Project delay and barriers to improved communication: Mediation effects of field experience.

Communication issues nowadays became a common issue that everyone is talking about. The blame is on these issues for the late progress in the construction sector and also other sectors. The communication issues become more extreme since the pandemic Covid-19 turn out. One of the serious problems related to communication issues in the construction industry is project delay. This paper aims to examine the relationship between barriers in communication and project delay which is mediated by the field of experience of the project teams. A survey of 215 project teams was conducted in Selangor to investigate the relationship between project delay, barriers to improvement in communication, and field of experience. It was hypothesized that a relationship between barriers to improvement in communication and project delay was mediated by the field of experience of the project team. To begin with, Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) study revealed that project teams' field of experience considerably and favorably reflects the relationship between barriers to improvement of communication and project delay. The finding shows the field of experience is significant as mediator to the relationship of barriers to improvement and project delay; bar -> exp -> pd (0.121, t = 2.393, p<0.05). Therefore, it can be concluded that the field of experience of the team members in the project plays an important role in dealing with the communications barriers that lead to project delays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]