Impact of the Virtual Collaboration on Project Progress Monitoring in the Construction Industry

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of virtual collaboration on project progress monitoring in international construction projects. The research is based on a survey of contracting and engineering consulting firms in the Middle East, Mid-Asia, Europe, North America, and Far East. The useable survey comprised 326 individual responses from 500 distributed, giving a response rate of 65.2 percent. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was proposed as an effective tool to identify the relations between various factors of project progress monitoring, virtual collaboration, and project performance control. The results revealed that there was a strongly significant relationship between virtual collaboration and project performance (time, cost and quality) control. The research findings support the virtual collaborative working environments, as the output of an automated monitoring system is real-time, accurate, and cost effective.