Enhancing Innovation in the EPC Industry, Version 1.2
Progressive managers realize that successful engineering-procurement-construction (EPC) organizations must be innovative in order to respond to today’s ever-increasing dynamic environment.* Yesterday’s processes and resources simply will not meet client needs and deliver desired margins on tomorrow’s projects. Understanding this reality, the construction industry has become interested in enhancing innovation and finding tools to help individual EPC organizations improve their innovative capabilities. Until the Construction Industry Institute (CII) and the Charles Pankow Foundation (CPF) sponsored Research Team (RT) 243, no such tool has existed for EPC organizations. At the outset of the study, RT 243 adopted the following definition of innovation: Innovation is the act of introducing a significant improvement in a process, product, or system that is novel to the organization, may cause individuals to view things differently, and results in competitive advantage, increased value for the client or benefit to stockholders.
After two years of research that included an extensive literature search on innovation within and beyond the EPC industry, and over 200 interviews and surveys, RT 243 developed the Innovation Maturity Model (IMM). This tool gives CII and CPF members a means for assessing their respective organizations’ innovation-related capabilities and gives specific recommendations for improving the areas that most hinder their ability to innovate. The tool was validated and improved through pilot tests by a half-dozen CII and CPF member organizations during the team’s third year of research. The purpose of this user’s guide is to provide IMM users with detailed and comprehensive instructions for using the tool successfully. RT 243 adopted the following definition of innovation: Innovation is the act of introducing a significant improvement in a process, product, or system that is novel to the organization, may cause individuals to view things differently, and results in competitive advantage, increased value for the client or benefit to stockholders.
The Innovation Maturity Model (IMM) is an evaluation tool that measures the current state of an organization’s innovation and provides recommendations for advancing innovation.
