Grant: Canada Research Chairs

The research proposed is based on the premise that the overall performance of the construction industry can be improved through the appropriate adoption and implementation of advanced technologies. Currently, the construction industry is hampered in both: its ability to identify opportunities for improvement; and its capacity to properly assess and implement solutions. This results in technology adoption and implementation activities that take longer than necessary and hinder performance improvements across the industry.With the overall goal to improve the performance of the construction industry, the objectives of the research fall into the areas of: 1) performance measurement - the proposed research will extend a framework for benchmarking performance in areas of information management practices, knowledge management practices, and innovation management practices; 2) technology adoption and implementation - the proposed research will explore predictive measures of success in innovation, as well as an ability to link to performance; and 3) information and communication technology - the proposed research will combine existing technology for virtual reality capture and interactive collaboration.The research with employ a series of technology development and implementation activities, as well as management practice definition and assessment activities. As a result, the research will provide an ability to demonstrate the relationship between practices and performance while focusing on practices that are less mature within the construction industry. This builds on recently completed work for maturity measures of organizational practices for safety management and innovation management. Ultimately, the research will extend a deeper understanding of the technological innovation process for the industry and result in approaches that are available for assessment and monitoring by measuring practices and relating this to performance.