management practices in project-based design environments

Design Innovation Research Centre

Management practices in project-based design environmentsJennifer Whyte

About the authorJennifer Whyte is Professor in Innovation and Design in the School of Construc-tion Management and Engineering at the University of Reading. Her work involves close collaboration with industrial part-ners to understand innovation and design practices within organizations. She has a particular interest in the role of digital technologies in the governance of large projects. These have been explored through the recent Advanced Institute of Management Fellowship, funded by the Economic and Social Sciences Research Council (ESRC) and Engineering and Physi-cal Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

This Fellowship on ‘Management Practices in Project-Based Design Environments’ provided time for analysis and interpreta-tion of, and theorising from Prof Whyte’s previous empirical work on major building and infrastructure projects: Heathrow Ter-minal 5, M6 Toll, CTRL, Safelink motorway, and the Tottenham Court Road Station Upgrade (TCRSU) project as well as the collection of new data from projects such as the London 2012 Olympics and Crossrail.

About the Design Innovation Research CentreProfessor Whyte leads the Design Innova-tion Research Centre, which is developing novel engineering solutions for shared design inquiry. It has a vision of a new mode of design in the digital economy. As a ‘Challenging Engineering’ exploration group, it is EPSRC funded in its first 5 years (£1.25m 2010-2014). The Centre is a new kind of engineering research laboratory, an open and networked laboratory, which is inter-disciplinary, international and engaged with industry.

Informed by Professor Whyte’s AIM Fellowship work, recent research is devel-oping particular focus on digital design interfaces, within design and over time, between design, construction, operations and use. It is at these interfaces that new engineering and management challenges arise, as digital technologies integrate information and enable collaboration across previously separate contexts.

The latest research from the team is available in a working paper series on the website: www.reading.ac.uk/designinnovation

www.reading.ac.uk/designinnovation

Management Practices in Project-Based Design Environments

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Contents

Aims 3

Background 3

What was studied? 4

Findings 5

Contributions 6

Impact 8

Ongoing research 9

Acknowledgements and references 10

Selected publications 10

Management practices in project-based design environments

AimsThis research on ‘Management Practices in Project-Based Design Environments’

aims to:

•articulate – new management practices emerging in the digital economy

•assess – how digital tools change the locus and nature of decision-making

BackgroundManagement practicesRecent research on management has begun to study the everyday practices of

managers (e.g. Tengblad 2012) to yield new insights about how management work

is achieved. This new research builds on classic studies (e.g. Mintzberg 1973), but

has become necessary as the work practices of managers has been changing as a

result of new forms of, and technologies for, organizing.

Projects and designProjects are particularly challenging organizational

contexts, in which the organization itself is temporary, brought together to

achieve particular goals, and itself changing as different specialists become

involved across the stages of the project. At the front-end of projects, where the

tasks that are being managed involved design, then the approach to management

has to facilitate creative work and the generation as well as to systematising of

information and processes.

Digital technologiesDigital technologies are changing the way that projects are delivered. In the same

way that integrated software solutions, such as Enterprise Resource Planning

(ERP), are used to integrate information at firm-level, new solutions are being

developed to integrate information for complex project delivery and operations.

In manufacturing these are described as Product Life-Cycle Management (PLM)

and in the delivery of the built environment they are discussed as Building Infor-

mation Modelling (BIM). Such integrated systems, and the social media that are also

developing, require new forms of management in the digital economy.

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What was studied?Research questionsThe research examined the practices of experienced managers working in project-

based design environments. Research questions included:

•How do managers accomplish their work?

•How does the use of integrated software solutions affect the manager’s role?

Data collectionFieldwork was conducted in the hand-over stages of the London 2012 Olympics as

the Stadium, Velodrome and Structures, Bridges and Highways were taken over

by games operators and prepared for legacy uses. Research was also conducted in

underground and railway stations, including Tottenham Court Road and King’s

Cross. Altogether more than 60 interviews were conducted; using formal inter-

view protocols, documents were obtained from the projects and there were many

more meetings, informal interviews and conversations with project participants.

