Christine Dugdale reports from the CIB Joint Triennial Symposium conference held recently in South Africa.
"Customer satisfaction: a focus for research and practice in construction" was the title of the CIB Joint Triennial Symposium held in Cape Town, 5-10 September. The CIB is the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction [1].
Of course, readers of this journal might well be forgiven for asking, "the what symposium" and "what has it to do with IT or information professionals?" Especially as it appeared, somewhat mystifyingly to me for a while, to be a conference of the CIB Commission W65 and W55, with the participation of W92 (procurement systems), W99 (safety and health on construction sites), TG31 (macroeconomic data in the construction industry) and TG35 (innovation in building and construction)!!! But I do hope not. It would make us as insular and short-sighted as the delegates who could not understand why a librarian wished to present a paper there. And wondered, far more worryingly, why librarians should appear so attentive whilst listening to papers outlining issues related to a discipline they served in an academic library.
I was there to present a paper about the ResIDe Electronic Reserve as it was, originally, developed in partnership with Built Environment academics and evaluated by Built Environment students. I was, of course, the only librarian there as the conference was very much for practitioners in the construction industry as well as academics. I had been concerned that other papers would be far too technical for me and would discuss subjects I would not understand. How wrong I was!
Admittedly, the conference theme was "customer satisfaction" and my choice of parallel sessions dictated those topics that I heard, but I did try "mixing" and "matching" sessions after the first day. Still, the recurrent themes were those rehearsed so often at LIS conferences - how to reach the customer, identifying customers' needs, satisfying customer demands, explaining/"selling" the means by which customer needs could be achieved to the customer, what makes a good manager, bringing about cultural change, collaborating, co-operating, partnering, learning, developing transferable life long learning skills, developing a learning culture to ensure that people become aware of new trends in education in order to help them assimilate information/knowledge, developing a learning organisation, lack of training, lack of knowledge, excess of irrelevant information, the need for information retrieval skills, the need for CPD programmes and the utilising of IT to innovate procedures rather than to automate existing manual practices. One speaker suggested that construction was one of the worst industries for assimilating new ideas and felt that predictions that the whole industry would be online by the year 2003 were wildly optimistic. Practitioners still need to gain technical maturity. There was even a fascinating discussion about the under-representation of women at the top of the industry. So many issues, indeed, that we hear about at IS conferences.
And so much that different disciplines could learn from each other. And so many opportunities lost because we do not. A number of delegates spoke to me after my presentation about their own libraries and it quickly became evident that most had not thought about explaining their courses or their needs to their librarians. They had not considered consulting library staff about available databases or software to inform their teaching programmes or to help them to teach their subject. Few realised how many databases were available - and to how many they already actually had access within their own institutions.
There is so much that LIS professionals could offer other disciplines and this conference convinced me that we should put more effort into finding ways to "advertise" how we can do this. There is also a great deal that needs to be done to break down barriers of misunderstandings as well as of ignorance. One delegate was at some pains to explain to me that he would not use his university library because the librarians were so unhelpful and actually hindered both his teaching and research. Closer questioning revealed that they were actually guilty only of refusing to break copyright law on his behalf! My attempts to help clear this misunderstanding only convinced him that all librarians were in a conspiracy to halt his research. Another University lecturer suggested to me - and yes he was being serious - that it would be a good idea if libraries were to lend books between themselves! I cannot imagine what his faculty's relationship might be with their library!
This gap in understanding that is frequently found between academics and librarians appears to be mirrored between academics and practitioners in the construction industry. The first speaker suggested that the industry suffers from ignorance at a time when knowledge skills should be paramount in what is now a knowledge society. And yet, he went on to say, academics are often rejected- probably out of ignorance. He suggested that the industry should seek new "learning methods" to change the current culture. Traditional educational methods were not working. This theme was introduced at the very start of the conference when the University of Cape Town Assistant VC began his welcome address. He spoke of construction and design of courses in terms of customer satisfaction and made the point that students are both customers and users. The conference chair continued to address the theme by quoting a chapter heading, "Customers are a nuisance", from a recently published South African book, and suggested that the industry might address this attitude. Perhaps it is also one that some LIS professionals should address. A later speaker suggested that academics and industrialists should work together. To this, I felt, should be added the fact that IS professionals should work with both as facilitators in the "knowledge exchange".
Of course, one could not expect to hear other papers about library systems at a conference dedicated to construction, but libraries, centres of education and IT software were never mentioned at all, although the lack of skills, especially IT skills, training and the difficulty of assimilating knowledge frequently were! There is an obvious ignorance or credibility gap here about what information professionals can offer students, academics and practitioners in the building industry. And yet, individual papers returned again and again to themes on which LIS discussions are often based. One speaker suggested that customers know what they want to find for their research, but do not know which systems, methods will help them find it. This seemed very reminiscent of library users who know they want but become impatient of attempts to explain how they might discover any relevant information.
