Inspiring construction management

ARCOM has made considerable progress in 25 years. It has become an internationally recognised and respected part of the academic world especially for its support of the development of the individual researcher and the discipline of construction management. Given today's environment for research, would it be possible to set up an organisation in the same mould as ARCOM or would such an organisation need to take a rather different form in terms of means of support and 'buy-in' from the research community? Although there is no definitive answer, it is useful to look at how the current environment of research has shaped the organisation another research community, albeit of more recent origin and in another field. Comparison of the development of this community with that of ARCOM provides some important indicators of both what has been achieved by ARCOM and the importance of that achievement.