Expert knowledge in the making: using a processual lens to examine expertise in construction

Author for correspondence:

Dr. Paul W Chan

School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering (MACE)

The University of Manchester

Pariser Building E17

Sackville Street

Manchester M13 9PL

United Kingdom

Email: paul.chan@manchester.ac.uk

Telephone: +44 (0) 161 275 4319

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Expert knowledge in the making: using a processual lens to examine expertise in construction

Abstract: Expertise in construction has typically been associated with the esoteric,

where experts occupy privileged positions through their possession of specialist

skills and knowledge. In this conceptual piece, an attempt is made to broaden this

view of expertise found in the construction management literature, by drawing on a

reading of the process philosophical writings of Henri Bergson and others. Re-

reading expertise from a processual standpoint, it is argued that our

conceptualisation of expertise in construction management should move beyond its

treatment as a thing to bring to the fore expertise as an open-ended, ongoing, ever-

evolving process of becoming. At the heart of this ontological shift of expertise in

construction lies the emphasis on the tacit and recognition that expertise is, at the

same time, interactional, intuitive and incidental. These ideas are illustrated in a

vignette of environmental expertise in an airport context.

Keywords: becoming, intuition, la durée (duration), organisation theory, process

philosophy

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Expert knowledge in the making: using a processual lens to examine expertise in construction

Introduction

The construction industry has always relied on a range of expertise, from the

knowledge and ability of craft labour to work on the tools, to the diverse range of

professional experts who design, build and manage the complex building projects of

today (see Clarke et al., 2012; Thiel, 2012, and Ball, 2014). Scholars have often

attributed the success or failure of construction projects to the presence or absence

of expertise. Thus, expertise has been considered a critical factor in the prevention

of construction delays (e.g. Eizakshiri et al., 2015), and the delivery of safer (e.g.

Swuste et al., 2012, and Choi, 2015), greener (e.g. Janda and Killip, 2013), more

innovative (Bosch-Sijtsema and Postma, 2009) and collaborative (e.g. Buvik and

Rolfsen, 2015) construction. It is therefore unsurprising to find much scholarly

interest in characterising the knowledge attributes that constitute expertise in the

general field of construction management (e.g. Ahmed et al., 2014), as well as

specific areas of project management (e.g. Hwang and Ng, 2013), refurbishment and

renovation (e.g. Egbu, 1999, and Janda and Killip, 2013), and sustainable

construction (e.g. Shi et al., 2014).

In searching for expertise, there is often a tendency to focus on the exceptional

(Delbridge et al., 2006) and the esoteric (Addis, 2013). In a study of competence

and the performance of construction project managers, Dainty et al. (2005) sought to

compare the profiles of exceptional (or superior) performers against those of average

employees. This in turn allowed them to construct a predictive model to establish

the relationship between competence and performance. Although the term

‘expertise’ was not used, the underlying premise of Dainty’s et al. (2005)

comparative study was that one could clearly mark out the competences that

differentiated those with superior performance (the experts) from the rest (the non-

experts). The demarcation between experts and non-experts has long been

intriguing. Dreyfus (1982), for instance, sought to model expertise through five

levels, spanning from the elementary level of the ‘novice’ to the advanced level of the

‘expert’ (see also Dreyfus and Dreyfus, 2005). Referring to someone as an ‘expert’

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often implies that this person is more experienced, more knowledgeable, and

therefore more valuable (and valued) at the workplace than the novice (Tempest,

2003).

In this article, the binary relationship between the ‘expert’ and the ‘non-expert’ is

called into question. Furthermore, the idea that an expert is more experienced, and

therefore more knowledgeable, is critiqued by drawing on the process philosophical

view, inspired especially by a reading of Henri Bergson and his ideas about

intelligence and intuition, time and duration. Specifically, emphasising expertise as

skilful performance developed out of serving more time in practice results in the

relative neglect of the qualitative experiences of expertise-in-action. Attending to the

multiplicity of qualitative experiences of expertise in the making allows us to bring to

the fore the ongoing shaping of expertise through intuition and in interaction with

others. Related to this, the main contribution of this article is to prompt a shift of

emphasis away from expertise in construction as some-thing essentially enumerated

in terms of skills and knowledge attributes, to highlight expertise as an ever evolving,

creative process that never stops becoming (e.g. Tsoukas and Chia, 2002; Chia,

2002, and Chia, 2014).

