Charrettes as a Method for Engaging Industry in Best Practices Research
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 136, Issue 1
Abstract
Gaining innovative and useful research findings concerning construction industry best practices requires an interaction and feedback mechanism between industry respondents and academia. Typical research methods such as surveys, source document reviews, and structured interviews will work, but suffer from barriers which can hamper results. Examples of these barriers include low response rates, asynchronous communication, time commitment of the researchers and respondents, access to project data, and travel costs. Structured workshops (research “charrettes”) are a unique and useful method for facilitating data collection between industry respondents and academic researchers. They combine the best tenets of surveys, interviews, and focus groups in an accelerated time frame. This paper will explain how these workshops provide a critical avenue for industry interaction. Characteristics leading to successful charrettes will be outlined. The paper will conclude by describing the benefits of these workshops to researchers including lessons learned from successful workshops.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 136 • Issue 1 • January 2010
Pages: 66 - 75
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: Aug 15, 2008
Accepted: Apr 2, 2009
Published online: Apr 30, 2009
Published in print: Jan 2010
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