Ethnographic Theory-Building Research in Construction

Traditional construction research methods have enabled focused but narrow advances in our understanding of industry phenomena. While contributing new insight, these methods are often not adequate to enable understanding of the complex interactions that lead to many of the industry’s pervasive social and technical problems. One means of addressing these limitations is for the construction research community to complement prevalent quantitative and case study methodologies with qualitative theory-building methodologies, specifically ethnographic studies or those based on detailed and long-term observation of project environments. This paper identifies the critical need for theory-building methods and their methodological conventions, challenges, and opportunities. Specifically, the paper focuses on data collection in ethnographic studies and analysis of that data through the use of grounded theory. Through better understanding and more widespread use of theory-building methods, the construction research community can provide a needed complement to the current prevailing methods and greatly aid the maturation of our important field.     

Implementing Observational Research Methods to Study Team Performance in Construction Management

The evolution of research in the area of construction engineering and management has moved toward the use of quantitative metrics and research methods for identifying and evaluating the impact of events or procedures on the construction process. While quantitative research methods can be very important for answering certain research questions, there are important reasons for adopting qualitative or mixed methodology studies to gain a better understanding of complex phenomena. This paper explores the use of observational studies and their potential use within the field of construction research. Observational studies can provide answers to “what” phenomena occurred, particularly when people are involved in a process, along with gaining insights into “why” the phenomena occurred. This paper discusses two types of observational studies, structured and unstructured, and provides a procedure for their implementation within construction research. To clearly demonstrate the methodology, a case study focused on the investigation of two different versions of an educational simulation application, the virtual construction simulator (VCS), is used to illustrate the benefits and challenges of implementing mixed methodology observational studies. The case study involved the video recording and analysis of interactions between student team members when using the VCS application for a construction sequencing task. The video recordings were analyzed, and important insights were identified, both qualitative and quantitative. Through content analysis, it was determined that the improvements made in a new version of the VCS application were beneficial, and the detailed observational studies identified insights into why the revisions in the application yielded improved results. This case study details the steps and considerations involved in planning an observational study, as well as the benefits and challenges that researchers may encounter when using observational research methodologies.     

Qualitative Research: Application of the Delphi Method to CEM Research

Construction engineering and management (CEM) researchers often rely on alternative research techniques when traditional methods fail. For example, surveys, interviews, and group-brainstorming techniques may not be appropriate for research that involves confounding factors and requires access to sensitive data. In such an environment, the Delphi technique allows researchers to obtain highly reliable data from certified experts through the use of strategically designed surveys. At present, the Delphi method has not seen widespread use in CEM research. This is likely due to variation among studies that implement Delphi in CEM research and ambiguity in literature that provides guidance for the specific parameters associated with the method. Using the guidance in this paper, the reader may: (1) understand the merits, appropriate application, and appropriate procedure of the traditional Delphi process; (2) identify and qualify potential expert panelists according to objective guidelines; (3) select the appropriate parameters of the study such as the number of panelists, number of rounds, type of feedback, and measure of consensus; (4) identify potential biases that may negatively impact the quality of the results; and (5) appropriately structure the surveys and conduct the process in such a way that bias is minimized or eliminated.     

Strategic Planning for Building Research—A Process Oriented Methodology

This paper explains and discusses the development of a strategic plan for the management of research in building in a planning horizon of 8–10 years. The plan has three major elements: (1) a knowledge base with ranked long range research needs in each discipline; (2) a second base which defines the main objectives of the building sector and the major interdisciplinary problems that must be solved in order to attain them; and (3) the procedures to be followed in order to initiate and carry out an annual research program in view of the strategic plan and the current information maintained in the two bases. This paper dwells first on the special features of research as a knowledge building and problem solving tool, and then describes the process of the actual development of the strategic plan for building research in Israel, including the construction of the knowledge bases and the generation of the annual research programs. Special attention is given to the objectivity and accountability of the process.     

