Towards a research agenda on clients and users in construction

Both nationally and internationally, calls have been made for clients to become change agents of the construction industry and users have been promoted as co-creators of built facilities. Taking clients and users as a new analytical starting point for understanding building and buildings require a new research agenda. Thus, the objectives of this paper are twofold. First, this paper will map the organisational landscape of national client associations and international research networks on clients and users. Second, this paper will identify relevant R&D themes and questions to be addressed in future R&D activities. This study applied three types of methods: roll your snowball, consultations and personal experiences of collaboration with clients and users. The first key finding is that the organisational landscape is dispersed with most of the designated client organisations located in the developed countries. Secondly, the R&D themes addressed by practitioners include in generic terms legal, organisational and managerial issues, value and performance management, sustainability, digitalisation like building information modelling and building automation, and asset and facility management. From a theoretically informed perspective, this paper identifies three main areas for research and development on clients and users: 1) the dualism of agency/structure, 2) governance, and 3) innovation. In conclusion, the major challenge for generating and conducting research and development on clients and users appears to be bridging the more theme-based approach of client practitioners with the theoretically informed approach of academics in order to generate a fruitful collaboration between research and practice.