Knowledge and technology transfer from universities to industries : a case study approach from the built environment field

Enabling knowledge societies and knowledge based economies is a key policy in the UK. Knowledge transfer partnership (KTP) scheme initiated by the Technology Strategy Board is a pathway for collaboration and partnerships between higher education institutions and companies to transfer innovative knowledge based solutions from universities to businesses in order to equip them with the leading edge knowledge and technology infrastructure for sustainable long term competitive advantages in both national and international market. The paper explains a KTP project between the University of Salford and John McCall Architects (JMA) in Liverpool in the UK that aimed to identify, map and re-engineer JMA’s strategic and operational change processes through lean thinking and the implementation of building information modelling (BIM), which is a foundational tool for implementing an efficient process and invariably leads to lean-orientated, team based approach to design and construction by enabling the intelligent interrogation of designs; provide a quicker and cheaper design production; better coordination of documentation; more effective change control; less repetition of processes; a better quality constructed product; and improved communication both for JMA and across the supply chain whereas it provided opportunity to increase business relevance of knowledge based research and teaching for the higher education. Case study approach is employed in this paper and the KTP project is assessed for i) how it helped in improving JMA’s knowledge and technology capacity in conducting their practice, and, ii) how it helped the university in improving its knowledge based research and teaching.