Assessment of Cause and Effect Factors of Poor Communication in Construction Industry

Abstract

Effective communication in construction industry is a core competency element to the success of the project. But it has been always a challenging mission to perform the communication effectively because the industry itself is characterized as fragmented, dynamic, and comprises of many parties (client, consultant, contractor, authorities) which leads to the presence of poor communication. There has been no publication to address the poor communication in a broad context especially identifying and assessing the causative factors and effects to this issue in the construction industry. However, this article aimed to identify and assess the significance of these factors through ranked them individually based on its level of significance/severity. Quantitative approach was adopted to conduct this study using structured questionnaire survey. A 5-point Likert’s type scale was used to assess the factors gradually based on their significance. Descriptive analysis was used to analyse the data collected from the survey. Average index (AI) and standard deviation were used to rank the importance of the factors in descending order. The study found that, the most dominant cause factors of poor communication is fear to communicate in the project space however the most dominant effect factor is high stress in workplace. The findings of this study serve best to draw a platform for construction practitioners to introduce strategies and plans to avoid the cause and diminish the effect of poor communication in construction industry.