1,721,004 research outputs found
Innovative Products Project: Background Study
No full textThe Australian Research Council (ARC) Innovative Products Project aims to facilitate project innovation by exploring means to improve the diffusion of innovative products to road and bridge projects. It adopts a highly novel approach to achieve this end, developing three different ways of viewing the problem: (1) as a relational governance issue, (2) as an absorptive capacity issue and (3) as a knowlege intermediation issue. This report presents teh results of teh first phase of a three phase fieldwork program
Innovative Products Focus Group Report 2012. Brisbane: QUT
No full textThis report presents the results of Phase 3 of the Innovative Road Products Project: National Focus Groups. The groups developed solutions to address the most important obstacles constraining the adoption of innovative products in Australian road construction projects. The Innovative Products Survey, the major Project deliverable in 2011, and the largest innovation survey ever undertaken in the Australian road consutrction industry, results in the identification of key obstacles constraining the adoption of innovative products on road projects
Innovative Products Survey Report
No full textThis report presents the results of the 2011 Australian road and bridge product innovation survey, the largest survey of its kind ever undertaken. The survey sample was defined as key organisations involved in the Australian road and bridge construction industry. The survey focused on four sectors across the road and bridge product supply chain: suppliers (comprising manufacturers and distributors), consultants (primarily engineering consultant firms), contractors (comprising head and trade contractors and subcontractors) and clients (state government road agencies). The sample comprised the four sectors in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria
Revisiting the adoption of innovative products on Australian road infrastructure projects
No full textConstruction product innovation can exert a positive influence on project and industry performance. However, guidance is scarce on product innovation diffusion for road infrastructure, in contrast to the large body of literature on the manufacturing industry. A conceptual framework is proposed to understand these processes. Advice is given to managers based on the framework and a large quantitative survey. The framework focuses on contextual characteristics that influence the decision to adopt new-to-industry product innovation, as part of a diffusion process. Case study data are interpreted within the revised framework to test its value and disaggregate the broad obstacles to innovation. A large quantitative survey was then conducted to rank the relative importance of the obstacles constraining the adoption of innovative products on road construction projects. The three most important obstacles were found to be: (1) overemphasis on up-front project costs during tender stage; (2) disagreement over who carries the risk of new product failure; and (3) adversarial contract relations. The results suggest refinements to the conceptual framework to make it a more powerful tool for categorizing and analysing construction innovation obstacles. Results also suggest well-resourced repeat interactions within complementary procurement and regulatory systems will enhance the project teams’ ability to recognize and address innovation obstacles. Further, improved relationships are expected to decrease the need for an overly conservative approach to product approval and prescriptive specifications
Motivating construction organisations through incentives : a case study for client managers
No full textClient-side project manager face challenges in motivating project organisations to pursue exceptional design and construction performance. One approach to improving the motivation of project organisations is by offering a financial incentive reward for the achievement of voluntary performance standards above the minimum required standard. However, little investigation has been undertaken into the features of a successful incentive system as a part of an overall procurement strategy. In response to a lack of information available to client-side project managers tasked with the initial design of an incentive system, the paper explores motivation undera successful incentive and identifies key learnings for client-side project managers to consider when designing incentives. Our findings are based on the results of a large Australian case study which is interpreted against a conceptual framework based on both economic and psychological perspectives of motivation. The results suggest the motivation towards incentive goals is influenced by the value the project organisations place on the incentive reward as a commercial opportunity to increase their profit margins. However, perhaps more important are the relationship management processes that promote commitment to the project; and pride in the achievement of project goals. In the case study, these processes intensified the direct motivational effect of the incentive reward on offer. The findings also highlight the importance of ensuring that incentive goals and performance measurement processes remain relevant to the organisation throughout a project to continuously encourage motivation under changing project conditions
Motivational misalignment on an iconic infrastructure project
No full textAligning the motivation of contractors and consultants to perform better than ‘business-as-usual’ (BAU) on a construction project is a complex undertaking and the costs of failure are high as misalignment can compromise project outcomes. Despite the potential benefits of effective alignment, there is still little information about optimally designing procurement approaches that promote motivation towards ‘above BAU’ goals. The paper contributes to this knowledge gap by examining the negative drivers of motivation in a major construction project that, despite a wide range of performance enhancing incentives, failed to exceed BAU performance. The paper provides a case study of an iconic infrastructure project undertaken in Australia between 2002 and 2004. It is shown that incentives provided to contractors and consultants to achieve above BAU performance can be compromised by a range of negative motivation drivers including: \ud
• inequitable contractual risk allocation; \ud
• late involvement of key stakeholders;\ud
• inconsistency between contract intentions and relationship intentions;\ud
• inadequate price negotiation; \ud
• inconsistency between the project performance goals and incentive goals;\ud
•unfair and inflexible incentive performance measurement processes.\ud
Future quantitative research is planned to determine the generalisability of these results. \u
Diffusion determinants for passive building technologies
No full textThis summary is based on an international review of leading peer reviewed journals, in both technical and management fields. It draws on highly cited articles published between 2000 and 2009 to investigate the research question, "What are the diffusion determinants for passive building technologies in Australia?". Using a conceptual framework drawn from the innovation systems literature, this paper synthesises and interprets the literature to map the current state of passive building technologies in Australia and to analyse the drivers for, and obstacles to, their optimal diffusion. The paper concludes that the government has a key role to play through its influence over the specification of building codes
