Abstract/Summary

One perceived constraint to more effective collaborative working in UK construction is the current practice whereby individual team members each insure for their respective liabilities. It is argued that this promotes risk avoidance and other non-collaborative behaviour among them. An innovative form of insurance, called Integrated Project Insurance (IPI), promises to help alleviate these constraints by insuring the design and construction team as a whole. An Action Research (AR) project is currently being designed to support the development and implementation of key IPI features on a live construction project from 2013 to 2016, with a focus on improving collaborative working among team members. This paper provides a critical review of AR with a particular focus on its recent application in construction research. It seeks to build on previous studies by introducing the key features of a proposed AR approach in terms of their methodological basis, the roles of participants and the nature of AR ‘interventions’ occurring over time.