Nadim, W (2009) Industrialising the construction industry: a collaborative training and education model. PhD thesis, University of Salford, UK.
Abstract
The United Kingdom (UK) construction industry has long been the centre of criticism and debate for its relative poor performance and high turnover. In this respect, the UK Government embarked on reviving Offsite Production (OSP) in an attempt to negate these issues, whilst simultaneously reducing the dependence on manual skills. However, extant literature highlights that professional (non-manual) skill shortages are just as acute. Notwithstanding these factors, from a training and education perspective, it is widely acknowledged that the myriad of approaches currently deployed to address professional education and training needs have systematically failed to fully satisfy industry's expectations. This is due in part to the lack of a 'common language' between the construction industry and the training/education providers. Given that OSP training and education is a predominant driver for the successful and wider uptake of OSP, there is no direct empirical evidence on the type, level, or priorities of OSP training and education required to meet the new exigent business drivers. This research focuses on addressing the polarised silos that currently exist between industry and training/education providers through the provision of a flexible collaborative model. This model embodies multi-criteria and multistakeholder perceptions and imperatives in order to help provide a 'shared' language and understanding across these multivariate issues to formally identify and prioritise OSP training and education needs. This research adopted a system approach to OSP training and education using the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) method to develop an OSP-QFD model. The positioning of this research adopts the positivism paradigm to infer OSP skills requirements, underpinned and supported by a triangulation approach to define the measures to satisfy those needs and help increase the validity and reliability of the data obtained. The model was iteratively tested and validated using domain experts from industry, academia and research organisations. Research findings confirmed the scepticism and misconception of the construction industry and academia with regard to OSP and industryacademia collaboration. However, the developed OSP-QFD model demonstrated that it could be used to shape, structure, and document the skills needed from multivariate viewpoints, thereby addressing the different drivers and expectations of the polarised stakeholders. Furthermore, the OSP-QFD model accommodates design flexibility, so that individual priorities can be independently assessed and analysed.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | collaboration; government; liability; offsite; quality function deployment; reliability; silos; skills; stakeholders; UK |
| Index terms: | validity, academia, paradigm, education and training, construction industry, quality function deployment, liability, skill shortage, turnover, United Kingdom, positivism, evidence, collaboration, triangulation |
| Subjects: | professional education, educational institutions, philosophical concept, quality assurance, liability law, industry analysis, management, education and knowledge transfer, Geography, business management, research design and methodology, evaluation and assessment methods |
| Topics: | Geographical Context, Legal Issues, Quality Management, Education, Business Strategy, Research Practice, Human Resources, Organizational Design |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTA |
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