1. Introduction
The selected delivery method for any construction project has a significant role in its success or failure. Changing business conditions, new requirements, and development of technologies are challenging traditional delivery methods and have resulted in several changes and the emergence of new ones, where collaboration between project stakeholders is of prime importance (such as project partnering, integrated project delivery, and project alliance) [
1,
2]. These new collaborative delivery methods in construction projects provide a different operational project environment, which can foster collaboration (working together) and cooperation (information exchange) among different project stakeholders for the good of the project.
In such an operational environment, appropriate stakeholder management is crucial to facilitate collaborative behaviors and project managers, as project leaders, are responsible for managing the project stakeholders and its atmosphere. Thus, project managers’ competencies are one of the main predictors of their performance, and they need to have certain kinds of competencies to have superior performance in their job [
3]. Accordingly, the role of competent project managers in successful delivery of projects, in general, and for construction projects, in particular, has been one of the most investigated topics among the research community.
In this regard, several studies have pursued to identify project managers’ competencies in general [
4,
5,
6,
7,
8] and for specific types of project [
9,
10,
11,
12,
13]. Those context-oriented studies have focused on different types of projects, such as construction and IT. Construction projects as one of the focused contexts, have received considerable attention for addressing project managers’ competencies. Consequently, several conducted studies, mainly focused on traditional construction projects, have resulted in identification of a few competencies [
14,
15,
16,
17,
18,
19]. Meanwhile, as stated earlier, there have been significant changes in delivery methods of construction projects over the recent years. Particularly, the use of collaborative project delivery methods has spread gradually to facilitate new management approaches, especially for complex infrastructure projects.
Due to the changes in construction project delivery methods and the focus of construction-oriented competency studies on traditional delivery methods, collaborative construction projects and their managerial solutions are still a relatively new field, and thus, special aspects such as competencies of project managers in such projects have been studied in a very limited manner. This study aimed to identify project managers’ appropriate competencies for collaborative construction projects. To that end, first, the theoretical background is presented followed by the description of the research methodology and relating research process. After that, the research results are presented together with relating discussion and their positioning with the prior research. The final chapter highlights the gained novel contributions.
5. Discussion
The first group of results showed the most and least significant competencies in the current state of project managers in collaborative construction projects. Group capabilities, trustworthiness, leveraging diversity, and leadership were the four highest valued competencies in the current state of collaborative construction project managers. This seems to be in line with the expectations from the project managers in collaborative construction projects, as part of their responsibility is to manage the projects, and in which one of their principles is cooperation and trust-based relationships among all participants for the good of the project [
1,
2]. In such a collaborative environment, leadership ability is also crucial in order to take full advantage of the mentioned principal. Concerning the four least significant competencies, including innovativeness, conceptual thinking, emotional awareness, analytical thinking, and initiative, it is quite surprising because these competencies (except emotional awareness), in general, are referred to as the necessary competencies for managerial level jobs [
3,
58]. Therefore, project managers in collaborative construction projects are expected to possess these competencies, as the areas requiring improvement. Subsequently, findings on the creative tension (supportive) competencies (Group 3) make it clear that among the ten least significant competencies in the current state of collaborative construction project managers, they have willingness for improving five (50%) of them, including innovativeness, emotional awareness, initiative, management, and developing others.
Group 2 included the most significant competencies of project managers in their target state, which later were termed as their core competencies. Here, group capabilities, leveraging diversity, relationship building, and maintaining order are among the ten most significant competencies in the target state (
Table 7). This is not surprising as we have already stated that these competencies are highly required for project managers in the collaborative construction projects. In addition, there are six other competencies among the ten most significant ones in the target state, which were not high in the current state. The first one was language proficiency, which surprisingly has been identified as the second core competency of project managers. This can be mainly emanated from the fact that utilizing foreign languages (particularly English) in Finnish construction projects has been considerably increasing during recent two decades. Accordingly, project managers in Finnish collaborative construction projects see language proficiency as a core competency for their success. The importance of language proficiency also emphasizes the need to be able to communicate more in a collaborative environment and this then also makes the language more critical. The second one was flexibility. The nature of collaborative construction projects considerably increases the amount of interactions between project participants. Project manager needs to be open to several various opinions and be able to manage multiple demands, resulted from those interactions, without losing focus, as the leader of the project. Thus, the flexibility competency seems to be completely necessary for project managers in collaborative construction projects.