Meeting the Burden of Proof with Case-Study Research

The case-study research method is popular across various disciplines; however, critics of the method argue that results from this form of research are applicable only to the case studied and cannot be generalized further. In the field of construction engineering and management (CEM), the number of papers employing case-study research methods over the past decade has increased substantially. As the method proliferates, the question arises: are CEM case studies being performed with sufficient validity and reliability to meet the burden of proof to generalize from the case-study findings? Meeting the burden of proof is particularly critical in CEM because of the unique, site-based nature of the projects and industry. This paper presents a review of 156 papers employing case studies published in the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, of which the writers identified 33 theory-building case-study-method papers. This subset of theory-building papers was examined to induce a set of requirements and guidelines derived from these case-study research efforts to aid researchers in meeting the burden of proof. The writers anticipate that more methodologically consistent and comprehensive case-study research will yield new lines of inquiry and rich theoretical models that enhance and expand CEM research.     

Charrettes as a Method for Engaging Industry in Best Practices Research

Gaining innovative and useful research findings concerning construction industry best practices requires an interaction and feedback mechanism between industry respondents and academia. Typical research methods such as surveys, source document reviews, and structured interviews will work, but suffer from barriers which can hamper results. Examples of these barriers include low response rates, asynchronous communication, time commitment of the researchers and respondents, access to project data, and travel costs. Structured workshops (research “charrettes”) are a unique and useful method for facilitating data collection between industry respondents and academic researchers. They combine the best tenets of surveys, interviews, and focus groups in an accelerated time frame. This paper will explain how these workshops provide a critical avenue for industry interaction. Characteristics leading to successful charrettes will be outlined. The paper will conclude by describing the benefits of these workshops to researchers including lessons learned from successful workshops.     

Lean Construction: From Theory to Implementation

This article compares the techniques developed for lean construction with those developed for lean manufacturing. Lean manufacturing and lean construction techniques share many common elements despite the obvious differences in their assembly environments and processes. Manufacturing plants and construction sites are different in many ways that might explain why lean production theories and practices do not fully fit the construction industry. Though many lean construction tools and elements are still in an embryonic state, lean construction techniques are gaining popularity because they can affect the bottom line of projects. Additionally, this paper presents a study of a construction project in which specific lean construction elements were tested. Each technique was evaluated in terms of its impact on the performance of the project. Based on the findings of the study, a new “lean assessment tool” is proposed to quantify the results of lean implementations. The assessment tool evaluates six lean construction elements: last planner, increased visualization, huddle meetings, first-run studies, five S’s, and fail safe for quality. This paper provides a simple and comprehensive approach that is transferable to any construction project.     

Linkages between Construction Engineering Education and Research

The needs of the construction industry require that an appropriate balance be provided between construction engineering topics and management topics in both education and research. Because construction is less mature as a research area compared to other areas in civil engineering, limitations on research funding have made the investigation of construction management topics more feasible in comparison to construction engineering topics. Because faculty members are drawn from the pool of Ph.D. students who have primarily researched management topics, there has been a tendency for them to continue emphasis on management topics in both education and research. Other civil engineering disciplines form their research programs around the needs of design codes and standards’ development, and academic participation is high. Similar efforts exist within construction engineering; however, there is less academic participation. It is suggested that greater effort be invested in the improvement of construction process standards and specifications so that construction engineering research efforts can advance construction process standards and stimulate increased engineering educational exposure. It is also suggested that academics who are interested in construction engineering research should consider participating in the specification improvement processes that occur at the national and state levels. A process for wider participation in construction engineering research and standards development is recommended.     

Knowledge Mining of Information Sources for Research in Construction Management

Extracting the right information at the right time is vital in any research project. Moreover, researchers generally seek innovative “knowledge mining” techniques for optimizing their research efforts within constrained time frames and with scarce resources. Meanwhile, rapid developments in the fields of computing and information technology drive the accelerated globalization process in both industry and academia. This paper explores some of the emerging technologies and associated research methodologies from an information supply chain perspective. An application in a recent Internet based two-phase questionnaire survey for design/build contractor selection provides a useful case study in the structuring of an innovative knowledge mining strategy. This experience feeds into the formulation of a “high-velocity” knowledge mining framework and a set of guidelines—to facilitate and enhance such innovative construction management research, while dealing with some initial issues/problems in the Internet based research environment. Furthermore, some critical success factors, key performance indicators, and mining strategies are consolidated for marshalling both vivid and tacit knowledge sources, such as by “exploiting” Internet resources for more creative and efficient construction management research.     

