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1. Introduction
Understanding and driving innovation in the construction industry have been an important field of research in the past several decades. Innovation in construction is multifaceted, complex and produces a multitude of outcomes (Oke, 2007). While structural and systemic factors are seen to constrain the innovation process, it remains that the industry does innovate in a localized manner over a project’s life cycle, be it to varying degrees (Slaughter, 1998). Providing the appropriate context for- and maximizing the impact of innovation, however, as manifested through new products, processes, services and technologies, and driving systemic and systematic innovation across the project and asset life cycles, remain challenging in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, Owner, Operation and Manufacturing (AECOOM) industry. Moreover, this complexity may explain the dearth of case study research actually investigating innovation from a systemic perspective. The Brock Commons Tallwood House (Tallwood House) at the University of British Columbia (UBC), the tallest hybrid mass timber building in the world at the time of its completion in 2018, presented a unique opportunity to study this complex process and its impact in the AECOOM industry.
Completed as part of the Tall Wood Building Demonstration Initiative that was supported by the federal government of Canada through Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) and the Canadian Wood Council, the design and delivery of the 18-storey student residence aimed to highlight the feasibility and functionality of using mass timber in high-rise construction (Mohammad, 2016). The intention behind the demonstration initiative was to help the Canadian AECOOM industry undertake innovative approaches to design and build high-rise wood buildings. The demonstration projects fostered innovation in the timber-building sector by bringing together researchers, building code officials, fire safety professionals, designers, engineers and construction industry experts. This synergistic approach to innovation, conceptualized as a balanced triple-helix system, is shown to foster and accelerate innovation by setting a conducive context to develop novel solutions and new expertise through a partnership between academia, industry and government (Ranga and Etzkowitz, 2013).
The Tallwood house project offers the following three perspectives on innovation in construction:
the context of innovation, through the lens of triple-helix systems;
the “clustering” of process and product innovation; and
sustaining innovation across the project’s life cycle and its supply chain as a question of “connectedness”...