25-27 June 2008 Madrid, Spain Improving performance of a research project by continuous learning – a systematic approach Anandasivakumar Ekambaram 1, Andreas Økland 2 1SINTEF, 7031 Trondheim, Norway, siva@sintef.no 2SINTEF, 7031 Trondheim; Norway, Andreas.Okland@sintef.no What is the research project? The REZBUILD project (REfurbishment decision making platform through advanced technologies for near Zero energy BUILDing renovation) grows with the main aim of defining a collaborative refurbishment ecosystem focused on the existing residential building stock. • Awarded by the European Commission with a H2020 Programme Grant of € 6,996,128.25 • Total budget: € 9,038,208.75 • Duration: 4 years (Started in October 2017) REZBUILD will base its refurbishment ecosystem on the integration of cost-effective technologies, business models and life-cycles interaction. The project will focus on the retrofit of diverse residential typologies, interconnecting every building renovation stage as well as all stakeholders. https://rezbuildproject.eu/ An underlying aspect of learning in a project A project is, per definition, unique, and it provides several new experiences. Does a new experience itself guarantee learning?... Therefore, there should be adequate mechanisms for facilitating reflection on experiences in order to ensure learning and performance improvement in a project. Reflection When reflection is considered in connection with a professional action that an organizational member participates, then it can be viewed as reflection-on-action and reflection-in-action (Schön, 1998). • Reflection-on-action is a process in which the individual reflects on his or her past experience or on a future act deliberately or unintentionally. • Reflection-in-action is a process in which the individual reflects on what he or she is experiencing while he or she is engaging in the activity. These two categories of reflection play a notable role to in the learning process. What do we primarily do for capturing learning in the project? • REZBUILD has regular meetings with all of its partners – twice a year (in addition to more frequent online meetings). These meetings are arenas for collective reflection, sharing knowledge and experience, identifying challenges and opportunities. • We use a questionnaire to capture lessons learned in a six month period between project-partner-meetings. The questionnaire too provides possibilities for reflection and hence contributes to learning. It deals with, for instance, the following issues: o The degree of understanding that is obtained regarding own and other work-packages, as well as the project as whole o Skills that contributed to the project and the challenges of the project during the period o Improvement possibilities o Most interesting result for the project partner and the corresponding organization, obtained during the period o Important lessons learned for the project partner and for the project during the period – along with an explanation of why it is important o Changes in the organization and its role in the project due to the gained insight o Perception of the likelihood of achieving the objectives of the work-package as well the project Information obtained from the project partners will be analyzed and shared regularly, so that performance of the project will be improved. An effect of continuous learning in a project 19th European Conference on Knowledge Management | Italy, 2018 We do not learn from experience... We learn from reflecting on experience – John Dewey Continuous learning within a project Intra-project learning Improving productivity and performance of the project Inter-project learning Creating more value for other projects by knowledge transfer Learning organizations Reference: • Schön, Donald A. (1998). The Reflective Practitioner, How Professionals Think in Action: Ashgate Acknowledgement: This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation