Achieving high process capability maturity in construction organisations

A move towards a process based view has been noted as the way forward to achievethe desired performance improvements in the construction industry. It has furtherbeen recognised that, it is important for the organisations to possess appropriateprocess capability maturity to embark on successful process improvement initiativesto achieve desired performance improvements. With the success of the softwareindustry's Capability Maturity Model (CMM), other industries have attempted to mapthe principles of CMM as a basis for process improvement initiatives within theirrespective settings. Construction is not an exception; the same has been attemptedwithin the construction industry through a research collaboration between academiaand industry, under the name of SPICE (Structured Process Improvements inConstruction Enterprises).Being a stepwise improvement strategy, the CMM consists of five maturity levels,where the first three levels have been identified as low maturity levels, while levelsfour and five have been named as high maturity levels. While the low maturity levelslay the foundation for organisations to attain continuous improvements successfully,the practices of the high maturity levels deploy the process improvements required toachieve substantial performance boosts. Despite the fact that achieving high maturitylevels is of utmost importance to achieve continuous improvements, up till now, onlythe low maturity level practices of CMM have been mapped within the context ofconstruction organisations, leaving its true potential unexplored as a constructionprocess improvement initiative.In the light of the above, this research aimed at mapping the practices of CMM highmaturity levels to construction organisations to achieve high process capabilitymaturity within construction organisations. This research has adopted the groundedtheory and case studies as the primary research methods. It used the hermeneuticspiral approach to operationalise the research. Accordingly, the empiricalinvestigation of this research consisted of two phases. The first phase is a series ofexpert interviews followed by two case studies conducted during the second phase ofthe study. Data analysis in this research was based on the coding, content analysis andcognitive mapping techniques. To assist with the data analysis and presentatio