Contrasting Construction and Business Projects: Implications for Project Management Techniques

From textbooks and education on project management, practitioners may be forgiven for assuming that well-documented project management techniques apply universally. In questioning the assumption, this paper shows that the nature of the project needs to be considered when deciding on techniques and, more importantly, how to apply them. While acknowledging the broad spectrum of projects, the approach taken is to contrast the extremes. On the one side is a typical construction project with a detailed specification being executed by a contractor; on the other, is a typical business project where, even if the overall objective is agreed, the way of achieving it is still to be determined and will change as the project unfolds. Contrasting different kinds of projects has not been found in extant literature, hence there are few references. To explore this new area, the following are covered. Four project examples are given to illustrate the differences between construction and business projects. The differences are then analysed on eight dimensions, Using this as background, eleven aspects of project management and some of their techniques, are discussed in terms of how they are applied. Most of the paper is based on the author’s experience as a practitioner overlapped with teaching of project management and project governance. Because research has not yet been done, eight areas for possible future research are suggested.