Abstract
Academia and industry research enables researchers to conduct research projects that are more relevant to current business practices and context. Although, several construction research works have been done by the academics in the tertiary institutions in Ghana, it is sad to know that, a large number of these research works have not moved from the pure stage to the applied stage. This study seeks to establish the imperative of academia and industry collaboration in building research in Ghana. A total of 116 construction practising professionals consisting of Ghana Institute of Construction (GIOC) corporate members (QS, Architects, Engineers and so on) from the industry, and academics from tertiary academic institutions (That’s, Lecturers from KNUST and UEW) that run postgraduate construction programmes in Ghana as at February 2016 constituted the respondents for this study. Census and systematic sampling techniques were used for the sampled population. Descriptive statistics was employed in the data analysis for the mean and standard deviation (SD) score values of variables. The most imperatives for academia and industry collaboration were found to be: ensuring research findings solve socio-economic and development problems, the intermittent collapse of buildings, support for the local industries to produce quality materials locally to feed the construction industry, proper contract documentations and administration. This research would bring to light the urgent issues in the construction industry that calls for greater collaboration between the academia and industry in Ghana. It reveals a deeper understanding on the need for collaborative research in the Ghanaian construction industry, by providing the most imperatives to academia-industry collaborative research in Ghana.
Highlights
Academia and Industry collaborations can be explained as the pairing of discovery and dissemination of knowledge for the creation of products and services [1]
According to [27] and [28], a variable was deemed to be crucial or imperative for collaborative research if it scored a mean value of ≥2.5 while variables with mean values < 2.5 were deemed not crucial or trivial for collaborative research and were automatically rejected
It can be clearly seen that all the variables had mean score values ranging from 3.0 and above, signifying all the 29 factors in Table 2 were the imperatives for academia and industry collaborative research in the construction industry in Ghana
Summary
Academia and Industry collaborations can be explained as the pairing of discovery and dissemination of knowledge for the creation of products and services [1]. The Industry on the other hand has the benefit of getting access to innovation and discoveries from academia research [2]. The Ghanaian construction industry is faced with many challenges with some of the reasons being due to lack of formal collaboration between the academia and industry in the area of construction research. The academia is faced with constraints regarding resources, funding, material, laboratories, equipment and so on for research, teaching and training of professionals, yet the industry has the ability to help in the provision of such facilities. It is an established fact that the collaborative effort between the academia and industry can make meaningful contribution to improving industry performance of nations [4]
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