Interface Management Model for Mega Capital Projects

Many construction projects are becoming more complex and large in scale due to advances in technology and operations. These projects involve many stakeholders, with different geographical locations and working cultures, collaborating with one another throughout the project life cycle. Industry leaders believe that interface management systems can be created to improve alignment between stakeholders and reduce project issues and conflicts. However, identifying interfaces and monitoring interface states are significant challenges that creates a continues struggle for owners. Interfaces are generally considered as the links between different construction elements, stakeholders and project scopes. Poor management of interfaces may result in deficiencies in the project cost, time, and quality during the project life cycle execution, or may result in failures after the project has been delivered. Therefore, having systematic interface management to effectively handle the interfaces through the project life cycle is critical to project performance. In this paper, a process based approach is proposed for interface management of mega capital projects, starting with the definition and taxonomy of interfaces. Then, the main steps for implementing an Interface Management System (IMS) are introduced: (1) interface identification, (2) documentation, (3) issuing, (4) communication, and (5) closing.