Ethnographic Action Research: A Human-Centric Development Framework for Engineering and Construction Project Information Platforms

Engineering and construction project information platforms (ECPIP) for architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) projects need to support both, project and product management and they need to be highly adaptable to the unique cultures prevailing on different AEC projects. Furthermore, due to the temporal character of projects there is little time to routinize processes around ECPIPs and, thus the processes that ECPIPs support will change often on a project. To address these challenges, this paper suggests a human-centric research and development methodology that combines the ethnographic observation of practitioners working in local project cultures and the iterative improvement of ECPIPs directly on these projects in small action research implementation cycles. The paper shows the practical feasibility of the theoretical methodology using ECPIP development cases from AEC projects in North America and Europe. The cases provide evidence that ethnographic action research is well suited to support the development of ECPIPs as it enables the identification of problems in the daily work of AEC practitioners and offers important insights into local AEC project cultures. Furthermore, the findings from the cases show that the iterative nature of the ethnographic action research is well suited to address the frequent changes prevailing on AEC projects.