Measuring Team Effectiveness in Construction Projects: Team Members' Perceptions

Team effectiveness is the ability of a team of people to work together efficiently to achieve a desired goal. An effective team works together to undertake responsibilities, maintain good social relations while promoting personal and professional development. Effective teams are able to enrich the strengths of each team member. Although there are different ways to measure team effectiveness, individual team members' perceptions can portray their direct experiences. Higher team effectiveness ratings from team members indicate enhanced team collaboration, stronger resilience when facing setbacks, and high levels of team performance. After reviewing and assessing team effectiveness literature from different industries, this study identified factors vital to measure construction teams' perceptions. A pilot team effectiveness survey was developed, and a pilot analysis was conducted to understand the overlaps between these factors. Professionals from 36 construction projects participated in the pilot study. The team effectiveness survey was refined using reliability analysis on the collected data, correlations among the specific factors, and the participants' feedback. The final survey is composed of 12 factors that measure team effectiveness as well as control questions that capture team members' general views of their team. These factors include Goal Alignment, Decision Making, Team Communication, Conflict Management, Professional Relationships, Humor, GRIT, Risk Management, Innovation, Trust, Collaboration and Diversity-Equity-Inclusion (DEI). Measuring team effectiveness and its outcomes in construction projects can substantially benefit designing effective professional team development training programs. In addition, the efficiency of design and construction project teams may also be strengthened throughout this process.