Complexity Management in Large Construction Projects: Identifying Factors and Variables

This study answers the question, “what are the main factors of complexity in large projects?” and “what relationships are there among them?” The main purpose of this study is identifying the factors of project complexity in large construction area and the relationships. Structural, technological, and environmental considered as the main themes and they formed the main components of the conceptual model. For examining the model, research strategy was case study in Iranian large construction projects, and research method was survey. The study population was the project experts in the selected cases, and stratified sampling was used to selecting samples. 300 questionnaires were distributed in the research population, and finally 120 completed questionnaires were analyzed using structural modeling. The findings indicate that there is a significant relationship between environmental complexity and project complexity. That is, when the complexity of the project environment, including economic, social, and political factors, raise, the complexity of the project increases too, while, both technological and structural complexities at the 0.001 level affect project complexity less than environmental. In other words, the relationship between technological and structural complexities with project complexity in Iranian large projects are weaker than environmental complexity. So, the intensity of the relationship between the last two factors is slightly different with the literature.