PhD Final Thesis April 2013.pdf - Anglia Ruskin Research Online

Thesis Keith Gale 2013CHAPTER 6: DATA SOURCES AND THE DEFINITIONS, CONTEXTUALPOSITIONING AND PREPARATION OF DATA USED IN THIS RESEARCH6.1 IntroductionResearch into construction framework agreements is set around a case study within alarge UK local government organisation. The overall size (circa 34,000 employeeswith £1.7Bn annual turnover) and maturity (origins over 500 years ago but morerecently formed under the Local Government Act 1972) had allowed access totransparent control systems with which to provide extensive and reliable datasources. A significant amount of data was discovered regarding outcome informationof projects and unrestricted access was offered to interface with participants involvedin the management of projects. An opportunity was taken to engage with significanttechnical expertise of the organisation through officers who hold formalqualifications recognised by the industry. Links with members of professionalinstitutions such as Institution of Civil Engineers and Royal Institution of CharteredSurveyors provide a strong link with current professional practice. Contextualpositioning with the case study incorporates public sector procurement engagementlegislation. This therefore provides a standard of regulation applicable to all UKpublic sector organisations that share a similar statutory constitution.Bisection of the case study period during introduction of framework agreementsallows a ‘before and after’ analysis of results to determine changes in outcomes. Thischapter examines sources of data available for this research and categorises such datainto specific types. Each data type is set against a datum identified in Figure 6.1.6.2 Overview and timescale of source dataThe data collection period for this research extends over a period of five yearsincluding a period of transition between final operation of discreet contracts andintroduction of framework agreements, a period of data collection during operationof the frameworks, and a questionnaire and interview period. Sources of each datastream relative to calendar dates are shown in Figure 6.1.119