Increased project complexity, project dynamics and changes in clients’ requirements are a few examples that suggest the necessity for flexibility in project management in order to deliver successful projects. Despite the fact that literature suggests adding flexibility to project management, there is no existing framework that provides a practical method for adding flexibility into the practice of project management in the construction industry. Therefore, this research is aimed at proposing a practical framework that helps practitioners in embedding project management flexibility into their project management practice. The research question is as follows: how to embed flexibility in the practice of project management in the early project phases? To answer the research question, four sub-questions have been formulated, which have been separately researched. The main question is answered by proposing a flexibility framework. This framework comprises four stages: understanding the current situation, practitioners’ perspectives on flexible project management, choosing enablers to become flexible and applying selected enablers to improve project performance. The framework is validated using the examples given by practitioners from 24 cases. Considering the movements towards flexibility and adaptability concepts, this research fills the gap in literature by providing a practical framework for project management flexibility. Moreover, it provides a step-by-step guideline for practitioners to embed flexibility in practice.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of project management flexibility in early project phases on end-project performance including its mediating role on the effect of complexity over project performance. Design/methodology/approach: Out of 13 hypotheses, 6 hypotheses regarding the relationships between areas of flexibility and project performance, 1 regarding the effect of complexity on performance and 6 other hypotheses regarding the mediating effect of six areas of flexibility were formulated. Statistical analysis was performed using partial least squares–structural equation modeling on data gathered from 111 surveys. Findings: Research results revealed that flexibility of “how-attitude” and “how-organization” has positive significant effects on project performance. “How-attitude” contributes to the flexibility of project management processes by having an “open attitude,” “wide approach” and “proactive attitude” while “how-organization” put the emphasis of flexibility on “facilitate planning,” “outer organization” and “inner organization.” Moreover, this research confirmed that complexity has a negative effect on project performance. Among the six areas of flexibility, flexibility of “how-organization” mediates the effect of complexity on project performance. Originality/value: The increased project complexity requires some degree of flexibility in project management to deal with project dynamics. However, whether such flexibility in early project phases has an effect on end-project performance has not been empirically investigated. This research contributes to filling the gap in literature about the relationship between project management flexibility and project performance. Such effect was investigated by studying the direct effect of flexibility on project performance and the mediating role of flexibility on the negative effect of project complexity on project performance.

Scientific literature is rather scarce as comes down on how to deal with Scope Creep (not be confused with Scope Changes) in Infrastructure Projects. However various studies and consulted practitioners in this study have pointed out that Scope Creep is often a root cause of project delay, cost overrun, and poor quality. Project Management faces considerable challenges to deal with the causes and consequences of Scope Creep. Scope Creep is by its (creeping) nature difficult to notice timely and therefore difficult to control. Scope creep deviates in this respect from 'normal' scope changes that can be identified and controlled through regular project scope change processes. In particular in Infrastructural Projects that are realized through means of fixed-price contracts scope creep can become hazardous. Therefore, this research was executed with an objective of investigating tools, techniques, and approaches which will potentially help practitioners in minimizing/mitigating scope creep causes and dealing with scope creep consequences. Based upon the identified causes of scope creep in literature, a scope creep management model was proposed for large infrastructure projects which are executed on lump sum price contracts by design and engineering consultancies. This model has divided the management processes into two groups namely planning process group i.e. project front end loading phase and monitoring & controlling process groups i.e. project execution phase. The distinction between these two groups is vital as they require different set of tools, techniques, and approaches to control the occurrence of scope creep and change. The workability and effectiveness of the developed model were validated and optimized by a focus group of experts. Further research is suggested to investigate the application of the model and its relation to project performance.

Nowadays, flexibility of project management attracts practitioners and scholars attention as a must-have quality to enable managing project complexity. Increased complexity of infrastructure projects needs such management approach which takes the (increasing) complexity into account. Literature sheds light on importance of flexibility in project management while practice of project management in construction industry seems to be less flexible. The gap between what literature advises and what practice does, triggered us to look into the practice and see whether it aligns with literature or not. Hence the objective of this research was to explore the flexibility of project management in practice in the frontend phase of infrastructure projects. By means of a semi-structured questionnaire we asked practitioners to rate their last-completed project based on its management flexibility. In order to do so, we gave the participants a list 26 identified flexibility enablers from literature and asked them first to pick (in general) the 5 most important and 5 least important flexibility enablers. Next we asked them to rate the project management of the selected project based on those 10 picked enablers. By qualitative analysis of data gathered from 43 respondents from The Netherlands it reveals that the practice of project management has some degree of flexibility which implicitly has taken into action. Our research results can help practitioners to take the full advantage of flexibility in project management by making (more) explicit what they do implicitly. For further research it is recommended to test the practical applicability of flexibility enablers in case studies, explicitly investigating the suggested links to project performance.