Measure ALL the Things?! Reflecting on Metrics in Construction Management

Thursday 29th February 2024
This event is a joint CIB W099 & W065 webinar
Metrics are becoming ever more commonplace in construction, in both general management and in the management of health and safety. Measurement is also being enhanced through the use of recent technological developments, which enables myriad different and novel approaches to its collection, monitoring, and management. In fact, are you even doing construction if you don’t have a dashboard monitoring something? Enhancing our measurement of things may seem like a positive step forward for construction, not least because as the saying goes - “if you can’t measure it then you can’t manage it”.But there are many other sayings - such as “what gets measured gets managed” - that we should also listen to. Evidence of this has been revealed in the field of safety specifically, where the longstanding metric TRIR has been found to not even be statistically valid in the common ways we use it. We therefore need to carefully consider the metrics we are prioritizing, researching, and using in practice to ensure we are optimizing what they can do for us, rather than simply measuring ALL the things.Join us for a lively and informative webinar as two leading voices from W099 and W065 discuss the opportunities, threats and impacts that surround metrics within construction management.
Speakers
Dr. Matthew Hallowell is a President’s Teaching Scholar and Endowed Professor of Construction Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. He earned a BS and MS in Civil Engineering and a PhD with a focus on Construction Engineering and Occupational Safety and Health. Before his academic career, he worked in construction as a laborer, project engineer, and quality inspector. Dr. Hallowell specializes in construction safety research and has pioneered leading indicators, hazard recognition programs, safety risk assessment, and precursor analysis. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers and has overseen over $3 million in external funding. For his research, he has received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the Construction Industry Institute Outstanding Researcher Award.
Dr Yingbin Feng is the Associate Professor of Quantity Surveying at Western Sydney University, and is the Joint Coordinator of CIB W065 Organization and Management of Construction. He leads industry-driven research and is passionate about engaging with the industry and enabling research to transform industry practices, and is the Leader of the Sustainable Procurement research theme at the Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre (SBEnrc), Australia. Publishing 140 journal articles, book chapters, conference papers, research/industry reports and media articles., he was the winner of the Premier Award at the prestigious Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) International Innovation and Research Awards 2014.
Thursday 29th February 2024