Improving Organizational Communication for Better Client Requirement Communication Practices

This Thesis focused on improving organizational communication and enhancing the information flow from the client to the back-office. The case company is an engineering office offering solutions and design services to private and public entities which has not yet established its client requirement communication practices. The Thesis followed the research approach of Applied action research and used qualitative research methods to gain deeper understanding of the challenge at hand. The topic of this Thesis was approached by conducting workshops, interviews and analyzing the existing employee satisfaction surveys. The research approach was chosen according to the nature of the research objective. The current state analysis revealed strengths and weaknesses in the current communication practices. The strengths relate to the already existing effective collaboration between designers and drawers in the back-office. The identified weaknesses revealed that the information flow from the client to the back-office was lacking clear structure and practices. Due to the results of the current state analysis, improvement proposals needed to be made first for organizational communication and current project practices before client requirement communication practices could be created. The outcome of this Thesis is a set of proposals for improving current project practices on Start meeting, Project meeting, Project communication and Design audit process. Based on the proposed improvements client requirement communication practices was created. Once the proposed improvements are implemented, the case company can improve their project performance and process client requirements more systematically