Gibson, G E and Whittington, D A (2010) Charrettes as a method for engaging industry in best practices research. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 136(1), pp. 66-75. ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
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.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | best management practices; lessons learned; research methods |
| Index terms: | charrette, management practice, lessons learned, focus group, interview, survey, project data, commitment, academia, best practice, construction industry, interaction, workshop |
| Subjects: | business, data collection methods, construction type, psychology, management, professional development, design process, educational institutions, behavioral psychology, industry analysis |
| Topics: | Construction Technology, Business Strategy, Information Management, Research Practice, Organizational Design, Education, Design Practice |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTE |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here