Assessing project delivery for sustainable, high-performance buildings through mixed methods

Project delivery processes that describe contractual agreements among project participants, timing their activities and levels of involvement have long been subjects for construction management research. Dominated by quantitative methods, this research topic requires large sample sizes mainly due to the extensive number of potential variables arising from the project-based nature of construction. The recent and growing trend in the industry towards sustainable and high-performance building construction introduces added complexities in the project delivery process and challenges research due to the limited population of completed environmentally sustainable buildings. This study presents a combined use of quantitative and qualitative methods, also called mixed methods, as a useful way to respond to the research challenges. This research first quantitatively selects important variables of project delivery from a sample of sustainable, high-performance office buildings (N = 40) and then tests those variables with the analyses of selected case studies. The results of this exploratory study are important to expanding research in the delivery of sustainable and high-performance building projects and the methods required to expand the understanding, validity and reliability of this research.