the project definition or scope and compensate them with little influences on schedule (time), costs and quality by appropriate management policies and actions. Following this definition flexibility is the factor that keeps projects on track regarding the success factors that make up the iron triangle Fig. 1.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Including flexibility in iron triangle

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Research Methodology

The research methodology consists of the following steps:

  1. 1.

    Conducting questionnaire survey through personal interviews.

  2. 2.

    Assessment of answers from questionnaire survey to identify the scope of flexibility as a success factor for construction projects.

Sample Size

The results reported in this study are based on selected completed as well as ongoing construction projects in Nagpur, and in and around vidarbha region. As a pilot study, 60 construction project managers involved in 26 construction projects were interviewed to assess the importance of the flexibility as success factor. In the context of site management related problems, it was decided that an interview method would be more reliable instead of asking the respondents to fill up the questionnaire on their own. A total of 60 respondents satisfactorily answered the questionnaire. These respondents were the project managers of 26 construction projects who were involved in various stages such as project planning, executing, procurement and decision making processes.

Analysis and Interpretation

Based on the information provided by 60 experienced project managers of construction industry the data representation is as follows.

Correlation Analysis

A correlation analysis was performed using SPSS version 16 for analyzing the association between flexibility factor and project success in construction industry based on the answers of 60 experienced project managers. The result is shown in Table 1.

Table 1 Correlation analysis between flexibility and project success
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The result showed that there exist a strong positive correlation with r = 0.66 between project success and flexibility as one of the factor of project success.

The authors also attempted to find the impact of flexibility as one of the factors on success of construction projects by performing ANOVA using SPSS version 16. The result is shown in Table 2.

Table 2 ANOVA between project success and flexibility factor
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The result showed that there exists a significant difference between the successes of construction projects. The projects in which there was a scope of flexibility in process, decision making, design, etc. showed higher level of success rate as compared to the projects with rigid system.

Conclusions

Bringing flexibility in projects involves costs as well as benefits. The cost of applying flexibility is much lower as compared to cost of managing unexpected changes. Hence it is better to make arrangements for flexible approach rather than dealing with changes on time. For having a proper flexible management it is necessary to identify the parts of the project where flexibility can be applied with little or no penalty costs on projects. While some researchers consider that bringing flexibility in projects will increase costs, cause delays of projects and thus will hamper the efficiency of projects, but looking at the long term goals, flexibility can be seen as adding value to the projects by improving on the overall effectiveness of projects and customer satisfaction. Thus, flexibility can be one of the success criteria of construction projects.

The success parameters of the construction projects need to be redefined to include project effectiveness. Presently, efficiency is the prime focus of the construction projects which neglects the effectiveness side of the projects. The concept of flexibility is gaining ground to influence the traditional success factors, which make up the iron triangle. The flexibility’s influence on the existing factors is not quite so clear yet and there is a need for further research that considers the role of flexibility.