Complexity Management in Large Construction Projects: Identifying Factors and Variables

Abstract

This study answers the questions “what are the main factors of complexity in large projects?” and “what kind of relationships are there among the factors?” To answer these questions, the purpose of this research is identifying the factors of project complexity in the large construction and the relationships among them. Structural, technological, and environmental complexities considered as the main themes, and they formed the main components of the conceptual model. Research strategy is multiple case study in Iranian large construction projects, and research method is survey. The project experts of the selected cases form the research population, and stratified sampling method is the sample selection method. Accordingly, 300 questionnaires were distributed among the members, and finally 120 completed questionnaires were analyzed using structural modeling. The findings indicate that there is a significant relationship between environmental complexity and project complexity. That is, when the complexity of the project environment, including economic, social, and political factors, raise, the complexity of the project increases too, while both technological and structural complexities at the 0.001 level affect project complexity less than environmental factos. In other words, the relationships between technological and structural complexities with project complexity in Iranian large projects are weaker than environmental complexity. So, the intensity of the relationship between the last two factors is slightly different with the literature.