Delivery-system misfit and role reconfiguration in industrialised timber construction: a phase-sensitive analysis of a turnkey project

Industrialised prefabrication alters project delivery by increasing interdependencies and shifting coordination requirements toward earlier design–production interfaces. Yet many construction projects retain governance structures based on centralised contractual control, creating a potential mismatch between governance logic and coordination requirements. This study conceptualises this mismatch as delivery-system misfit and examines how it emerges and how actors respond in practice. The study draws on a phase-sensitive case analysis of a multi-storey timber apartment project delivered through a turnkey design-build arrangement. The analysis uses a purposively selected subset of fourteen interview documents from twelve participants, selected from a set of seventeen semi-structured interviews with nineteen participants. The case provides a theoretically revealing setting for examining centralised governance under heightened design–production interdependence. The findings indicate that governance–coordination misfit emerged where formally centralised responsibility encountered distributed and time-sensitive coordination demands across design, manufacturing, and assembly interfaces. These conditions generated timing, expertise, and responsibility-boundary tensions, particularly during detailed design and production preparation. Actors described boundary-spanning clarification and informal coordination support beyond routine formal procedures. The study introduces delivery-system misfit as a governance problem in industrialised construction and proposes role reconfiguration as an adaptive response through which actors may temporarily support coordination under interface tension.