Abstract
This case‐study outlines the activities of the Centre for Construction Innovation highlighting critical success factors associated with collaborative centres and innovation brokers in transferring knowledge between Universities and Industry. The case study also explains the national context in which the centre has developed. The Centre's approach to the provision of knowledge and tools to create an industry environment that fosters innovation is presented and discussed. The Centre brings together industrialists and academics as multi‐disciplinary participants in a range of best practice education and training, seminars, workshops and in‐company events, facilitating change by learning, debate and experience. The Centre recognises the complex relationship that exists between projects, organisations, people and contracts and this in turn determines both what is possible and what is desirable. The collaborative process that seeks to achieve desirable outcomes requires inter‐ and intra‐ organisational cultural assessment and development. Facilitating this is a key role of the Centre.
Highlights
The activities of the Centre for Construction Innovation are reported in this paper, highlighting the critical success factors associated with collaborative centres in transferring knowledge between Universities and Industry
The extent to which the Latham and Egan reviews of the UK construction sector have resulted in sustainable and real changes in construction performance is still subject to debate
To enable companies to adopt and share new and best practice three national organisations were established: the Construction Best Practice Programme; the Movement for Innovation (M4I) and Rethinking Construction. These organisations have come together under the title of Constructing Excellence which co-ordinates the national demonstration projects programmes and regional best practice clubs, see www.constructingexcellence.org.uk for a full account of its activities. It is beyond the scope of this paper to attempt to detail the contents and nature of these two reports but it is important to realise that in a regional setting the Centre for Construction Innovation was able to work in support of a national agenda that many organisations were seeking to adapt to
Summary
The activities of the Centre for Construction Innovation are reported in this paper, highlighting the critical success factors associated with collaborative centres in transferring knowledge between Universities and Industry. The goal of CCI is to supply business support for the Construction Industry generally and to promote and foster the Rethinking Construction agenda (Egan, 1998) and help implement Accelerating Change (Strategic Forum for Construction, 2002) in the region and beyond. This activity was determined by its initial core sponsors Manchester City Council, through European Regional Development Funding and the Construction Directorate of the UK Government. The Egan review was distinctive in that it established new change implementation bodies, for example the Movement for Innovation and Local Government Task. While institutional change and development is reviewed elsewhere, this paper concentrates on describing the experiences of building a consensual network for change in a region with unique and distinct characteristics, and the interactions which occur between network participants
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