Achieving higher capability maturity in construction process improvement

Process improvement has been identified as one of the potential mechanisms to achieve the desired performance improvements within the UK construction industry. In addition, it has further been recognised the importance of learning construction process improvement lessons from other industry examples. Software industry has exemplified a successful implementation of a process improvement strategy, based on the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) which evaluate the capabilities and maturities of organisations in concern to establish the next level of process improvements needed.
This model consists of five maturity levels where level 1 being the least matured and level 5 being the most matured. After considering the close similarities between the software industry and the construction industry, the principles of software CMM were attempted to be applied within the construction industry, under the research project “Structured Process Improvement in Construction Enterprises (SPICE)”. Within this research the Key Process Areas (KPAs) of level 1, 2 and 3 of software CMM were evaluated and customised to the UK construction industry, after taking its unique characteristics into consideration. This leaves the software CMM level 4 and 5 KPAs unevaluated and un-customised, leaving the maximum potential of SPICE un-revealed. This paper aims at addressing this gap by reviewing the literature on construction process improvement and the software CMM to evaluate the applicability of software CMM higher capability maturity level KPAs within the UK construction context.