Collaborative Project Delivery Models and the Interplay Between Collaboration and Sensemaking Processes in Major Infrastructure Projects

Licentiate thesis, 2025

Collaboration is increasingly recognised as critical to the success of complex infrastructure projects, facilitated by collaborative project delivery models. Despite extensive research, its evolution over time remains underexplored. Collaboration, though related to cooperation and coordination, is inconsistently defined in literature. This thesis examines how collaboration is described and explores mechanisms shaping it in infrastructure projects, using sensemaking as a theoretical lens to analyse how project actors interpret and foster collaboration. A systematic review of 137 articles identifies key components underpinning collaboration, cooperation, and coordination – trust, communication, culture, and contract – establishing a hierarchical relationship among these concepts. This study clarifies definitional ambiguities and contributes a conceptual framework illustrating how a collective sense of purpose emerges in projects. The framework advances theoretical understanding and offers practical insights into relational governance, addressing trust, contracts, cooperative goal-setting, and coordination mechanisms. Through a longitudinal case study of a major road tunnel renovation project, this research examines how project managers and experts shape collaboration using sensemaking processes. Data from 42 interviews and observations reveal that collaboration is instigated, maintained, and developed through sensemaking and sensegiving related to governance, decision-making, and information flow, with the client’s approach playing a pivotal role. Events, triggers, and sensebreakers influence these processes, causing management teams to fluctuate between order and chaos, highlighting the dynamic nature of collaboration. Integrating empirical and theoretical perspectives, this thesis enhances understanding of collaboration in major infrastructure projects, offering implications for project management and relational governance research and practice.