Case Study Design

Yin (2014) established five components for case study research design, they include; 1- case study’s questions, 2- propositions, 3- unit(s) of analysis, 4- the logic linking the data to the propositions and 5- the criteria for interpreting the findings. The first components discusses the form of the questions for instance, “how” and “what” in respect of achieving the research objectives. The second component of case study research design describes the intension of researcher’s interests which is planned to be examined within the research scope. The unit of analysis (third component of case study research design) defines individuals who stand together to established “case(s)” and relevant questions with logic attentions will be collected from those individuals. Identifying unit of analysis can limited case study questions and propositions. Different research questions might point to different unit of analysis. The fourth component refers to research discussion where findings of case study will be linked to research objectives and research questions. The final and fifth component of case study design defines criteria for statistical estimation for interpreting case study’s findings. According to Yin (2014) the first three components (research questions, propositions and unit of analysis) lead research design into identifying data collection. And the last two components (linking data to proposition & criteria for interpreting case study’s findings) link collected data to interpreting the findings.

The case study method is conducted in this research to address four objectives as defined in Section 1.4. In order to achieve research objectives three key research questions are considered to be addressed in this thesis as shown in Figure 4-2. The purposes of these research questions are to identified challenges in structural engineering organisations and examine key contributions of BIM to address those challenges (information quality). Structural engineers, BIM managers and design managers are involved in day to day using information management system. Therefore, this research targeted these participants who are

93 working in two multidisciplinary construction organisations. The targeted organisations are leaders in adopting BIM and novel technologies in the UK in their information management systems. The targeted participants have sufficient experiment from their previous and particularly current projects to respond to the designed research questions (See Table 4-2). The findings from both cases can be duplicated or compare to each other to obtain robust conclusion in this research.

Table 4-2 Research questions and Unit of Analysis

Research Questions Participants

1-What are the key challenges in structural engineering information management within UK?

Structural engineers BIM Managers Design Managers 2-How BIM is implemented in UK-based structural

engineering organisations currently?

Structural engineers BIM Managers Design Managers 3-How can BIM contribute to key information

management challenges in the structural engineering organisations?

Structural engineers BIM Managers Design Managers

According to Yin (2014, P 50) There are four types of case study; single-case holistic unit of analysis, single-case embedded unit of analysis, multiple-case holistic unit of analysis and multiple-case embedded unit of analysis. Single case studies have some disadvantages in terms of generalization of the findings from a single case however, multiple case study can improve the internal validity of the findings and conclusion from multiple evidences (Voss et al., 2002). As illustrated in Figure 4-4, there are subunits embedded in the unit of analysis for both two cases in this research. The participants are experts who are able to respond to the research questions in the context of information management within their current projects in their organisations.

94 Context (Information Management)

Case 1 (Structural engineering Department in

Multi-disciplinary Organisation

Participants (Engineers, Design Managers, BIM Managers)

Context (Information Management)

Case 2 (Structural engineering Department in

Multi-disciplinary Organisation

Participants (Engineers, Design Managers, BIM Managers)

Multiple Cases

Figure 4-4 Case Study Design

Single case study is often employed to explore samples that are limited and difficult to generalise large populations. Therefore having at least two cases can contribute to credibility of the research results (Yin, 2014). This research adopted two cases as stronger evidence of findings and conclusions may be obtained due to replication. As shown in Figure 4-3, this research focused on two structural engineering departments in multi-disciplinary construction organisations in the UK. The analysis includes outcomes about information management in their current design projects. The results from the two cases was sufficient for this research to achieve rich and reliable data from experienced participants who are working in structural departments and who have years of experience in adopting BIM in the context of structural engineering discipline. In this research, the results of the two cases provided ample opportunity to compare data from different organisations and to understand the phenomena through achieving saturation and repetition of data In this research, case 1 is a structural engineering project in a structural engineering department in the organisation A. Organisation A is a world-class infrastructure and construction services organisation operating across the construction and infrastructure lifecycle. Teams of designers, planners, engineers, builders, project and facilities managers, analysts and consultants are working with their clients and partners to fund, design, deliver, operate and maintain infrastructure efficiency and safety.

95 This research focuses on the company’s design office in the north west of England. Case 2 is also structural engineering design project in a structural engineering department in the organisation B. Organisation B Founded in 1946 with an initial focus on structural engineering, they first came to the world’s attention through structural design and since then its work has grown the company into a multidisciplinary organisation. The company’s portfolio today is broad and wide and their work goes beyond buildings and infrastructure. They have also developed a range of proprietary computer modelling tools, which they sell around the world. They have over 90 offices across Europe, North America, Africa and South East Asia, having tripled in size in the last ten years, and now employ over 11,000 people worldwide. However, this research focuses on the design office in the UK.

The qualitative data collection and analysis of this research is focused on context discovery, based on semi-structured interviews. This research adopted qualitative interview to build in- depth analysis based on details and richness rather than on statistical logic. As a result this research adopted two different cases out of which 12 interviews were solicited. Table 4-3 shows the demography of the participants in two different cases who were involved in qualitative interview data collection.

Table 4-3Demography of interview participants

Participant Code Case Study Role Years of experience

SSE1 Case1 Senior Structural

Engineer

8

SSE2 Case1 Senior Structural

Engineer

14

DM1 Case 1 Design Manager 12

SSE3 Case1 Senior Structural

Engineer

14

SSE4 Case1 Senior Structural

Engineer

96

BM1 Case1 BIM Manager 8

SSE5 Case2 Senior Structural

Engineer

7

SSE6 Case2 Senior Structural

Engineer

9

JSE7 Case2 Junior Structural

Engineer

2

SSE8 Case2 Senior Structural

Engineer

17

DM2 Case2 Design Manager 12

BM2 Case2 BIM Manager 15

Survey data collection is added in sequence to the case study to increase representation of larger population. Mixing qualitative case study method with quantitative survey (questionnaire) method can establish richer and stronger evidence when compared with single method alone (Yin, 2014, P 66). The focus of qualitative case study was on structural departments in large organisations which have capabilities in terms of budget and human resources to adopt BIM. However, this research required an exploration of the challenges and key consideration of small and medium structural organisation with different budget, capabilities, human resources and organisational structure in the context of adopting BIM and information quality. Therefore, quantitative data was collected via questionnaire from different participants in different structural organisations to provide more robust results for this research. In the following sections the techniques that have been used in this research to analyse both qualitative and quantitative data are presented in detail. The next section discussed the data collection technique that was adopted in this research to collect and analyse qualitative data in the case study methods.

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