This conceptual endeavour is carried through as follows. In the next section, the

nature of expertise as applied in the field of construction management research and

practice is saliently reviewed. This review highlights that the conventional view of

expertise in construction tends to emphasise statically the knowledge attributes that

marks out ‘experts’ as a special category. Such an approach to expertise fails to

account more fully for the dynamics of change and the continuous process of

becoming. Suggestions to broaden this traditional view of expertise are made by

tracing some of the key ideas of process philosophy, namely the intelligence/intuition

relationship and the concept of duration, and exemplifying these in an illustrative

vignette of negotiating environmental expertise in an airport context.

Expertise in construction management: an emphasis on professional knowledge characterisations

“Professional construction management came into being for the simplest of reasons […] the modern era’s increasingly complex projects required many

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different specialists, who often did not communicate or work well together. Owners, who could never have the scope and depth of expert knowledge these specialists possessed, felt unrepresented and unprotected in a risky and costly enterprise.” (McKeon, 2011: vii)

The term ‘expertise’ is typically associated with the possession of esoteric and

specialist skills and knowledge (see e.g. Delbridge et al., 2006; Addis, 2013, and

Collins, 2013). As McKeon (2011) stressed, the successful delivery of construction

projects depends on the ability of different specialists to collectively put their

respective expertise to work. Thus, expertise is often taken as a given entity and the

problem lies in how best to integrate different expertise, usually in the form of various

professional and occupational groups (e.g. architect, civil engineer, quantity surveyor

etc.), in the delivery of construction projects. Yet, as McKeon (2011) and others

have observed, this integration is not often the case in practice. Fellows and Liu

(2012), for instance, reflected on the fragmented nature of construction and stated

that “[g]iven the multiplicity of expertise required for engineering construction projects

and the diversity of organizations within which expertise resides, there are significant

differences in professional values and allegiances which are difficult to integrate” (p.

664). To combat the fragmented, asymmetries of expertise (Lawson, 2004, and

Ressler, 2011; see also Abbott, 1988) prevalent in construction, the need for

construction managers who are able to span across boundaries become ever more

critical (McKeon, 2011; see also Fellows and Liu, 2012, and Boudeau, 2013). In

2013, this need for boundary-spanning construction management expertise was

enshrined in the authority granted by the Privy Council in the UK to the Chartered

Institute of Building (CIOB) to award professional status to construction managers.

The professional construction manager has come into being and given legitimacy

and the royal seal of approval.

In any discussion on expertise, there are clearly parallels to be drawn with the

debates on professionalism1. In The Nature of Expertise, Chi et al. (1988) defined

experts as those with superior performance who are able to perceive large

meaningful patterns in their particular domain. Experts have better memory, can see

and represent a problem more deeply; they are also faster than novices, have a

1 Here, professionalism is discussed with a small ‘p’ to extend the discussion beyond the Professional Institutions that are well-known in the construction industry (e.g. in architecture, engineering, quantity surveying, and construction management etc.). Rather, as Freidson (2001) argued, professionalism extends to craft labour as well (e.g. the biblical trades of carpentry/joinery and masonry/bricklaying).

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sense of self, and spend a great deal of time analysing a problem qualitatively (Chi

et al., 1988). Taking this definition of ‘expertise’, two related elements are critiqued

here, including (i) the privileging of expertise as a special category that defines

superior performance within a particular domain, and; (ii) prevailing view of how

expertise, especially in terms of tacit knowledge, is being developed over time.

Expertise as superior performance within a particular domain

Experts, like professionals, are often associated with a particular occupational group

known to possess special skills developed through extensive training (see Abbott,

1988). Early writings on professionalism tended to take a functional approach to

focus on the skills and knowledge characteristics that set a professional group apart

from the rest (Ressler, 2011). Reflecting on the construction management literature,

one can also detect such a functional approach used to determine the traits of what

constitutes expertise and superior performance. For example, by comparing the

profiles of what they deemed to be ‘superior managers’ (n = 24) against the profiles

of ‘average managers’ (n = 16), Dainty et al. (2005) found that expertise lie in the

superior managers’ ability to exercise self-control and team leadership; these

competence areas, they maintained, provide the most predictive behaviours that

produce effective project management performance in construction. Similarly,

Hwang and Ng (2013) found strong agreement among previous scholars in

identifying communication, team leadership and planning/scheduling as key

knowledge areas for construction management specialists to function effectively. In

these examples, expertise is often treated as a thing that is characterised by a

relatively stable set of knowledge attributes. Indeed, it would seem that the

construction management expertisehas not altered much over time; after all, Fryer

(1985) articulated similar attributes in The Practice of Construction Management.

