 Current building boom in China

 54% of world’s concrete production

 35% of the world’s steel production

 Predicted boom will continue for an additional 20

years

 Chinese laws attractive to investors

 Relatively cheap labour combined with the
technology and knowledge available
 Problems Leatty Shanghai is facing:

 -Redesign
 -Road works
 -Building contractors
 -Suppliers
 -Weather conditions

 2 months behind schedule and 16% over

budget
 Redesigned plans took over three weeks to
reach contractor
 No adequate time allocated for quality design

whilst being deadline orientated

 Technology important obstacle

 Because of an internet-based application

there were problems collaborating

 Because of meetings with developer in
Canada efficiency level dropped
 Time difference important role in this

problem next to courtesy culture in China

 Because of long weeks and late nights the

morale dropped significantly leading to more
delays
  Suggestion
 They wanted everyone to use an internet

based application to foster communication

effectively.
 They should be deadline allocated to any task
 Problems
 The Germans and Chinese preferred using

email.
 The Germans and Chinese were slow in

carrying out projects.

  Suggestion
 They wanted a face to face communications

with client
 Problems
 Poor communication
 Little allocated time to time for designs
 Teleconference was not easy because of time
difference

Teleconference creates misunderstanding and

friction because they thought they talked
mainly about problems and risk
 They get negative feedback from client even
after spending much time on the project

 There is little or no time for the team

members to have fun as a team
 Revise communication lines

 Training regarding cultural differences

 Emphasize a positive approach

 Use of:  Compulsory use of the
- Paper Internet application.
- Phone
- E-mail  Face-to-face meetings
- Internet application 3 times a year.

 No face-to-face
 Teleconferences twice
contact; only a month
teleconferences.

Proposed way of
Situation at the moment communication
 Intensive training for all members of the team
 4 sessions
 1 day a week; 4 weeks in a row.
 One complete week in Shanghai
 All members of the team

 Objectives:
- Build trust
- More open way of communicating
 The most important problems for Leatty
were:
 -Geographical distance
 -Teamwork
 -Cultural differences

 Several suggestions have been put forward to

improve on these points
 The geographical distance can be neglected
by making better use of the communication
devices, this will also improve teamwork

 Key solution:
 Compulsory use of internet application, face-

to-face meetings and teleconferencing will

stimulate teamwork and ignore distance

 This will also reduce delays

 The different interpretations of the team
members resulted in delays
 Most important factor was cultural difference

 Key solution:
 Establishing a decent communication system
 Training on these cultural differences in order

to prevent possible misinterpretation