Co-creating digital services with and for facilities management
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to increase understanding about the co-creation of digital facilities management (FM) services with and for FM during a construction project.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper reports a case study on the co-creation of a digital facilities management service during the Mission Bay medical center construction project for the University of California, San Francisco. The sub-contractors and the FM team co-created a quick-response (QR) code system for valves on the project. This digital service is now used by the FM team for training purposes and in emergency situations when information on valves and their service areas is quickly needed. Researchers made on-site observations, conducted 84 interviews and reviewed archival data in 2012, 2014 and 2016.
Findings
The findings show that a successful co-creation process consists of three elements: a dialogue between the project parties, the creation of shared context between the project parties and the creation of shared understanding about the FM’s needs and the service providers’ ways of satisfying those needs. The study describes ways to promote these elements.
Originality/value
Previous studies emphasize the need for digital FM but few explain how FM teams can be involved in creating digital services for them. This paper describes how to co-create digital FM services with and for FM in the context of a construction project.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The research reported in this paper has been funded by three institutions: (1) the Finnish Science Foundation for Economics and Technology, (2) the Finnish Cultural Foundation, and (3) the Digital Disruption of Industry (DDI) research project funded by the Strategic Research Council at the Academy of Finland. The institutions have purely funded the research and have not affected the research process. The first author works in the DDI project as part of the Enterprise Simulation Laboratory SimLab at Aalto University. The authors are also grateful for Center for Integrated Facility Engineering (CIFE) and the Global Projects Center (GPC) at Stanford University, USA, for all the support throughout the research process. Earlier results have been published in a conference paper by Lavikka, R., Lehtinen, T. & Hall, D. (2016) “Co-creation of digital services with and for facilities management in construction projects” in the Working Paper Series of the Engineering Project Organization Conference, Cle Elum, WA, June 28-30, 2016. Kaminsky, J. & Zerjav, V. (eds.). Cle Elum, WA, USA, 18 p.
Citation
Lavikka, R.H., Lehtinen, T. and Hall, D. (2017), "Co-creating digital services with and for facilities management", Facilities, Vol. 35 No. 9/10, pp. 543-556. https://doi.org/10.1108/F-12-2016-0101
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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