End-user attitudes towards EDM use in project work A case study of the Kamppi Center project

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End-user attitudes towards EDM use in project
work A case study of the Kamppi Center project

• M.Sc. thesis research methods and results

29 March 2006 Mathias Hjelt Swedish School of
Economics and Business Administration
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Research objectives

• Explore end-user attitudes towards EDM usage in a
  large construction project
• How do users across different segments of the
  project organisation perceive the benefits and
  challenges of EDM use?
• Propose a model describing factors affecting
  individual EDM adoption

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Case Kamppi Center

• 500 million EUR construction project including
• a shopping centre
• underground bus and cargo terminals
• 12,500 m² of office space
• 5,700 m ² of residential apartments
• parking facilities
• SRV Viitoset appointed design build contractor
• 3 architectural offices
• 20 structural / technical design offices
• Hundreds of subcontractors

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Case Kamppi Center

• Electronic document management in the project
• ASP / web based Raksanet
• Used by 340 users from 90 organisations
• 17,000 documents organised in 1700 folders
• Mainly DWG, PLT, PDF, Word, Excel
• Automatic paper copy distribution

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ICT adoption theory

• Adoption decisions in an organization (Gallivan
  2001)

Management objectives and intentions for change
Mandate to adopt
Primary innovation adoption process
Secondary innovation adoption process
Availability of technological innovation
Other influences
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ICT adoption theory

• Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of
  Technology (Venkatesh et al 2003)
• The UTAUT model is based on previous frameworks
  innovation diffusion theory, TRA, TAM, MPCU,
  etc..
• Intention and actual use influenced by
• effort expectancy
• perfomance expectancy
• social influence
• facilitating conditions

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ICT adoption theory

• Updated IS Success Model (DeLone McLean 2003)
• Users intention to use is influenced by three
  dimensions of quality
• system quality
• information quality
• support quality

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Research design

• Phase 2
• Objective gain deeper understanding
• Qualitative
• 5 users 1 expert
• Sample based on phase 1

In-depth Interviews
Survey
Log file analysis

• Phase 1
• Objective draw the big picture
• Quantitative
• Entire user base

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Survey

• 19 Likert-scale questions on the topics of
• Respondent background (e.g. previous EDM
  experience)
• Support quality (received training, support,
  guidelines)
• System quality (e.g. reliability, functionality,
  ease of use)
• Information quality (contents of the EDM,
  structure)
• EDM vs other channels of communication
• Overall perception of benefits
• 1 free-text comment
• Web based implementation
• Covering letter sent by e-mail to all active
  users (n282)
• Each respondent given a unique URL in the e-mail
• http//kamppi.iterate.fi/KABCDE
• The link contains an ID which helps tracking
  responses
• Answer required on all quantitative questions
• Effect 20 partial responses ? 13 complete ones

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Ensuring a satisfactory response rate

• Cover letter credibility
• From SRV Viitosets director of planning
• Low effort
• Questionnaire can be completed in 5 minutes
• All questions on page you see what youre in
  for
• Incentives
• Non-monetary get your voice heard
• Monetary 2 x 100 gift certificates
• Timing
• post-holidays, Monday a.m.
• Follow-up / reminder
• You still have a chance to give your input / win
  a gift certificate

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Response statistics

• Respondents
• 282 intended recipients
• 13 unreachable (invalid email addresses,
  over-quota mailboxes etc)
• 167 actual responses
• Active response rate 167/(282-13) 62

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Interviews

• 5 end-user interviews
• 2 project management
• 1 architect
• 1 subcontractor
• 1 city planning
• 1 expert interview

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Previous EDM experience

• 53 were first-time EDM users

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Attitude towards EDM

• At the outset of the project
• Experienced EDM users were more confident
  regarding benefits than first-time EDM users
• Subcontractors were the least experienced thus
  also the most sceptical
• At the end of the project
• A majority reported that their attitude had
  improved
• Subcontractors reported the biggest improvement!

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Perceived benefits of EDM usage

• Most respondents considered EDM essential in a
  project of this size and complexity

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Other channels of communication

• Still the use of parallel channels was considered
  a major source of stress and extra work!

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Perceived barriers to EDM use

• Why didnt EDM replace other channels of
  communication?
• Using the system was considered slow and
  cumbersome - sending a file by email much easier
  and faster
• Users did not receive enough training or
  guidelines the complexity of the contents was
  perceived as the biggest challenge to getting
  started

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Key findings

• Users quick to revert to other channels if EDM
  not perceived as easy to use or useful
• Two aspects influence ease-of-use and usefulness
• System quality The technical aspects of using
  the software
• Information quality The actual contents,
  structure, meta-data practices, etc
• Users need training and guidelines regarding both
  aspects!
• Self-learning not always viable
• Learning from colleagues not always viable
• Thus, formal training should be organised

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Evaluation of research methods

• Web-based questionnaire successful, but...
• respondents skewed towards more active users
• difficult trade-off between detail and likelihood
  of getting a broad response (4-point Likert
  scales perhaps too coarse, certain questions
  ambiguous..)
• Matching of quantitative and qualitative data
• quantitative answers appeared largely positive
  free-text comments and interview responses much
  more critical
• Number of interviews...