Clients and Users in Construction : Agency, Governance and Innovation

Clients have been identified as critical for building delivery but have been under-researched with only a few studies about them. This book seeks to address this gap.

A deeper look into the nature of construction clients and their relation to building users exposes more fundamental questions related to the activity of building and the activity in the building. These fundamental questions include 'How do clients get what they want?', 'How do clients cope with the building process?', and 'How are clients being shaped by building(s)?'.

This book on clients and users is structured around three main themes:

• Agency is concerned with the classical agency/structure dichotomy on actions, roles and responsibilities or, put differently, whether actors can act freely or are bound by structural constraints.
• Governance is related to the interplay between clients and the supply system: clients govern the supply system but are at the same time governed by the supply system through different processes and mechanisms.
• Innovation deals with construction innovation and what part clients and users play in this struggle between change and stability.

The book includes theoretical and conceptual frameworks on what constitutes clients and users as well as case studies on R&D themes of relevance to practice.

Kim Haugbølle conducts advisory services to the Danish government, undertakes teaching, and develops research-based knowledge to improve the built environment. He has authored or co-authored more than 200 publications on innovation, procurement, lifecycle economics and sustainable design with a special emphasis on the role of clients. Kim has been involved in the coordination and management of several national and international R&D projects, and has been heading the secretariat of a think tank and a research department. Kim is the international co-coordinator of the CIB Working Commission W118 on Clients and Users in Construction as well as a board member of the Nordic researchers’ network on construction economics and organisation (CREON).

David Boyd is Professor of Construction at Birmingham City University, UK. He has a background in engineering, but is better known for his management insights of the industry. His major contribution has been to develop a model of projects in the industry as complex adaptive socio-technical systems. His earlier research on construction clients has been published in the book Understanding the Construction Client which was adopted by the UK Construction Clients Forum. He is developing research into practice through the philosophy of expertise-in-context and is currently researching the challenges of connecting human and information perspectives in BIM. He is the international co-coordinator of the CIB Working Commission W118 on Clients and Users in Construction.