Knowledge exchange between academia and industry

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report
unambiguously demonstrated the critical and serious
nature of climate change. It specifically outlined the
urgent need for new practices and technologies within the
built environment, and this in turn needs effective and
quick knowledge development and transfer. While,
historically, construction research has presupposed the
‘pipeline’ model of knowledge transfer from academics to
practitioners, often in a slow and piecemeal process,
there has been a recent move towards greater involvement
of practitioners in research, following theories from
the social sciences about the roles of social networks and
communities of practice in the co-production of knowledge.
However, there is little empirical evidence to show
whether the involvement of practitioners in construction
research is changing either research practices or the
acquisition of new knowledge by practitioners. This paper
provides some of this evidence, by summarising the
results from four studies to investigate how knowledge is
being created within the Sustainable Urban Environment
research consortia and how it is being accessed by the
construction industry.