A systematic review of ‘enablers of collaboration’ among the participants in construction projects

The recent advancements in the project execution thinking and the growing levels of large capital-intensive investment projects in construction have led to increased attention to the ‘collaboration’. Loss or lack of collaboration between project partners is seen as the most significant professional and project execution in the construction industry. This study aims to identify the enablers, i.e. governing factors of collaboration. This study applies a systematic review methodology to explore the literature and achieve the objectives. In the process of this systematic literature review, a total of 800 articles were identified in the construction domain, out of which 110 articles were found to be relevant for this study. The ‘citation analysis’ was performed on the articles identified by ‘content analysis’ as relevant to this study, which focused on the issue of the construction industry and issues of subcontractors. The findings identified that trust, commitment and reliability are the enablers of collaboration in construction projects. Providing due attention to the enablers of collaboration, i.e. ‘trust, commitment and reliability’ in the context of the project execution decisions, can facilitate collaboration and thus enhancing project productivity.