Business Communication Case Study

8/20/2019 Business Communication Case Study

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A Report on

PROJECT COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT

On Project Site of

CRESCENT BAY, PAREL, MUMBAI

Submitted to:

Dr. (Mrs.) Kirti Rajhans

Submitted By:

Anshul Sharma AP14049

Ashish Mishra AP14067

Swapnil Gajghate AP14145

Avinash Sharma AP14177

Nikhil Bakane AP14189


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Contents

1. Introduction

2.

Current Status of the Project Communication

Case: Communication Failure

3. Communication Challenges

4. Stakeholder Identification

5. Change Management

Case: Resistance to Change

6.

Risk Management

7. Communication Management Plan


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Introduction

The project discussed in this report is a residential project named CRESCENT BAY

situated in Parel, Mumbai. It comprises of three towers including G+22, G+32, and

G+ 21.

The first tower is currently under progress on 8th floor and the second one is on 30th

floor. The third tower is under Handing-Over Process.

The Client is L&T Realty, the real estate arm of the construction giant, L&T.

The Contractor is L&T IF&BC.

The project involved high end construction technology and the involvement of high

end customers which increases the credibility of the project. The project has seen

about 90% of flats got sold during the announcement of the project. This shows the

company’s popularity in the market.

This report deals in the communication pattern seen during the process. The current

status of project communication is cited so as to make you visualize the actual

scenario and then followed by the challenges involved. The stakeholder management

is described with preparing a Power/Interest Grid. The Change Management was

found to be an integral part of project communication which needs urgent attention

on site. This is displayed with the messages followed by solutions. The Risk

Management strategy involves the most important proactive approach in project

communication to solve problems and gain successful project completion.

There are two cases described to support the report in order to have a practical

understanding of the bottlenecks and solutions to the same during the

communication process.


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Current Status of the Project Communication

The communication pattern involved the reporting system, coordination between

the active stakeholders and timely execution of payment process. The

communication during the progress stage (execution) involves a high level of

ambiguity. There the lower level management and the direct field engineers are

involved in the process. The miscommunication and inefficient way of delivering

the information was found to be the bottleneck.

The right information was not being passed to the right person at the right time.

This violates the basic against an effective project communication. There were

cases where there had been conflicts which were just the effect of ineffective

communication.

The reporting was done from the junior level to the top most senior level. This

whole scenario was understood and the result was found that here the process was

better than the previous case. This was due to the involvement of top management

in the loop.

The co-ordination between the Client, contractor and the JV partner was an

important part of communication. This involved coordination and proper planning

so as to not cause any delay in the handing over process. It is estimated that

generally there is a significant amount of delay during handing over process of a

project. This is due to unnecessary causes which needs attention at the right time

and need to be attended at the required time. The communication failure at thisstage will lead to significant delay in time and finally will lead to cost overruns.

The JV partner is not informed for inspection time and schedule by the client

which led to unnecessary delays. The contractor could not effectively manage in

communicating the requirements during the process.

There was a case when the JV partner was called for inspection along with client

and there was a dispute related to not bringing the required document for the

process. The JV partner accused the client of not communicating them about the

same and the contractor was not aware of the situation. This led to complaint to the

Project Head from the JV partner side.

The billing process needs special attention while communicating the required

documents and the information needs to be put at the right place or else it would

lead to significant losses.


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Project Review Meeting is a place where one can actually see the causes and

effects of project communication failures. The boss is always ready to hit the

accused harder and make him on his knees.

This is the stage where there is organized communication as well as lot of

interdependency involved.

A diagrammatic view of the communication is shown below:

Progress,Quality and

SafetyReporting

Co-ordinationbetween the Client,Contractor and JV

Partner duringHanding Over

Progress

Timelyexecution of

Billing Process

Project ReviewMeetings


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Case: Communication Failure

Situation: Erection was under process for 12th floor at the G+22 Tower. The 10th

and 11th floor has been successfully completed. There was a particular wall panel

which was erected for the 10th, 11th and 12th floor. It was 8days since the erection

has been done. The site supervisor was dealing with day to day activities. The

contractor ’s site engineer was involved in the supervision of the site execution and

the client’s site engineer was monitoring the progress. During an internal quality

audit it was found that the wall panel which was erected had not been grouted for

the current floor and the two floors below.

This is a serious quality issue which was communicated directly to the top

management.

