For practitioners

One of the ambitions of the Center for Management Studies of the Building Process is to generate knowledge that may make actors in the building industry adopt a different approach to practice. Here you can read more about how practitioners can benefit from our knowledge.
 

We provide relevant knowledge

In Center for Management Studies of the Building Process we are very humble toward the complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity that characterize the building process in practice. Therefore, each time we embark on a new project, we spend much time understanding the specific practice before looking for potential changes.

What we claim is that we can furnish practitioners with new knowledge. Our approach to the building process is different from yours, and we can use our knowledge to open your eyes for new ways of thinking and acting. In this way you will hopefully learn more about your field of practice. It is usually one’s own understanding of practice that impedes improvements which is why we don’t mind claiming that we have something valuable to offer both you and the industry by offering more choices – both in terms of understanding and of action.

Our evidence-based knowledge is not intended to replace or render superfluous the experience-based knowledge of the industry, but we hope that it will inspire actors in the industry to interpret experiences in new ways and to see new action possibilities. All this in the pursuit of better ways of coping with the many challenges and difficulties that you are facing in practice.

The knowledge that the center accumulates does not offer ready-made solutions to what the building industry could do differently. Instead we work to produce knowledge that will enable the individual practitioner to make better choices. 

Focus on the underlying conditions

For far too many years criticism of the construction industry has started from an ideal image of what organizing and managing the construction of buildings imply. This kind of criticism risks prolonging and strengthening the industry’s problems, because it does not explore the underlying conditions and real challenges.

Learning about and understanding the underlying conditions are vital for being able to incorporate the latter into one’s own practice. There is no reason to think that ready-made solutions will be handed out from nowhere. Therefore, we contribute with new understandings of management – understandings that accept the inherent complexity and uncertainty of the building industry, and which we hope will motivate your to act both innovatively and realistically.