ABSTRACT
There is nothing particularly new about the concept of collaboration in construction, with master builders collaborating with workers and clients to realise their objectives long before the establishment of the building professions. Similarly, the concepts of collaboration and teamwork have featured within the literature for a long time. What have changed are the technologies available to designers and constructors as the digital revolution gathers pace. Now it is possible to collaborate in real time as easily with project collaborators geographically located the other side of the world as it is with those physically located in the same place. This, in theory at least, makes the task of designing a building much easier, although we need to remember that design is a social task and that the individuals contributing to the design process need to be able to work together effectively, i.e. they need to share some common values (Thyssen, 2011). In this chapter we introduce some of the main issues that underpin collaborative working.