Analysis: The situation arouse due to negligence and negative attitude carried by the

site supervisor. This led to incomplete transfer of information to the Site engineer

and this was carried forward the client side. This is a typical case of not having the

communication in the right way at the right time and to the right person.

The site supervisor could have saved this from happening if the information was

immediately forwarded to his seniors and immediate action would have been taken.

Response: The response to the situation was strict and led to both impact

positively and negatively. The Contractor ’s site In-charge was given

serious warning and was held responsible for the case. This gave a

message to the project team to follow the company’s policy and meet the

requirement s of the job.


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Communication Challenges

Construction projects are complex and risky, requiring the active participation of all

contributors. Cooperation and co-ordination of activities through interpersonal and

group communication are essential in ensuring the project is completed successfully.

Poor communication, lack of consultation and inadequate feedback are to be found

as the root cause of defects in many constructed works. Poor co-ordination and

communication of design information lead to design problems that cause design

errors. Communication is the one aspect of the management of projects that pervades

all others.

The organization of human, financial and material resources: People are

very unpredictable and as such, require different skills and competencies if

they are to be managed effectively.

A unique scope of work and specification: This demands that project

managers generate a bespoken communication strategy for every project.

Constraints of cost and time: Rapid and precise communication strategy is

required.

Quantitative and qualitative objectives: The PM needs to meet stakeholder

needs and to communicate this effectively to them.

The inter-dependence of project participants such as VP >PM >SR ENG>JU

ENG.

Need to respond to sudden changes in workload.

The labour intensiveness of construction activity – using of only regional

language

Jargon, semantics and the potential for misunderstandings-don’t have

knowledge of symbols and technical meanings.


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An ingrained male-dominated culture.

Many problems concerning communication have been reported, with a focus on

intra-supplier communication within the construction sector; demand-supply

communication during the design phase; and communication between and within

single demand and supply side parties, during whole the construction process.

In our company, there was a confusion due to communication gap between engineers

and supervisors as they were using local names for process such plumb, skirting

activities. They referred to plumb to Olamba and skirting as Beda, which created a

sense of ambiguity between engineers and supervisors.

The communication between supervisors were in regional language. When

supervisors were discussing the activities related problems, engineers find it difficult

to understand.

There was a communication gap between execution team and sales team. The

execution team were not having any information related to carpet area and selling

rates.

The consultant visited site weekly .He found out the various technical flaws which

were not communicated to quality department in time, flaws such as proper cover to

reinforcement.


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Stakeholder

Internal

Client

Project Head

Project Manager

Line Managers

Site Engineers

Contractor

Project Manager

Line Managers

Site Engineers

Supervisor

Foreman

Sub Contractor Consultant

Structural

Architectural

MEP

External

J V Partner

Sponsors

Supplier/Vendor

Customer

Govt. /Regulatory

Bodies

Public/ LocalBody

1. Govt. Regulatory Body

2. Consultant

1.Client – Project Head,Project Manager

2. Vendor/Supplier

3. Sponsors

4. JV Partner

1. Public

2. Local Body

1. Customer

2. Contractor – PM andTeam

3. Sub- Contractor

Stakeholder Identification

Power / Interest Grid

Interest

P o w e r


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Change Management

Messages about the change: -

•

the current situation and the rationale for the change

• a vision of the organization after the change takes place

• the basics of what is changing, how it will change, and when it will change

• the expectation that change will happen and is not a choice

• status updates on the implementation of the change, including success stories

Messages about how the change will impact the employee: -

•

The impact of the change on the day-to-day activities of the employee

(WIIFM – What’s in it for me?)

• Implications of the change on job security (Will I have a job?)

• Specific behaviors and activities expected from the employee, including

support of the change

• Procedures for getting help and assistance during the change

Aspects for Successful Communication - Change

o Direct communications were seen as successful for conveying messages

about the need for change, providing details about specific roles and

expectations, describing the future state and answering specific questions.

o

In addition to how the message was delivered, participants provided

characteristics of communications that contributed to success.

o

According to participants, successful communications were:•

honest – “Honesty even when the consequences were possibly negative”

• frequent and constant throughout the entire program

• consistent

• open, transparent and safe


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Case: Resistance to Change

All the planning engineers were well equipped in working with excel but at times

certain reports needed to be generated on Gantt Chart which included proper

sequence of work along with the durations and constrains (e.g. Must start on, mustend on, as soon as possible etc.)