New Method for Measuring the Safety Risk of Construction Activities: Task Demand Assessment

The task demand assessment (TDA) is a new technique for measuring the safety risk of construction activities and analyzing how changes in operation parameters can affect the potential for accidents. TDA is similar to observational ergonomic methods—it does not produce estimates of probabilities of incidents, but it quantifies the “task demand” of actual operations based on characteristics of the activity and independent of the workers’ capabilities. The task demand reflects the difficulty to perform the activity safely. It is based on (1) the exposure to a hazard and (2) the presence and level of observable task demand factors—that is, risk factors that can increase the potential for an accident. The paper presents the findings from the initial implementation of TDA and demonstrates its feasibility and applicability on two different operations: a roofing activity and a concrete paving operation. Furthermore, the paving case illustrates how the TDA method can compare different production scenarios and measure the effect of production variables on the accident potential. The findings indicate that the method can be applied on activities of varying complexity and can account for several risks and task demand factors as required by the user. The selection of task demand factors is a key issue for the validity of the method and requires input from the crew and safety management. The limitations of the methodology and the need for further research are discussed. Overall, TDA provides a tool that can assist researchers and practitioners in the analysis and design of construction operations.     

Lessons Learned in Designing Research Methodology in Field-Based Construction Research

Research aiming at modeling construction knowledge often faces many problems because of the unique nature of each construction project and the lack of formal data-collection procedures within the industry. Therefore, designing a sound research methodology becomes very important for assuring the validity of this type of research. This paper summarizes the methodology used in the development of a model for evaluating bridge construction plans. It defines some validity threats facing such research efforts and provides some techniques for overcoming them. The case shows that the use of overlapping data-collection tools coupled with rigorous, stepwise analysis of each step in the model development is crucial for research validity.     

Research Needs in Construction Worker Performance

No validated model of worker motivation and performance exists for the construction industry. Reasons for this are examined. Such a model has been developed outside of construction. The model is presented and discussed. Research that is needed to develop and validate the model for use in the construction industry is discussed. The need for this research to be interdisciplinary in nature, to encompass construction researchers and industrial∕organizational psychologists or organizational behaviorists, is analyzed.     

Campus Construction as a Research Laboratory: Model for Intracampus Collaboration

Capital construction projects on university campuses produce experience opportunities and archived data. Meanwhile, construction engineering faculty seeks research projects and funding for graduate students who, in turn, seek additional practical experience. In response, symbiotic relationships, between an academic department with construction engineering proficiency and the administrative office that oversees campus construction, have formed at both The University of Alabama (UA) and The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State). At each institution, the intracampus collaboration provides funded opportunities and access to projects, which enable graduate students to successfully complete thesis research (M.S. and Ph.D.). Further, campus construction offices at both institutions are also realizing benefits from the collaboration, including a connection to academia, and have committed to continuing the relationship indefinitely. Aimed at helping other institutions establish and benefit from similar collaboration, this paper describes a model for research partnerships made possible by campus construction. The development of a model for intracampus construction collaboration is explained using separate experiences from UA and Penn State. Both positive results and lessons learned are shared.     

Fifty Years of Progress in Construction Engineering Research

This paper provides insight into how and why construction has developed as a research based discipline over the past 50 years. The writer presents anecdotal information about certain critical events which played a role in shaping the thrust of construction research in the United States. The acceptance of construction engineering and management as a university level program and discipline is strongly tied to research and the publication of scholarly work.     

