Team Building Moderators of the Engineering and Construction Industry Virtual Team Performance

The engineering and construction (E&C) industry is increasingly utilizing geographically distributed, virtual teams to execute project work, and virtual team technology continues to improve to support higher levels of virtual team performance. However, virtual team performance can vary widely across organizations. While virtual team technology is advancing, the technology alone is not sufficient and managerial aspects also need to adjust accordingly. To explore this topic, the Construction Industry Institute (CII) formed Research Team 326 to investigate how virtual teams can maximize performance. A survey questionnaire was distributed to individuals with experience working in virtual teams in the E&C industry. Respondents were asked to each evaluate factors for both a high performance virtual team (a team that substantially exceeded expectations of scope, quality, schedule, budget and client expectations) and a baseline performance virtual team. We then analyzed the team building behaviors that may be moderating virtual team performance by comparing responses from baseline and high performance virtual teams. We found significant differences between high and baseline performance virtual teams that may help E&C organizations to identify and improve the performance of their virtual teams.