Adoption of innovative products on Australian road infrastructure projects
No full textProduct innovation is an important contributor to the performance of infrastructure projects in the construction\ud
industry. Maximizing the potential for innovative product adoption is a challenging task due to the complexities of the construction innovation system. A qualitative methodology involving interviews with major construction project stakeholders is employed to address the research question: ‘What are the main obstacles to the adoption of innovative products in the road industry?’ The characteristics of six key product innovation obstacles in Australian road projects are described. The six key obstacles are: project goal misalignment, client pressures, weak contractual relations, lack of product trialling, inflexible product specifications and product liability concerns. A snapshot of the dynamics underlying these obstacles is provided. There are few such assessments in the literature, despite the imperative to improve construction innovation rates globally in order to deliver road infrastructure projects of increasing size and complexity. Key obstacles are interpreted through an open innovation construct, providing direction for policy to enhance the uptake of innovation across the construction product supply network. Early evidence suggests the usefulness of an open innovation construct that integrates three conceptual lenses: network governance, absorptive capacity and knowledge intermediation, in order to interpret product adoption obstacles in the context of Australian road infrastructure projects. The paper also provides practical advice and direction for government and\ud
industry organizations that wish to promote the flow of innovative product knowledge across the construction\ud
supply network
Client recommendations for financial incentives on construction projects
No full textPurpose: To provide recommendations for construction clients who design and implement financial incentive mechanisms (FIMs) on projects. ----------\ud
Methodology: Four large Australian building projects commissioned by government clients under managing contractor contracts and completed between 2001 and 2005 were examined to explore the ‘drivers’ that promoted motivation toward financial incentive goals. The results were triangulated across data sources, projects and stakeholder types. ----------\ud
Findings: FIM design should incorporate:\ud
1. flexibility to modify goals and measurement procedures over time,\ud
2. multiple goals covering different project areas,\ud
3. distribution of rewards across all the key organizations contributing to team performance (e.g. potentially not just the contractor, but the subcontractors and consultants) and a reward amount sufficient to be valued by potential recipients. \ud
FIM benefits are maximized through the following complementary procurement initiatives:\ud
4. equitable contract risk allocation,\ud
5. early contractor involvement in design,\ud
6. value-driven tender selection,\ud
7. relationship workshops, and\ud
8. future work opportunities.----------\ud
Research Limitations: This paper provides practical recommendations to industry and hence does not emphasize theoretical aspects.----------\ud
Practical Implications: The uptake of these recommendations is likely to increase the impact of FIMs on motivation and improve project and industry outcomes. Although the study focuses on government clients of building projects, all the recommendations would seem to apply equally to private-sector clients and to non-building projects.----------\ud
Originality: In order to improve motivation and reward high performance, clients are increasingly using FIM in their construction contracts. Despite the rising use of financial incentives, there is a lack of comprehensive construction-specific knowledge available to help clients maximize outcomes. The study addresses this gap in the literature
Innovative Practices in the Australian Built Environment Sector : An Information Resource for Industry
No full textPROJECT BRIEF\ud
Information provided by the Built Environment Industry Innovation Council as background to this project includes the following information on construction and innovation within the industry.\ud
\ud
• The construction industry contributes around 150 million.\ud
• The industry has one of the lowest innovation rates of any industry in Australia, ranking third last across all Australian industries in terms of its proportion of business\ud
expenditure on innovation, and second last in terms of the proportion of income generated from innovation (ABS, 2006).\ud
• Key innovation challenges include addressing energy and water use efficiency, and housing costs in preparing for the implementation of the Carbon Pollution Reduction\ud
Scheme. The sector will need to build its capability and capacity to deliver the technical and operational expertise required.The broader Built Environment Innovation Project aims to address the following two objectives:\ud
1. Identify current innovative practice across the Built Environment industry.\ud
2. Develop a knowledge exchange strategy for this information to be disseminated to all industry stakeholders.\ud
Industry practice issues are critical to the built environment industry’s ability to innovate, and the BRITE project from the CRC for Construction Innovation has previously undertaken work to identify the key factors that drive innovation. Part 1 of the current project aims to extend this work by conducting a stocktake of current and emerging innovative practices within the\ud
built environment industry. \ud
Part 2 of the project addresses the second of these objectives, that is, to recommend a knowledge exchange strategy for promoting the wider uptake of innovative practices that makes the information identified in Part 1 of the study (on emerging innovative practices)\ud
accessible to Australian built environment industry stakeholders. The project brief was for the strategy to include a mechanism to enable this information resource to be updated as new initiatives/practices are developed.\ud
A better understanding of the built environment industry’s own knowledge infrastructure also has the potential to enhance innovation outcomes for the industry. This project will develop a coordinated knowledge exchange strategy, informed by the best available information on current innovation practices within the industry and suggest directions for gaining a better understanding of: the industry contexts that lead to innovative practices; the industry (including enterprise and individual) drivers for innovation; and appropriate knowledge exchange pathways for delivering future industry innovation. A deliverable of Part 2 will be a recommendation for a knowledge exchange strategy to accelerate adoption of innovative\ud
practices in the built environment industry, including resource implications and how such a recommendation could be taken forward as an ongoing resource
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