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 this
stage 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
Safety
Reporting

Co-ordination
between the Client,
Contractor and JV
Partner during
Handing Over
Progress

Timely
execution of
Billing Process

Project Review
Meetings

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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 Identification

Stakeholder

Internal External

Client Contractor Sub Contractor Consultant

J V Partner

Project Head Project Manager Structural

Sponsors

Project Manager Line Managers Architectural

Supplier/
Vendor

Line Managers Site Engineers MEP

Customer

Site Engineers Supervisor Govt. /

Regulatory
Bodies
Public/ Local
Foreman
Body

Power / Interest Grid

1.Client – Project Head,

Project Manager
1. Govt. Regulatory Body 2. Vendor/Supplier
2. Consultant 3. Sponsors
4. JV Partner
Power

1. Customer
1. Public 2. Contractor – PM and
2. Local Body Team
3. Sub- Contractor

Interest

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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, must
end 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 project
manager 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 From To Purpose Frequenc Delivery
Communicati y media
on
Contractor Contractors Client Document At the Hard copy
related register/Recor start of the submission
document ds project
submission
Project update Contractors Client / JV Project Daily Email/Telepho
partner progress ne
update
Design change Client/Archite Contractors Design When Verbal update,
intimation ct change received Email, Memos
implementatio
n
Issues Contractors Client Major site As needed Email
issues
resolution
requests
Request for Contractors Architect/P Design query As needed Email
information MC resolution
Contractor Contractors Client Invoice Monthly/ Email, Hard
invoices certification As needed copy
and payment submission
Site Client/Archite Contractors Minor query As needed Verbal, site
instructions ct resolution instruction
book
Handover Contractors JV Partner/ Records, At the end Hard copy
documents Client O&M of project submission
manuals

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