Another speaker discussed the creation of a co-operative learning environment, learning leading to knowledge and the need for the development of organisational learning, continuing learning, increased knowledge and communication, ease and access to knowledge, changing mental models and the need to reflect and enquire within joint learning structures and learning frameworks.
In all, 130 papers were presented by speakers from 35 countries to 155 delegates. Unusually, for an international conference, the largest group of speakers was not from the US, but from the UK. 36% of the presenters and a large proportion of keynote speakers were from the UK which I was told (by a UK speaker) was the world leader in construction research. The next largest group was from the USA with 10% from South Africa.
The conference was held at the University of Cape Town in an idyllic setting nestling under Table Mountain. The actual venue was the Education Building of Middle Campus which proved a tremendous bonus as it housed the Carleton Harrison Education Library that held the University's collection of LIS journals. South Africa&'s attempts to reach out to the international community obviously extended to UCT's holdings policy for international journals in this field and I missed two whole conference sessions lost in a wonderland of journals articles I would have had to obtain through inter-library loans at home. Since weeding did not seem to be an urgent priority, I was able to delve back through time in librarianship. While nineteenth century copies of The Library (back to 1889) offered no useful advice on electronic libraries, they were far more tempting than a session on management accounting in construction!
The Library, though small and quite busy even in the vacation, did prove to be more up-to-date than some of their holdings suggested with demands for silence and threats of removal by "campus control" of anyone eating, drinking or using a cellphone. I must admit to applauding this tough stance until phones started ringing and no campus control arrived either in the library or the conference room. I have attended conferences before where a panel members phone has rung, but never before where the speaker's phone rang – and rang twice! I also applauded their decision to open one hour later one day a week for staff training. I am sometimes tempted to wonder if users' needs would be better served in some libraries by additional staff training than by longer opening hours. They also had some very up-to-date problems! On the last day OPACs sported notices, "BORIS is not working at the moment". I could only hope that BORIS did not appeal for help to the same technician as the one who failed retrieve the top, bottom and right hand side of my slides, turned off the "presenter function", presented me with a faulty mouse, said he knew nothing at all about PowerPoint, and left the room without connecting me to a projector!
A conference located in Cape Town certainly offers a variety of experiences lacking in the UK hinterland. I was particularly fortunate that I arrived on a very clear day and my 'plane was put into a holding circle that offered very clear and close sightings of the Cape of Good Hope, Table Mountain and Robben Island. My arrival was particularly well timed as I just missed a freak tornado, which had destroyed some buildings, although I did not miss the cold weather, torrential showers, hail and nearby snow falls! The cold outside, however, became a distant and happy memory after only two minutes in the lecture theatres. Their air conditioning systems could have done justice to a commercial refrigeration plant!
Staying in budget accommodation also took on a new meaning when I caught up on the lack of sleep and realised that my "hotel" so closely resembled prison cells clustered around an exercise yard because it was an old prison! It was, indeed, once the most notorious prison in Africa! Fortunately, no guards looked down from the corner turrets as we walked along long corridors with small barred windows and overhead walkways to breakfast. We also felt very safe behind the surrounding tall walls whose tops were studded with broken glass. Perhaps, these were necessary as the fact that even the toilet seats were stamped with the University's name appeared to suggest that theft might be rife!
Safety and control also appeared to be an implicit theme at the conference reception. This was held at the Two Oceans Aquarium directly in front of a large tank of predatory fish – including several small sharks – and a notice inviting passers-by to "see the fish eat". Delegate numbers, however, did not appear to be dramatically depleted before the first paper! Personally, I uncharitably thought that a tank of predators might have some metaphorical significance for those who had suffered at the hands of less scrupulous members of the construction fraternity than my fellow delegates! The predator theme was repeated at the conference banquet where we were invited to stroke a cheetah before entering the restaurant! Ever prepared to put the interests of my university first, I declined on the grounds that I still had to present my paper!
Far more sobering was the cultural tour which took us to townships where we saw housing poverty and deprivation so deep it is impossible to describe to anyone whose idea of a home includes such "luxuries" as sufficient room to enable all members of the family to move at the same time and external walls that do not have gaps wide enough for the outside world to see through. The inhabitants were too materially poor to even worry about whether they were information poor or whether this might deprive them in the knowledge society. The stark contrast of concluding the tour by drinking wine in a warm restaurant whilst watching the sun go down towards Cape Point and the lights go on beneath Table mountain was painful.
Christine Dugdale
ResIDe Electronic Library
University of the West of England
Email: Christine.Dugdale@uwe.ac.uk
URL: <http://www.uwe.ac.uk/library/itdev/reside/>
Tel: 0117 965 6261 ext 3646
Christine Dugdale manages the ResIDe Electronic Library at the University of the West of England, Bristol.
For citation purposes:
Christine Dugdale, "Customer satisfaction:
a focus for research and practice in construction",
Exploit Interactive, issue 3, October 1999
URL: <http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue3/cibcon/>
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