It is, of course, sensible to recognise that expertise in construction has changed over

time. Recent studies have started to include other areas within the domain of

construction management, such as sustainable construction (e.g. Hwang and Ng,

2013, and Shi et al., 2014). This expansion of what construction management

experts should know could be seen as an expansion of their jurisdiction. As Abbott

(1988) argued, extending the body of knowledge that defines who the experts are

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and what they do is clearly a means for professional institutions to “maximize both

the quantity of expertise institutionalized in their arrangements and the economic

returns to that quantity” (p. 325). The introduction of the Chartered Construction

Manager status and extension to the existing Chartered Builder status in the CIOB is

a case in point. It allowed the CIOB to grow its jurisdiction and monopoly (see

Larson, 1977) over the professional practice of construction management, while

widening the membership net to include those working in both large and small firms

in the industry2.

The focus on who experts are, and the protection of their status as controllers of the

body of knowledge that defines them, is increasingly under critical scrutiny. For

example, Ressler (2011) painted a somewhat bleak picture on the future of

professional expertise. He drew on Freidson (2001) and others to show that the

onslaught of commoditising and standardising expertise means that professional

experts are increasingly being replaced by less qualified workers who no longer

need to exercise discretionary judgement. Thus, the privilege that professional

experts enjoy is being threatened as legal requirements for endorsing the license to

practise becomes relaxed or removed. Hughes and Hughes (2013) also questioned

the legitimacy of the professions in the construction industry today; they argued that

the grand challenge of meeting the sustainability agenda of today means that

professional institutions can no longer lay claim to the monopoly of knowledge since

meeting this challenge demands the negotiation of knowledge in a multi-disciplinary

context. Even in craft labour, one can also see how the privilege associated with the

craft system where skilled workers retained the expertise and entitlement to work

with tools related to particular materials is being eroded away (see Clarke et al.,

2012). In the UK, the biblical trades of joinery and bricklaying appear to be losing

ground to a bourgeoning category called ‘Not Elsewhere Classified’3. Thus, it can be

2 Curiously, for the CIOB, the size of the company is a key deciding factor that differentiates between the Chartered Builder status and the Chartered Construction Manager status. According to the Frequently Asked Questions section of the CIOB web pages, members can exercise discretion over the choice of chartered status, although they recommend that a Chartered Construction Manager is more suited for someone working “with a big construction company tackling multimillion projects” (see www.ciob.org/chartered-construction-manager accessed on 20 August 2015).3 In the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) Construction Skills Network’s forecast for 2015-2019 (see www.tinyurl.com/csn2015-2019 accessed on 20 August 2015), the annual recruitment requirement across the UK for ‘Not Elsewhere Classified’ stood at 4,130 workers, which constituted the second largest annual recruitment requirement after those workers in wood trades. An earlier forecast, 2012-2016, placed ‘Not Elsewhere Classified’ as the largest group in demand.

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seen that expertise as a label to describe the possession of special skills and

knowledge that creates superior performance within a particular domain is becoming

questionable. Furthermore, focussing on what expertise is rather than how it is

developing does little to explain ongoing change in the industry.

Expertise as tacit knowledge gained over time

Expertise is inscribed in the structures and rules of institutions, often codified in

terms of a body of knowledge or code of practice (Fellows and Liu, 2012). Such

codified bodies of knowledge enable experts to create and re-create meaningful

patterns in their everyday work and to develop a sense of identity (Chi, 1988). But,

as Polanyi (1966) famously remarked in The Tacit Dimension, “we can know more

than we can tell” (p. 4). Thus, the body of knowledge that governs a particular

expertise is only partial and can only be taken as a guide. To paraphrase Abbott

(1988), expertise is not simply a specialist body of knowledge “applied in a purely

routine fashion, but [it requires] revised application case by case” (p. 7). Expertise

demands professional judgement in order to apply the general to the particular

(Hughes and Hughes, 2013).

