A Framework for Evaluating the Impact of Construction Research and Development on University, Construction Industry, and Government

Abstract

Research and development (R&D) partnerships among universities, industries, and government agencies involve investigative activities that may result in new discoveries and innovations. While R&D partnerships are critical for the technological advancement of the construction industry, they require substantial financial support. Although demonstrating the value of these partnerships is essential for encouraging investment, the construction research domain lacks a formal evaluation framework. To address this problem, this study introduces a logic model approach that uses an input-output-outcome-based methodology for evaluating construction R&D partnerships, where inputs represent resources, outputs represent activities, and outcomes represent intended results. The developed framework was tested using a pilot study that focused on the evaluation of the university’s role within a collaborative construction research program under the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Industrial Research Chair (IRC) program, namely the NSERC IRC in Strategic Construction Modeling and Delivery (SCMD). Using canonical and Spearman’s correlation analysis, this study showed the investments and activities for the university research team that lead to desired outcomes of the R&D partnership. The contributions of this study include: (1) introducing the concept of the logic model, which has been used for program evaluation in a range of contexts, to the construction research domain; (2) presenting a framework with detailed evaluation criteria and measurement metrics that will assist research teams and funding agencies in evaluating and improving current R&D partnerships; (3) presenting a statistical approach that will help in identifying relationships between the components of R&D partnership, so that inputs and outputs can be improved to achieve the desired outcomes of each collaborating party; and (4) presenting a validated logic model to evaluate the university’s role within the NSERC IRC in SCMD.