Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

One of the greatest risk factors in the delivery of on-time, high quality infrastructure projects is successful completion of the environmental review process. For state and local transportation agencies, this work is performed primarily by environmental consulting firms. Many agencies report severe problems in the quality of environmental reports submitted by consulting firms, which results in multiple rounds of review and project delays in the design and construction of infrastructure. The growing research literature on contracting and partnerships highlights the importance of cooperative strategies between agencies and consultants. While communications are generally considered key to cooperative strategies, few studies explore how the communication processes affect project performance.

We develop a transactional process model as a means of understanding the consultant performance in environmental reviews and agency performance in developing infrastructure projects. This type of model provides a framework for understanding how communications between consultants and agency personnel are mediated by the task structures associated with the infrastructure project contracts as well as variations in role perception amongst project personnel. Using this model, we explore how communications between agency and consultants affects project performance in terms of the quality of environmental reviews as well as the delivery of infrastructure projects on schedule.

A mixed methods research design is employed to examine the relationship between agency-consultant communications and project performance. We start with a set of six case studies of infrastructure projects that produced high and low quality environmental documents and matched in terms of the types of tasks associated with the infrastructure projects. Respondents were drawn from both the agency and consulting firms associated with each case. We then examine the commonalities and differences in communication patterns across the matched case studies. Patterns of communications identified in the case studies were then reviewed with a wider set of 22 representatives from consulting firms that have long-term working relationships with the agency. The goal of the focus groups was to explore whether the communication patterns reflected common challenges experienced across a wide variety of projects or not.

Findings from this study indicate that infrastructure projects are noisy environments. While agency environmental personnel are responsible for the work of environmental consultants, they do not control or coordinate communications within the infrastructure project. Consultants receive inputs from a variety of agency personnel that have a direct bearing on performance quality. High quality projects are marked by communication processes where consultants take the lead in managing integrative communication practices linking agency personnel into effective infrastructure project teams. Low-quality projects are marked by communication practices that are reactive to information requests from different parts of the agency and responsive to regulative requirements without providing integrative elements. However, the strength of the influence of communications on outcomes varies with role perceptions. Integrative communication practices can be mitigated by agency roles that emphasize the roles of document reviewer over environmental manager and environmental protector over project facilitator.