Egan's was a false paradise. Seems churlish to point this out 10 years late, but now that Building has pronounced the Egan revolution dead (9 May), perhaps it's time to put the whole thing behind us. The crucial flaw in the Egan analysis was the assertion that the main cause of the problems in construction was dysfunctional relations between the members of project teams. As anyone who has worked on a project knows, teams are amazing examples of the ability of intelligent people with widely varying personal and corporate goals to reconcile them with the aims of the larger team. Sure we have rows, and they often get into the hands of the lawyers, but just stop and think for a moment about the context in which project teams have to operate and consider the enormous achievements that these people deliver, day after day, unsung, almost as a matter of routine.
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