Project and Quality Management

This is a group a group mainly centered around the area of project management, in a broad sense of the term. A number of sub-topics with project management are covered by our research and academic interests, see examples below. In addition, most of the members of the group have a background based on a broader set of areas within quality management and improvement work, including expertise within digitalization.

Relevant areas of research are therefore quite broadly composed:

• Project owner management and project governance
• Project models and different phases of projects
• Stakeholder management
• Partnering and other innovative collaboration and contract forms
• Mega projects
• Performance measurement and improvement, including modeling
• The use of big data, advanced data analysis using techniques like artificial intelligence/machine learning
• Evaluation of projects and experience learning/transfer
• Concurrent engineering, ICE, VDC
• Lean, both construction and in other types of processes
• Digitalization of business and project processes
• Innovative forms of learning, especially when applied in the teaching of project management

Examples of recently completed or ongoing research projects:

• Project Norway, which is not a research project of its own, but a research-based, virtual center with close to 30 partners from industry and the public sector that initiates and co-funds research activities. The secretariat of the center is located at the project and quality management group.

• The Concept programme, which develops ways of improving the use of resources and enhancing the effects of major public investments. The principal goal of the Concept Research Programme is to develop knowledge and expertise on projects in the front-end phase, from the initial visualization until the decision to implement is made. Trailing research on large public investment projects is the main project activity. The goal is to attain better use of resources and greater effects of such investments. The Norwegian Ministry of Finance funds the programme, and we are actively involved in both the steering group and research activity

• Måleprosjektet - Presentasjonsmåling i BAE-næringen, a project co-funded by Bygg21 to adapt the performance measurement tool CII 10-10 to a Norwegian context and offer it to the Norwegian construction industry. The has led to the establishment of a member-owned association, Nordic 10-10, ensuring that the CII 10-10 tool is actively used in Norwegian projects. The group runs the secretariat for the association and we use the data collected for research.