Instilling a New Culture for Innovation in Canada

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The Canadian construction industry is significantly impacted by rising costs, reduced profit margins, new increasingly complex market demands, and decline in productivity. These are necessitating a change in the entire construction process, adding more strain to the limited resources available to the construction industry. New ideas and innovation can help address these trends, and create opportunities for increased productivity, profitability and market expansion. This will necessitate a culture shift in the construction industry. In 2014 and in response to this call for action, the construction industry formed Canadian Construction Innovations (CCInnovations). Its values are as follows: (1) Industry-Driven: All that CCI undertakes must be relevant to the industry, applied and have measurable outcome; (2) Accountability: CCI is accountable to its membership (owners, architects, engineers, contractors, manufacturers and suppliers) and by extension to the industry its serves; (3) Collaboration and Partnerships: CCI must leverage all possible resources to accomplish its mandate by establishing active partnerships and collaborative arrangements; (4) Multi-disciplinary: CCI is inclusive of all sectors of the construction industry and must harness the very diverse expertise and experience available in Canada and around the world. This workshop aims at attracting founding partners of CCInnovations, special guests, and construction academics to address the following objectives: -Identify key challenge areas in the industry where pragmatic solutions can be found and put to market -Determine the clusters needed to give focus to each of those areas -Establish networks to leverage the expertise necessary to address each of the identified areas -Identification of individuals who could serve on the CCI Technical Council. The workshop will be vital for advancing collaboration between industry and academia, and in fostering further research activities in key areas of concern linked to productivity, profitability, and market expansion.