Link to thesis - Concept - NTNU

In this paper we use the process analysis of the second phase of the St Olavs Hospital projectas a case study to address two research questions:1. Did the process analysis provide the necessary input regarding future capacity needsfor the new hospital buildings?2. Did the process analysis facilitate user involvement and organisational development?We discuss these two research questions in light of four key success factors in hospitalconstruction projects: efficiency, effectiveness, flexibility and user involvement. A project’sability to produce its immediate outcome can be measured in terms of efficiency. It is aquestion of doing things right and producing project outputs in terms of the agreed scope,quality, cost and time. Hence, it is a measure internal to the project and restricted to theproject management or contractor’s perspective. The longer-term effects of the project can bemeasured in terms of effectiveness - or in other words doing the right things. In relation to theconstruction project, it is an external measure. Eikeland (2001) relates effectiveness to howthe results of a project contribute to value added for owners and users.Flexibility in a project can be associated with the project’s decision process or the finalproduct. The intention with flexibility in the decision process is to be able to incorporate newneeds and prerequisites throughout the project. Flexibility in the product means that thephysical design of the hospital facilitates changes in type of activity and required capacity, aswell as other changes which might require changes in physical structures.PROCESS ANALYSIS IN HOSPITALSLike other enterprises, health care organisations such as hospitals can be viewed as a numberof processes organised in many different process-hierarchies. Each process-hierarchy in anorganisation has a specific purpose, with clear objectives, goals and methods, and may alsohave many variants, depending on the enterprise’s needs to characterise, categorise andclassify knowledge (Browne and Doumeingts 1997). In health care, patients, professionals aswell as managers increasingly value aspects of processes as much as final clinical outcomes(Calnan and Ferlie 2003).There are a number of different definitions and meanings of process. Badiru and Ayeni (1993)choose to define a process as “a collection of interrelated activities that are designed togenerate specific outputs based on the application of specific inputs”. A process can consist ofonly one task or a number of tasks in sequence. Such tasks are characterised by that people,tools, materials, and environment act together to perform one or more operations which causeone or more characteristics of a product to be altered or generated (Badiru et al.1993).Another distinctive feature of a process is that it is indifferent to departments and functionalareas in that it may spread across several or be contained within one specific department.With the development from the traditional focus on departments towards process-orientedorganisations, process analysis has emerged as a tool for gaining organisational insight andfor improving the performance of the organisation. Process analysis typically involves bothquantitative and qualitative techniques. Visual graphical representations of process data areparticularly useful in process analysis as they allow for simultaneous representation of a large