INTEGRATION OF INNOVATION IN CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT

Abstract

Effective construction management is the best practice in the construction sector to achieve the project objectives and the vision for the company. The projects require high level of challenges to maintain the continuous improvement within the competitive global market. Keeping this in view, the concept of innovational practices in the construction sector is introduced as part of the construction management. This study applies the concept of innovation management in the construction industry by studying the major components of innovation process which include the major drivers to innovation, barriers and obstacles that prevent innovation, the enablers that motivate innovation, the practices of innovation, and the benefits of innovation related to project and firm level. This study depends on collecting data by constructing structured questionnaires with survey analysis. The survey consists of three parts; the first part is examining and surveying the organizations involved in the construction sector. The second part is exploring the most efficient and effective innovation components in order to approach the best innovation and construction management strategy. The third part is to identify the innovation outcome and the innovation models executed in the construction industry. The survey consists of 46 factors involved in innovation process and was distributed to different 121 participants, and the collected data was analyzed by relative importance index (RII) and then the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). The analysis results summarized that the most important input factor to initiate the innovation process is providing enough capital and funding the innovation process. Moreover, it is concluded that the major reason to initiate the innovation concept is the client requirement. The major obstacle to initiate the innovation process as per the data analysis is the shortage of financial support and resources to motivate and initiate the innovation practices. These are all external impact to innovation process. The internal impacts studied in this report consider leadership as the most important factor that should be carefully applied in the innovation process. Finally, it is found that having new and modern methods of construction is the best innovation approach to achieve the organizational goals in order to increase the productivity and finish the projects earlier.