Prof Whyte also interviewed managers in HighSpeed 1, CrossRail and the M30

in Canada, with additional research discussions, or interviews with participants

from firms that work on major projects including McAlpine, Halcrow, Thales,

Skanska, Fulcro, Arup, Costain, COINS, Autodesk and Bentley. Comparisons with

the USA and Denmark have been used to evaluate the significance of both practi-

cal and theoretical contributions.

ImportanceThis research is important as project management techniques developed in

the 1950s and 1960s are being challenged as technologies used to deliver major

technologies transform practices. New understandings are needed to manage pro-

ject-based design environments effectively. Through asking these questions, this

research has begun to develop new insights around the consequences for manag-

ers of a digital infrastructure for delivery, and the new challenges for mangers in

handover of data.

A project manager on digital data:

‘I think you have to step back and say, yes, it’s very useful, but challenge it, constantly challenge what you see. Does it make sense?


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Findings New challengesManagers face new challenges in making visible and monitoring the current

status of work. The field research found a range of new techniques being devel-

oped to make use of digital infrastructures for delivery at the same time as

making work visible. Some managers favour interacting with their teams to talk

around and coordinate tasks and there is clearly a use of digital media to then

record conversations and their outcomes.

ConsequencesWhile the literatures on management are sometimes critical of digital technolo-

gies, this study finds the increasing pervasiveness and use of these infrastructures

striking. The consequences of emerging practices that break the mould of 1960s

approaches to project delivery (Whyte and Levitt 2011) also include the distri-

bution of work across global offices; the prominence of the new roles of CAD

managers and document controllers (Whyte 2011) and asymmetrical relationships

between the digital models and established professions, with for example, archi-

tects directly inputting data into the system while engineers use CAD technicians

to update their designs and feedback any issues.

Digital infrastructureThe research shows how in complex projects, integrated software solutions form

this digital infrastructure for delivery (Whyte and Lobo 2010). It articulates how

digital repositories; standards; transformational technologies; and models are

used; and how asymmetries of information arise in professional practices around

these datasets. Given the distribution of work, and the practices involved in its

digital integration, managers accomplish their work by juggling many activities at

the same time. Interruption is normal, rather than an exception.

‘You are used to change, and it’s how you manage that change which is most important.’

Integrated digital models are central to the digital infrastructures for delivery

Transformational technologies Remote devices

Social media

Standards

Repositories

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Contributions …To understanding organization and management The detailed findings, around how managers accomplish their work in this

context, are available in research papers. These articulate the contributions of the

work to organization and management debates.

Accountability and controlThe research contributes to understandings of boundary spanning in coor-

dination by articulates how a digital infrastructure is becoming used for

accountability and control on major projects, as well as for the kinds of coopera-

tion that are documented in existing literatures on ‘boundary objects.’

Hybrid practices

The research highlights the hybrid practices that emerge across media, con-

tributing to work on materiality and practice by assessing how the visibility of

information and auditability of decisions changes the locus and nature of deci-

sion-making. Managers have to become skilled at working across multiple media

and activities at the same time through new forms of hybrid practice.

Coordination over timeThe research raises new questions about coordination over time. While the

existing literature considers rapid handovers between professionals, this study

has started to examine and consider the practices of handing over large data-

sets between organizations. Integrated software has real potential for effective

management, but it raises new challenges for managers in project-based design

environments– to ensure that the design is buildable and complete and that

the data is in a format that will be not only useful over the short term, but will

become useful to project clients in operating the asset over the longer term.

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To informing practices of managementPromising organizational forms and arrangements have been surfaced in this

research, particularly around the handover of data from projects to operations.

Here the work with the London 2012 Olympics highlights both the challenge of

handing over larger data-sets, where professions have different conceptions of the

underlying data and interact at different points in time, and promising practices.

