Korkmaz, S; Riley, D and Horman, M (2011) Assessing project delivery for sustainable, high-performance buildings through mixed methods. Architectural Engineering and Design Management, 7(4), pp. 266-274. ISSN 1745-2007
Abstract
Project delivery processes that describe contractual agreements among project participants, timing their activities and levels of involvement have long been subjects for construction management research. Dominated by quantitative methods, this research topic requires large sample sizes mainly due to the extensive number of potential variables arising from the project-based nature of construction. The recent and growing trend in the industry towards sustainable and high-performance building construction introduces added complexities in the project delivery process and challenges research due to the limited population of completed environmentally sustainable buildings. This study presents a combined use of quantitative and qualitative methods, also called mixed methods, as a useful way to respond to the research challenges. This research first quantitatively selects important variables of project delivery from a sample of sustainable, high-performance office buildings (N = 40) and then tests those variables with the analyses of selected case studies. The results of this exploratory study are important to expanding research in the delivery of sustainable and high-performance building projects and the methods required to expand the understanding, validity and reliability of this research.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | green buildings; high performance; mixed methods; project delivery; qualitative; quantitative; sustainability |
| Index terms: | mixed method, management research, case study, office building, exploratory study, validity, qualitative method, sample size, building construction, quantitative method, green building, population, sustainable building, agreements, project delivery, complexity |
| Subjects: | design practice, research methods, sustainable construction, demography, building construction, systems engineering, construction type, data collection methods, evaluation and assessment methods, research design and methodology, contract formation, data analysis and analytics, project delivery |
| Topics: | Urban Studies, Design Practice, Contract Administration, Engineering Principles, Research Practice, Sustainability, Construction Technology, Procurement |
| Descriptive scope: | 5 PCTEA |
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