Knowledge integration in hospital construction projects – how to build hospitals for the future?
Funded by: SBUF (The Construction Industry's Organisation for Research and Development) and CMB (Center for Management in the Built Environment)
Time period: December 2019 to December 2021
Partner organizations: NCC Building Sweden, Chalmers, Uppsala university, KTH
About the project
With a hospital infrastructure that was built 40-50 years ago, Sweden is now facing a large number of construction projects with the goal of building ‘the hospital of the future’ in the most cost-effective way possible. This refurbishment is referred to as "the second hospital wave". Building a hospital is a complex task and requires joint knowledge development in the projects around how the current and future care needs can be translated into building technical solutions and how these can be produced in an efficient way. A fundamental question is how to best integrate the knowledge required from a number of different actors in construction projects, such as construction contractors, clients, users (patients and hospital staff), property management and various technical disciplines. This knowledge integration includes knowledge diffusion between actors and joint knowledge development in the creation of new innovative solutions. This study is therefore about mapping, identifying and understanding what knowledge is used and integrated by various key actors in hospital projects. In addition, the study aims to understand if and how partnering contributes to knowledge integration in hospital projects.
Principal investigators: Viktoria Sundquist and Malena Havenvid
Project members: Åse Linné and Sofia Wagrell (Uppsala University), Malena Havenvid (KTH), Viktoria Sundquist (Chalmers)