Editorial

Citation

McCaffer, R. (2007), "Editorial", Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, Vol. 14 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ecam.2007.28614aaa.001

Editorial

Issue 14.1 sees the start of a new year and for those academics in the UK it is the year when the research outputs will be chosen for the next research assessment exercise. In my commentary below I make the point, with all the force I can muster, that the judgement of academic research is shifting from the “quality” of published papers to demonstrating “impact”. Lansley sets out his observations on RAEs to date in his paper. The paper by Maqsood, Walker and Finegan is of great interest and they address the use of academic knowledge. The use of research output is at the heart of the shift in thinking that has taken place in the UK, and is embedded in the thinking of the proposed Australian research assessment.

The issue is if research has no impact (and I do not mean citations) then what is it worth. ECAM should lead the field in asking authors to address the impact of their research more than we have. In effect academics are responsible for the implementation of their research and must be seen to be succeeding in this.

Issue 14.1 has six papers, three from the UK, one from Germany and two from Australia – 13 authors have combined to produce these papers, two have single authors, one has two authors and three have three authors.

My comments on the papers are:

Lansley’s paper addresses issues relating to the UK research assessment exercise. Coming up for our sixth research assessment exercise the process has become an important influence on UK higher education influencing how Departments and Universities are managed. Research has now long been recognised as a University exercise that needs to be managed to ensure that staff perform and produce the outputs that will lead to a good RAE grade. Pro-Vice Chancellors for Research have become the performance drivers in universities and personal research plans reviewed every six months are now the norm. However the ground in the UK has shifted, seismically, and for those that have noticed changes are being made in the management of research active staff. The interesting observation is that in the middle of this research earthquake some universities have not yet noticed and within some universities some staff are alert to the changes and some are clinging to the era that has just passed. The alert and agile will succeed. The others could from a club that we might call the “canute club” objecting to the tide of change.

The shift, driven largely by Government and statements from Treasury and the Chancellor is to measure research by “impact” not papers. The training of academics to date has been to get her or his work published in the best journals. Citations, prizes, recognition, more research grants have been taken as the traditional measure of research success. But now the demand is to demonstrate “impact”. What has your research actually achieved. Whose work practices have changed, what design codes have altered, what commercial activities have been created. Universities are being urged to spend their income derived from research assessment not on more research but on implementation and exploitation. EPSRC may shift expenditure in programmes such as IMRCs towards implementation and exploitation. The next generation of successful academics will have a different skills set to the present generation. They probably will have greater rewards and why not they will, to succeed, have to prove their value. Ferraris in the car park?

Hackett and Hicks attempt to improve the position and status of the estimators by defining estimating as a “profession”. The contrast they draw is with the “QS”. As one who has been involved in estimating for most of my working life its not for me to downgrade the worth of the estimator so I wish them well in their quest. However, It seems to be defining a “profession” at a very functional, albeit important, level.

Stoy, Dreier and Schalcher attempt to improve the estimation of the construction duration of residential buildings. They attempt this by the use of a database and a regression model. They admit to the need for more data in their data pool.

Carmichael, Edwards and Holt address the issue of the understanding by plant managers of plant security systems. The issue is that plant theft is high and there are means available to prevent it. The question the authors address is, are the plant managers aware of the problem and the solution.

Lingard and Francis bring to our attention the asymmetrical relationship between professional work and family roles in Australia although I am sure her work applies to other countries too. Lingard uses a model and data from a survey to explore these issues. The work-life balance is an issue that the professions and professional institutions have not yet come to terms with, perhaps they should.

Maqsood, Walker and Finegan examine an aspect of knowledge management focussed on how knowledge from external sources pulls through. In particular they are addressing how academic/research knowledge is pulled through to the practical use in the field.

Ronald McCaffer