Case explorations in construction conflict management

Empirical data from recent studies on conflict in construction projects are presented and discussed. Views of conflict management, collected during interviews with a wide range of practitioners, serve to highlight the importance of conflict as a major component in project management strategy in the construction industry. The occurrence of conflict is shown to be a common and often poorly managed phenomenon in modern construction projects, despite real progress in the organization and administration of construction projects. The research demonstrates a need to re-evaluate construction management processes in order to shift the distribution of conflict occurrences from one that peaks during construction to one that peaks in the earlier formative stages of design when the output of conflict is more likely to be creative and complementary to the overall project aims.