Contractor and Owner Perceptions of Interface Management Implementation Strategies for Airport Construction Projects

Abstract

Interface roles are critical in multidisciplinary and large construction projects (LCPs), owing to numerous boundary activities and liminal actors. The current study investigated the perceptions of interface management and contrasted the strategic interventions to deal with interface-related issues through the people, process, and technology lenses. Airport construction projects in this study were considered one of the most interface-issue-prone projects, and viewpoints from the general contractors versus the owners were investigated. A qualitative approach with semistructured interviews as data collection and through thematic analysis (TA) was employed for capturing the opinions of international experts. The study’s notable findings include that the general contractor insists on people- and process-based interventions, such as negotiations with stakeholders and management of information at a contractual level, while the owner insists on the technology-based initiative of huge software integration. This study entails two key contributions. First, the current investigation extends the scarce literature on a holistic understanding of interfaces and interface management taxonomy in highly interdependent and complex projects such as airports. This current study is among the first to consider interface management as highly crucial for airport construction projects. Second, it compares the strategic interventions contractors and owners adopt when dealing with different interface issues, having understood the airport interface taxonomy.