At its core, expertise has two interrelated dimensions: the first is that tacit knowledge

plays a central role, and the second is that expertise is defined in interaction with

others in a group setting. Recent scholarship in construction management has

begun to acknowledge these aspects of expertise in earnest. Styhre (2009), for

instance, examined how the norms of ‘good’ work were established at the

construction workplace through what he called the circuits of credibility. In a similar

vein, Chan (2013) suggested that superior performance in construction was rarely

taken as given in objective terms, but talked about in terms of acceptability in

interaction with others at the workplace. Boudeau (2013) echoed this view in her

observations of how conversational practices across different disciplinary experts –

in her case, the structural engineer and the landscape architect – mattered much

more than formal, abstract bodies of knowledge as these experts wrestle for

legitimacy during design team meetings. Räisänen and Löwstedt (2014) stressed

that the label ‘expert’ does not automatically confer legitimacy; rather, they

suggested that expertise is recognised through stakes and struggles in practice.

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There have been longstanding debates about the value of and tensions between

formal and informal, codified and tacit knowledge in construction (see e.g. Chan and

Räisänen, 2009, and Boyd, 2013). Ressler (2011), for example, highlighted how

practitioners often bemoan education as being too theoretical and not preparing

graduates with the skills required for practice. There is a tendency for the industry to

privilege experience over systematic teaching and learning of the subject. This

separation between in-principle and in-practice, and between mental models and

manual labour, is ingrained in the time-served approach that has long characterised

skills development in construction. In asking who gets the jobs among graduates in

the construction industry, Devaney and Roberts (2012) found to their surprise that

undertaking a higher degree qualification provided no tangible benefits to one’s

employment prospects in construction. In the construction industry, it is experience

on the job that counts much more than off-the-job theoretical education (see Clarke

et al., 2012 and 2013).

Experience is certainly a crucial element of expertise. As Chi et al. (1988) stated,

experts spend a great deal of time analysing a problem qualitatively. Experience is

also a hallmark of the well-known five-stage model of expertise developed by

Dreyfus (1982; see also Dreyfus and Dreyfus, 2005)4. According to Dreyfus (1982),

what separates a novice from an expert is the ability for the individual to rely less on

analytical principles such as rules, guidelines and maxims, since “nothing less than

vast experience with concrete, real-world, situations can produce expertise” (p. 146).

Underpinning the five-stage expertise model was Dreyfus’ (1982) firm belief that

experts should exercise human judgement. Dreyfus’ (1982) model originated at a

time when many were swept by technological seduction of artificial intelligence. His

model came as a response against the tide of mathematising and objectifying

expertise in a bid to reclaim the significance of intuition. For Dreyfus (1992),

expertise required not simply a codified body of knowledge, but a physical human

body that could act as a carrier of expert knowledge as it moves around in interaction

4 Although the work on expertise by Stuart and Hubert Dreyfus have been criticised for its normative account of how novices become experts (see e.g. Selinger and Crease, 2002 for a useful critique), this conceptual model of expertise has been used pervasively in construction management research, and wider field of management and organisational studies (see e.g. Ewenstein and Whyte, 2007; Boyd, 2013, and Sage, forthcoming for examples related to construction management).

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over time. Expertise is often associated with time spent in amassing this vast

experience. So, for instance, the expertise of a commercial pilot is often connected

with the number of flying hours experienced with a particular type of aircraft.

Similarly, serving time in an apprenticeship is an age-old method of developing craft

expertise in construction. It is not surprising to find studies that attempt to quantify

the amount of experience needed to develop expertise (see e.g. Ericsson et al.,

1993, and Ericsson, 2006).

Relying on this quantifiable amount of experience to develop expertise in

construction is, however, problematic for a few reasons. Firstly, the project-based

nature of the construction industry means there are discontinuities in the methods of

organisation from one project to the next; these discontinuities would in turn pose

immense challenges that would prevent learning from particular experiences to

abstract more general, recognisable patterns (Bresnen et al., 2003). Furthermore,

because of the uncertainties inherent in moving from project to project, employers

are less likely to be willing to offer placement opportunities to novices (Abdel-Wahab,

2012), thereby reducing the opportunities for immersing in experiential learning. The

focus on on-the-job experience also limits the potential for developing occupational

capacity and serves only to exacerbate fragmentation in the industry (Clarke et al.,

2013). Secondly, though many would agree that expertise is about making

judgements based on a wealth of particular experiences (Dreyfus, 1982; Dreyfus,

1992; Lawson, 2004; Dreyfus and Dreyfus, 2005, and Hughes and Hughes, 2013),

the scope for exercising judgement is increasingly under threat as professional

status continues to be eroded in the sector (Ressler, 2011, and; Hughes and

Hughes, 2013). Thirdly, the assumption that more experience is necessarily a good

thing is also questioned (see e.g. Tempest, 2003; Campitelli and Gobet, 2011, and

