Three conceptual levels of construction project management work

The widespread use of project management standards for professional competence assessment and development is based on a rationalistic approach, whereby competence is seen as constituted by a pre-defined set of attributes in the form of knowledge topics. Yet little is known about whether and how these attributes are used by project managers in the workplace. In this paper we report an empirical exploration of project managers’ ways of conceiving and accomplishing their work. We follow Sandberg’s [Sandberg J. Human competence at work: an interpretative approach. Göteborg (Sweden): Bas; 1994; Sandberg J. Understanding human competence at work: an interpretative approach. Acad Manage J 2000;43(1):9–25.] phenomenographic study of automobile engine designers that found that the basic meaning structure of people’s conceptions of their work constitutes their competence at work. From our interviews with 30 project managers in UK construction firms, we identify three different basic conceptions of project management work. Each conception has a different main focus and a different set of key attributes that appeared to project managers when experiencing and accomplishing their work, reflecting a hierarchical arrangement of three distinctly different forms of project management competence. The findings offer an opportunity for a new approach to professional competence assessment and development that complements existing standards-based approaches.