Assessment of CII knowledge implementation at the organizational level

The construction industry has become increasingly more competitive and organizations need to continuously improve in order to remain successful. One way of improving organizations is implementing knowledge or existing research products typically developed by various universities and research institutes such as the Construction Industry Institute (CII). Although there are valuable research products available which have tremendous potential to improve construction project performance as well as the organization's business processes, many of them have not been implemented to a significant extent on real world projects (CII, 1995). Despite the importance of the implementation effort, there is little research focused on the implementation of existing research products or methods of measuring the degree of the implementation effort. The traditional philosophy of construction management places great emphasis on the ability to plan and execute individual projects (Chinowsky, 2000). In contrast, a similar emphasis on the overall ability of an organization is many times lacking in the construction industry. This dissertation focuses on assessing a construction organization's implementation effort at organizational level using construction-related knowledge that CII has developed. A survey questionnaire was developed based on the information gathered from literature and inputs from industry participants to evaluate organizational implementation status. The survey was validated through two pilot tests and the finalized questionnaire was distributed to 88 CII member organizations including both owner and contractor companies. The data collected from surveys were analyzed by using independent-samples t tests, ANOVA, and reliability tests. Based on the survey data, the CII Knowledge Implementation Index (CKII) was developed to quantify the level of organizational implementation status. Evaluation of the CKII against other implementation indicators, such as project use indices, verified that the CKII is consistent with other related measures. The level of the CII Best Practice implementation was also evaluated in terms of the frequency and intensity. A significant and positive relationship was found between the CKII and project performance as measured in various performance variables. Research procedures, conclusions, and recommendations for industry and for future research are also discussed in this dissertation.