| In a distributed team context, appropriate and effective information flows among team participants are vital to the success of the project's implementation and performance. An understanding of information flows during construction is also essential to identify various issues and find the appropriate solutions to address them in order to further improve construction processes. However, the research analyzing management processes by observing information flows in the construction industry, especially in projects executed in an internationally distributed work environment, is quite limited.; This study closely observes the business processes of a real case, and systematically analyzes the email messages exchanged at the management level of this international construction project. First, the information flow patterns associated with the construction project are identified on the basis of a study of the email messages. Based on the volume of information flows, communication, integration, procurement, materials and HR are found to be the most important areas involved in this distributed team context.; The in-depth observation of the interactive and communicative features of the exchanged message groups reveals that integration, procurement and materials are the most critical processes to project execution in this distributed work environment. The various issues associated with integration, procurement and materials, and the common problems, are identified and documented. A series of generic models, use case models, and activity diagram models proposed in this report provide an effective solution to address various issues and solve common problems associated with integration, procurement and materials management.; Keywords: Distributed Team, Information Flows, Construction Industry, Project Management Process, Communication... |