Practices to enable informed decision-makingIn design there is the challenge of ensuring that experts can make decisions,

and that these decisions are appropriately checked. Managers find this more

challenging in the digital economy, as work is less visible – no longer can the

manager walk around and look at the work on the drawing boards at the end of

the day. Instead managers need to develop new ways to make decision-making

work visible and to check the validity of decisions.

Practices to ensure shared deliveryThere is significant management attention to compliance with workflows and

structured processes associated with digital design work, and to reducing the

workarounds that use email and social media as a means to accomplish tasks

outside of formal processes. Managers are instead developing new ways to use

informal communication to reinforce formal processes and accomplish shared

tasks to deliver effectively and efficiently.

Practices to effectively hand-over responsibilitiesThe handover of digital data-sets, for example from projects to client operations,

became a particular focus, as this is a significant practical challenge. Here the

analyses conducted contribute to and extend understandings of asynchronous

coordination in large and complex projects. The findings are important as policy

makers see developing and maintaining high-quality data through the life-

cycle is crucial in addressing challenges of cost, value and carbon.Managers are

developing new practices for handing over responsibilities at the end of complex

projects to make use of integrated software in the operation of assets.

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ImpactInforming the project clientThe findings of this research are shaping policy making and practice as the UK

government as a client begins to mandate the use of these tools on projects.

Results have been disseminated to UK managers and business leaders through a

series of workshops and through practitioner outputs and reports. Two workshops

were held in London with other activities in London. One of these was organized

jointly by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) and Advanced Institute of Man-

agement (AIM) event on ‘Engineering Management in the Digital Economy , and is

fully recorded and available online at: www.ice.org.uk/digitaleconomy

Informing practice and researchThis research has implications for managers in a range of complex product and

service industries. Prof Whyte has been disseminating the findings through work

with major built infrastructure clients and industry partners, participating in the

Construction Industry Council (CIC) Building Information Modelling (BIM) Forum

and the Institution of Civil Engineers Information Systems Panel. The main indus-

try/government BIM task group has asked her to lead a workpackage on learning

from others, drawing lessons from overseas practices. The work has also shaped the

trajectory of research being taken forward through the Design Innovation Research

Centre, which Prof Whyte has established and leads at the University of Reading.

www.ice.org.uk/digitaleconomy


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Acknowledgements and referencesAcknowledgementsThe author gratefully acknowledges support from the EPSRC and ESRC through

grants RES-331-27-0076 and EP/H02204X/1 as well as the inputs of co-authors and

colleagues,

ReferencesMintzberg, H. (1973). The Nature of Managerial Work, Harper Collins.

Tengblad, S. (2012). The Work of Managers: Towards a Practice Theory of Management.

Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Whyte, J. and Levitt, R. (2011) ‘Information Management and the Management of

Projects’, in Morris, P. Pinto, J. and Söderlund, J. (eds) Oxford Handbook of Project Man-

agement, Oxford University Press.

Whyte, J. (2011) Managing digital coordination of design: emerging hybrid prac-

tices in an institutionalized project setting. Engineering Project Organization Journal,

1 (3), pp. 159–168.

Whyte, J. and Lobo, S. (2010) Coordination and control in project-based work:

digital objects and infrastructures for delivery, Construction Management and Eco-

nomics, Vol. 28, No. 6, pp. 557–567.

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Selected publicationsWhyte, J., Lindkvist, C. and Hassan Ibrahim, N. (2012) From

projects into operations: Lessons for data handover, Manage-

ment, Procurement and Law, forthcoming.

Whyte, J., Lobo, S., Lindkvist, C., Jaradat, S., Oliveira, A., Guo,

G., Maradza, E., Stasis, A. (2012) Research on Digital Design and

Innovation: New Directions. DIRC Working Paper 4, version 1.1.

www.reading.ac.uk/designinnovation/for-industry/di-for-

industry-working-papers.aspx

Zhou, W., Whyte, J., Sacks, R. (2012) Construction safety and

digital design: a review, Automation in Construction, Vol. 22,

pp. 102-111.