Maintaining order and achievement orientation are the next competencies identified as the highest in the target state. A very important goal of collaborative construction projects is the concern for quality, which is most often is sacrificed in traditional construction projects for meeting time or cost targets [
1]. One other important goal in collaborative construction projects is the orientation toward excellent results through setting and meeting the challenging goals [
2]. The two mentioned competencies, maintaining order and achievement orientation, precisely account for these goals, and therefore are of prime importance for project managers in collaborative construction projects. The last one is relationship building. As already stated, collaborative and trust-based relationships are principally required to set and meet the common goals for the good of the collaborative construction projects. Conceptually, relationship building is the ability of establishing or maintaining friendly relationships or networks of contacts with people who are or might be useful in achieving work-related goals. Accordingly, the relationship-building competency is completely needed for establishing effective and trust-based relationships in the collaborative construction projects.
Moreover, project managers’ core and supportive competencies, together, characterized the profile of their competencies in collaborative construction projects. This finding is originated from project managers’ self-evaluations concerning their competencies. Self-evaluation in a behavioral manner is one of the most valid and effective methods in conducting competency studies [
3]. This competency profile of project managers contributes to the existing knowledge and brings new insights on project managers’ competencies in collaborative construction projects, particularly in the Finnish context.
Finally, based on the obtained results, it looks obvious that there are differences between the required competencies for project managers in traditional and collaborative construction projects. Whereas the managerial competencies for traditional construction projects highlight the significance of systems and methods, the recognized competencies of relevance for collaborative construction projects draw attention to human issues and management. This argument can be supported from two aspects. First, looking at top 10 competencies identified from literature (
Table 1) and those competencies from survey and interviews (
Figure 7 and
Table 9), competencies such as time management, quality management, and human resource management, which have been important in traditional construction projects, are no longer focused in collaborative construction projects. Second, looking at the competencies detected in this study, it seems that the importance of competencies (such as understanding others and stress management) related to human issues and in particular, behavior of project managers in collaborative construction projects, have increased.
Moreover, the body of needed competencies in traditional and in collaborative construction projects may well emanate from the differences between the working culture, management style, and business model of traditional and collaborative construction projects. The working culture in collaborative construction projects is based on trust, cooperation, effective communication, and teamwork whereas traditional construction projects suffer often from mistrust, adversarial relationships, and ineffective communication [
1,
2]. The type of culture in collaborative construction projects needs a project manager whose management style helps him/her to trust project team members and foster teamwork and effective communication [
66]. To that end, competencies such as group capabilities, language proficiency, leveraging diversity, flexibility, relationship building, and understanding others are here characterizing the needed culture as mentioned by this study (
Figure 7). Then, a business model comprising elements such as fixed profit and profit based on project outcome (shared risk/reward system) needs a project manager who can lead all project practitioners toward a common goal by aligning their commercial interests toward project efficiency as a whole. Such a project manager needs competencies such as leadership, management, and developing others (see
Figure 7). In other words, project managers in collaborative construction projects are managers of people rather than managers of systems and technology. Therefore, in collaborative construction projects the behavioral competencies related to human issues are of prime importance, whereas in traditional construction projects the key competences are around systems and methods.
6. Conclusions
This study aimed at evaluating project managers’ competencies in collaborative construction projects, especially in a Finnish context, to identify the most appropriate ones suiting the context of interest. It was carried out through undertaking qualitative research to analyze project managers’ behaviors related to their everyday work. The obtained results provide the basis for the following conclusions concerning the collaborative construction projects:
Project managers’ 10 core competencies (necessary for their superior performance) comprise group capabilities, language proficiency, leveraging diversity, stress tolerance (management), flexibility, relationship building, leadership, maintaining order, achievement orientation, and understanding others.
The seven supportive competencies (supplementary for core competencies) of project managers were found to be emotional awareness, communication, innovativeness, developing others, initiative, organizational savvy, and management.
There are four competencies that were found to be very important in both current and target state of project managers. These are group capabilities, leveraging diversity, relationship building, and maintaining order.
Project managers have a strong willingness to improve the emotional awareness, communication, innovativeness, developing others, initiative, organizational savvy, and management competencies that are not high in their current state.
The profile of project managers’ competencies can assist them to cover their competency deficiencies and help decision makers in companies to hire or select the right person as a project manager.
The recognized competencies of relevance draw attention to human issues and management, whereas the managerial competencies for traditional construction projects are highlighting the significance of systems and methods.
These findings provide new insights for project managers of collaborative construction projects in terms of possessing the competencies necessary for their superior performance, and their managers to be aware of project managers’ core and supportive competencies in collaborative construction projects. Since 2011, the total value of launched alliance-type construction projects in Finland is more than EUR 3 billion. This highlights the importance of this study’s findings for contributing to the existing knowledge on project managers’ competencies in collaborative construction projects. Finally, it should be acknowledged that the generalizability of the findings of this study is rather limited due to its scope, which includes project managers of collaborative construction projects in Finland. Therefore, studies on project managers’ competencies in collaborative construction projects in various regions and business conditions is a potential area for further research.