Hambrick et al., 2014). Gobet (2005), for instance, argued that amount of time

devoted to deliberate practice is insufficient, as it is also important to consider the

quality of that practice. As Gobet (2005) stressed, “playing the piano for fun will not

make one a concert pianist” (p. 193). More experience does not equate to better,

more expert performance. More recently, Leonard and Labate (2013) cautioned

against the retention of experienced retirees since their expert knowledge might

soon become outdated or strategically misaligned.

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Limits of current framing of expertise in construction and the possibilities of Henri Bergson and process philosophy

In the preceding section, the notion that expertise in construction constituted a set of

attributes that explained superior performance in a particular domain and the idea

that expertise is developed experientially over time were critically analysed. This

critique highlighted the problem of representing expertise as a thing produced and

accumulated over a long period of time. In this section, questions are raised over

the premise that expertise is merely about spending more time and accumulating

more experience along the suggestions of stage theorists like Dreyfus and Dreyfus

(2005), by drawing inspiration from process philosophy in general, and the work of

Henri Bergson in particular.

So, what are these possibilities from process philosophers like Henri Bergson in

broadening the understanding of expertise in construction? It is at this juncture

helpful to trace some of Bergson’s enduring ideas and their relevance to examining

expertise in construction. Although Bergson had gained much popularity for his

ideas at the turn of the twentieth century, he never advanced a school of thinking or

a movement in his lifetime (see Kelly, 2010, and Linstead, 2014). Yet, as Linstead

(2014) noted, Bergson’s influence was far-reaching, impacting upon inter alia various

philosophical approaches, literature and poetry5. Bergson’s writings developed in

response to and retaliation against the growing dominance of science and the

Scientific Method at that time (Carr, 1911). Bergson was dissatified with what he

saw as intellectualisation “taking the life out of experience” (Massey, 2005: 21). It

must be clarified that Bergson was not anti-science as many scholars have often

caricatured him to be (see e.g. Kelly, 2010, and Mutch, forthcoming). As Kelly

(2010: 8) noted, for Bergson, “science was not wrong; it simply could not claim

exclusive explanatory rights over human life and experience or even life and

experience broadly construed.” Knowledge about the world extended beyond what

scientific analysis could offer as Bergson urged for a deeper engagement with the

consciousness of human life.

5 It is neither possible nor necessary to provide a detailed explanation of Henri Bergson’s ideas; only some of his key ideas are borrowed for the purpose of developing the argument about expert knowledge in the making. For a more comprehensive overview of Bergson’s ideas, the reader is referred to a contemporary piece found in Linstead (2014).

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It is this challenge to the dominance of scientific intellectualisation that Bergson

sought to reclaim the power of intuition. According to Lawlor (2010) knowledge, for

Bergson, is “a mixture between analysis and intuition” (p. 27). Lawlor explained that

“[a]nalysis remains outside the thing, it consists in turning about the thing and

adopting viewpoints on the thing” (ibid.). By contrast, he added, “intuition in Bergson

involves no viewpoints and supports itself on no symbols used in a reconstruction.

Intuition is concrete” (Lawlor, 2010: 27). Bergson was especially concerned that

scientific intelligence, without due consideration of intuition as a basis of knowledge,

was reducing our ability to appreciate the full spectrum of the multiplicities in human

life. As Kelly (2010) noted, “intelligence as a human instrument that cuts up the

dynamic world of matter and forces it into static concepts deployed to marshal

nature’s or even society’s resources for its needs. […] What we forget, according to

Bergson […] is our other way of knowing: intuition, or instinctual or sympathetic

engagement with things in the world” (p. 10).