As the contractor had to abide by the requirements of client. The contract introduced

MSP i.e. Microsoft projects into their work so steadily the work force came up with

some issues when change was being implemented into the work culture.

Some of the resistances were as follows on the individual level

Habitual with all the work on excel as it solved most of the issues on tracking and

monitors.

Fear of unknown like some were afraid to work with complex commands and how

to defend them.

All this took the shape of group inertia.

Due to this all the workshops arranged saw poor engagement when it came to

working on the software

At the very end with the change management saw the intervention of the projectmanager then work force was willing to accept it at a better level than expected due

to the following things he did

Motivating the change so as to diversify their reach on project, explaining the

requirement of the current economic condition and also induction of positive fear to

perform as they may get left out with primitive skills.

Creating a vision of change and convincing them that this Change will initiate

clarification of goals and seeing through the allocation of resources and developing

alternative techniques to works to be done.

Explaining the takeaway for employees with respect to knowledge and skill


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Learning from this study is that

Active participation of the management people or even a in-charge will do

wonders

Proper Negotiation and Manipulation can help both the parties (employees

and project manager) involved achieve their profits at individual level

collectively leading to the organisational good.

Change has to be initiated slowly and has to be made understood and bring in

to the work culture


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Risk Management

Explaining in detail the nature of a risk, how it may affect your project, and

how you estimated the likelihood of its occurrence. The risks that are

associated with time overrun like penalty, overheads were discussed.

All the variances which were calculated by planning department were

communicated to the execution team so that they can take remedial measures

accordingly at the right time.

Encouraging people to think and talk about risks, meetings were

conducted every 15 – 20 days that included client, contractor, sub-contractor

and consultant. DELPHI and Brainstorming methods were used to find out

and mitigate the risks.

Maintaining a risk register in which all the risk related data is documented;

this is referred throughout the duration of the project.

Telling people the current chances that certain risks will occur, how

you’re minimizing the chances of problems, and how they can reduce the

chances of negative consequences.

Delphi Technique:

The Delphi method is a structured communication technique or method, originally

developed as a systematic, interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of

experts. The experts answer questionnaires in two or more rounds. After each round,a facilitator or change agent provides an anonymous summary of the experts’

forecasts from the previous round as well as the reasons they provided for their

judgments. Thus, experts are encouraged to revise their earlier answers in light of

the replies of other members of their panel. It is believed that during this process the


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range of the answers will decrease and the group will converge towards the "correct"

answer. Finally, the process is stopped after a predefined stop criterion (e.g. number

of rounds, achievement of consensus, and stability of results and the mean or median

scores of the final rounds determine the results.

Delphi is based on the principle that forecasts (or decisions) from a structured group

of individuals are more accurate than those from unstructured groups. The technique

can also be adapted for use in face-to-face meetings, and is then called mini-Delphi

or Estimate-Talk-Estimate (ETE). Delphi has been widely used for business

forecasting and has certain advantages over another structured forecasting approach,

prediction markets.

Brainstorming Technique:

Brainstorming is a group creativity technique by which efforts are made to find a

conclusion for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously

contributed by its members. The term was popularized by Alex Faickney Osborn in

the 1953 book Applied Imagination. Osborn claimed that brainstorming was more

effective than individuals working alone in generating ideas, although more recent

research has questioned this conclusion. Today, the term is used as a catch all for all

group ideation sessions.


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Communication Management Plan

Nature of

Communicati

on

From To Purpose Frequenc

y

Delivery

media

Contractor

related

document

submission

Contractors Client Document

register/Recor

ds

At the

start of the

project

Hard copy

submission

Project update Contractors Client / JV

partner

Project

progress

update

Daily Email/Telepho

ne

Design change

intimation

Client/Archite

ct

Contractors Design

change

implementatio

n

When

received

Verbal update,

Email, Memos

Issues Contractors Client Major site

issues

resolution

requests

As needed Email

Request for

information

Contractors Architect/P

MC

Design query

resolution

As needed Email

Contractor

invoices

Contractors Client Invoice

certification

and payment

Monthly/

As needed

Email, Hard

copy

submission

Site

instructions

Client/Archite

ct

Contractors Minor query

resolution

As needed Verbal, site

instruction

book

Handover

documents

Contractors JV Partner/

Client

Records,

O&M

manuals

At the end

of project

Hard copy

submission

Documents

Business Communication Case Study