Whyte, J. and Levitt, R. (2011) ‘Information Management and

the Management of Projects’, in Morris, P. Pinto, J. and Söder-

lund, J. (eds) Oxford Handbook of Project Management, Oxford

University Press.

Whyte, J., Lindkvist, C., Jaradat, S. and Hassan Ibrahim, N.

(2011) “Data handover from project delivery into operations”

Learning Legacy: lessons from the London 2012 Games construction

project. www.reading.ac.uk/designinnovation/di-legacy-

report-video.aspx

Whyte, J. (2011) Managing digital coordination of design:

emerging hybrid practices in an institutionalized project

setting. Engineering Project Organization Journal, 1 (3), pp. 159–168.

Whyte, J. and Sexton, M. (2011) Motivating stakeholders to

deliver environmental change, Building Research and Informa-

tion, Vol. 39, Issue 5, pp. 473–482.

Tombesi, P. & Whyte, J. (2011) ‘Challenges of Design Man-

agement in Construction’, in Cooper, R., Junginger, S. and

Lockwood, T. (eds) Handbook of Design Management, Berg Pub-

lishing.

Whyte, J., Lindkvist, C., and Hassan Ibrahim, N. (2010) Value

to Clients through Data Hand-Over: A Pilot Study, Summary

Report to Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) Information

Systems (IS) Panel.

Whyte, J. and Lobo, S. (2010) Coordination and control in

project-based work: digital objects and infrastructures for

delivery, Construction Management and Economics, Vol. 28, No.

6, pp. 557–567.

Harty, C. and Whyte, J. (2010) Emerging hybrid practices in

construction design work: the role of mixed media, ASCE

Journal of Construction Engineering and Management. Vol. 136,

No. 4, pp. 468–476.

Whyte, J. (2010) Taking time to understand: articulating rela-

tionships between technologies and organizations, Research

in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 29, pp. 217–236.

Whyte, J. and Cardellino, P. (2010) Learning by design: Visual

practices and organizational transformation, Design Issues,

Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 59–69.

www.reading.ac.uk/designinnovation/for-industry/di-for-industry-working-papers.aspx

www.reading.ac.uk/designinnovation/for-industry/di-for-industry-working-papers.aspx

www.reading.ac.uk/designinnovation/di-legacy-report-video.aspx

www.reading.ac.uk/designinnovation/di-legacy-report-video.aspx


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Ongoing researchResearch on management practices in project-based design environments has

informed ongoing work. Within the Design Innovation Research Centre research

is conducted across three themes:

Theme 1: Science of design aims to transform understanding of design innovation

on major engineering projects and programmes through research on the digital

infrastructure for delivery of major building and infrastructure projects and

programmes. This research analyses technology strategies and outcomes across

projects, proposing models and indicators for future practice.

Theme 2: Playful engineering and design innovation aims to develop new tools

and processes and to trial these engineering solutions in hypothetical and real-

life engineering contexts. Rapid developments in 3D visual interfaces are used to

enable intuitive visualisation of digital models in physical design environments,

focusing designers’ attention and allowing them to engage creatively.

Theme 3: An open innovation network as a new kind of engineering laboratory,

the Centre is oriented outward, engages with society and, through that engage-

ment, develops creative solutions to practical engineering problems. It is located

in both a digital and physical space. Public participation is treated as matter of

research validity and not just a mechanism for dissemination; broad engagement is

seen as important in contextualising and understanding socio-technical solutions.

For more information see: www.reading.ac.uk/designinnovation


Management practices in project-based design environments

For more information, please contact:

Jennifer WhyteDesign Innovation Research Centre 216 Engineering Building Whiteknights, PO Box 225 Reading, RG6 6AY. UK

[email protected] Tel (0118) 378 7172


B04785 07.12


management practices in project-based design environments

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