Evaluating the industrial potential of digital outsourcing in architecture: Methodological challenges and choices

Abstract

This paper is the first product of a two-year research program sponsored by the Australian Research Council in 2005. The project seeks to evaluate the industrial potential of distant collaborations between architectural firms, and assess the likelihood that such practice will develop into a fully-fledged mode of service delivery. In order to achieve these two objectives, the research was set out to answer three main questions. (1) What are the quantifiable advantages and drawbacks of offshore collaborations for Australian firms? Do they change according to the socio-technical characteristics of collaborating offices? (2) To what degree do professional and cultural elements affect the performance of firms engaged in the digital supply of architecturerelated services? (3) Is there a way to quantify the cost of the transactions involved in distant collaborations, and use these costs as indicators of future geographic shifts in the procurement of design services? In the initial stage of the project, however, the main intellectual challenge was analytical. It concerned the organisation of a system of technical tests and design tasks that did justice to the complexity of the design process and the skills required to carry it out properly, whilst helping the researchers assess workforce performance and collaboration costs. Strategies adopted in selecting the sample of participating firms, and the choices the authors had to make in structuring ad-hoc pilots in order to collect meaningful and generalisable data are reviewed.