Building Integrated Architecture/Engineering/Construction Systems Using Smart Objects: Methodology and Implementation

Integrated project systems hold the promise for improving the quality while reducing the time and cost of architecture/engineering/construction (AEC) projects. A fundamental requirement of such systems is to support the modeling and management of the design and construction information and to allow the exchange of such information among different project disciplines in an effective and efficient manner. This paper presents a methodology to implement integrated project systems through the use of a model-based approach that involves developing integrated “smart AEC objects.” Smart AEC objects are an evolutionary step that builds upon past research and experience in AEC product modeling, geometric modeling, intelligent CAD systems, and knowledge-based design methods. Smart objects are 3D parametric entities that combine the capability to represent various aspects of project information required to support multidisciplinary views of the objects, and the capability to encapsulate “intelligence” by representing behavioral aspects, design constraints, and life-cycle data management features into the objects. An example implementation of smart objects to support integrated design of falsework systems is presented. The paper also discusses the requirements for extending existing standard data models, specifically the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), to support the modeling of smart AEC objects.     

Research in Visualization Techniques for Field Construction

Field construction can be planned, monitored, and controlled at two distinct levels: (1)?the activity or schedule level; and (2)?the operation or process level. Graphical three-dimensional (3D) visualization can serve as an effective communication method at both levels. Many research efforts in visualizing construction are rooted in scheduling. They typically involve linking activity-based construction schedules and 3D computer-aided design (CAD) models of facilities to describe discretely evolving construction product visualizations (often referred to as four-dimensional CAD). The focus is on communicating what components are built where and when, with the intention of studying the optimal activity sequence, spatial, and temporal interferences. The construction processes or operations actually involved in building the components are usually implied. A second approach in visualizing construction is rooted in discrete-event simulation that, in addition to visualizing evolving construction products, also concerns the visualization of the operations and processes that are performed in building them. In addition to what is built where and when, the approach communicates who builds it and how by depicting the interaction between involved machines, resources, and materials. This paper introduces the two approaches and describes the differences in concept, form, and content between activity level and operations level construction visualization. An example of a structural steel framing operation is presented to elucidate the comparison. This work was originally published in the proceedings of the 2002 IEEE Winter Simulation Conference. This paper expands on the original work by describing recent advances in both activity and operations level construction visualization.     

Action Research as a Proactive Research Method for Construction Engineering and Management

Academic research in applied disciplines such as construction engineering and management (CEM) has the dual mission of simultaneously contributing to the solution of practical problems and creating theoretical and conceptual knowledge. To do so, appropriate research approaches are needed. However, extant literature in the field has paid little attention to this issue and research methods used have been almost entirely either quantitative surveys or case studies. In this paper, action research (AR) is proposed as an answer to this knowledge gap. AR aims at building and testing theory within the context of solving an immediate practical problem in a real setting. The paper describes the underlying philosophy and application procedure of AR and highlights its strengths and weaknesses. Then, the applicability of the method to CEM is illustrated through a case study of improving access to information to support planning and decision making in a construction owner organization through designing and implementing a data warehouse. The findings indicate that AR is a reliable, structured, and rigorous research approach that is very useful for conducting applied research in construction and enabling academia to influence and improve construction industry practices. It can also effectively help to improve collaboration between academic researchers and industry practitioners in research and development projects.     

Analysis of Trends in Construction Research: 1985–2002

This paper provides a historical perspective on construction research trends as reflected in the American Society of Civil Engineer’s Journal of Construction Engineering and Management (JCEM). The paper reports the results of an 18-year analysis of JCEM between 1985 and 2002. The analysis focused on such data as author information (affiliations and home countries), as well as the research topics of the technical papers. The paper summarizes the data extracted from the journal and use it to analyze construction research trends. Construction trends reveal that U.S. writers contributed the most papers by that there has been an increasing number of international submissions to the journal. The top research topical areas relate to scheduling, productivity, constructability, simulation, cost control, planning, safety, and computer systems as described in this paper show that research is increasing throughout the world and topics are changing as current needs change. However, there is a need to increase research collaboration between industry and academia, government and academia, and industry and government to advance the construction industry.     

Experimental Research in Construction

Humans’ unique use of tools originated with their capability to observe, to link causes with effects and to conduct trial and error experiments. Experimental research today is still using these same basic elements albeit augmented by sophisticated tools and methods. Researchers conducting scientific experiments in the construction arena, however, face a “harsh” environment to work in. This paper draws from 20 years of experimental work in construction and engineering education. It provides a short historic background before discussing a framework useful to categorize the various ways researchers conducted experiments that provided meaningful results. Many examples are used to underscore the most important points.