In some sense, this relationship between intelligence and intuition draws parallels to

Michael Polanyi’s idea of tacit knowledge. As Polanyi and Prosch (1975) wrote of

the need to connect science with the senses,

“No science can predict observed facts except by relying with confidence upon an art: the art of establishing by the trained delicacy of eye, ear, and touch, a correspondence between the explicit predictions of science and the actual experience of our senses to which these predictions shall apply.” (p. 31)

Indeed, Polanyi (1961) emphasised that “knowledge is an activity which would be

better described as a process of knowing” (p. 466). However, for Bergson, this

process of knowing is not simply about the distinction between explicit and tacit

knowledge, or between intelligence and intuition. Rather, it is about the concept of

multiplicity, best illustrated in Bergson’s contrast between time as a quantitative

measure and as qualitative real-time or what he termed as la durée (translated as

‘the duration’) (see Linstead, 2014). The quantitative measure of time in the former

(also known as ‘clock’ time) emphasises homogeneous states in linear succession

(e.g. each minute in an hour is still the same minute), whereas the qualitative

experiences of duration in the latter is heterogeneous and ever-changing (e.g. a

minute locked in a tender embrace with a lover is not the same kind of minute stuck

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in an elevator with an enemy). Thus, Bergson’s duration is lived experience (see

e.g. Chia, 2002, and Lawlor, 2010).

Bergson is often caricatured as being anti-science. Indeed, Bergson (1911) [1983]

asserted that “intellect turns away from the vision of time. It dislikes what is fluid,

and solidifies everything it touches. We do not think real time. But we live it,

because life transcends intellect” (p. 36; original emphases). Yet, in Matter and

Memory, Bergson (1912) [2004] wrote

“The duration wherein we see ourselves acting, and which it is useful that we should see ourselves, is a duration whose elements are dissociated and juxtaposed. The duration wherein we act is a duration wherein our states melt into each other” (p. 243-244; original emphases).

Thus, Bergson can be seen not to refute the usefulness of intelligence, but bring to

the fore the importance of intuitive knowledge situated in the moment of our actions.

One should not treat intelligence in opposition to intuition. Rather, intelligence is

intertwined with intuition (Mutch, forthcoming). As Whitehead (1978), argued in

Process and Reality, it is about recognising that “[t]he methodology of rational

interpretation is the product of the fitful vagueness of consciousness” (p 15), and that

“[o]ur habitual experience is a complex of failure and success in the enterprise of

interpretation” (ibid.). Through a process philosophical standpoint, the constitution of

organisational knowledge and expertise should not be seen only through the

“calculative and formalistic” (Linstead, 2002: 95), which has characterised the

prevailing approach of treating expertise in construction. There is a need to

emphasise the continuous process of becoming (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002).

That said, it is not just about tying process with the concept of becoming. As Bakken

and Hernes (2006) maintained, process philosophy is often misunderstood as

privileging verbs over nouns when organising is actually both a noun and a verb.

Instead of ossifying the concept of becoming, process philosophers like Bergson and

Whitehead invite us to open up multiple possibilities of how one examines that

process of becoming (Massey, 2005). Relating back to expertise, therefore,

becoming an ‘expert’ is not simply about following a process (such as the staged-

process suggested by Dreyfus and Dreyfus, 2005) of meeting certain attributes as

though practitioners are passive recipients of these rules, but to attend to the

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multiple (and infinite) possibilities of becoming an ‘expert’ in situated practices (see

also de Certeau, 1984)6. There is no done deal so to speak. It is about recognising

that enumerating attributes of expertise is simply, as Chia (2002) would put it,

temporary “‘islands’ of fabricated coherence in a sea of chaos and change” (p. 866).

Thus, any codified attribute of expertise should also be considered alongside intuitive

knowledge that can never be logo-centrically codified (Styhre, 2004). To paraphrase

Linstead (2005), a processual way of thinking would attend to expertise as “a shifting

qualitative relation between order and change which might at different times display

more patterning than others, more evidence of environmental intervention than

others, more creation and surprise than others” (p. 214). It is this surprise and the

truly novel that we turn to the next point.

In the preceding section, it was noted that expertise is often about adaptation of the

general to the particular context. So, experts are skilful at searching from their

memory of past knowledge and experience, and applying the best course of action.

Here again, a reading of Bergson’s duration would prompt us to open up the ‘black-

box’ of expertise to question the limits of replication of the past in the present. For

Bergson (1911) [1983], “Duration means invention, the creation of forms, the

continual elaboration of the absolutely new” (p. 11; emphasis added). He added that

replication is impossible, and stressed that “[…] adapting is not repeating, but

replying” (Bergson, 1983: 58; original emphases).

For processual philosophers, carving up the past, present and future into neat

chunks is problematic because such treatment emphasises the static and eliminates

the dynamism of movement. As Whitehead (1920) [1964] emphasised “[t]he

passage of nature leaves nothing between the past and the future. What we

perceive as present is the vivid fringe of memory tinged with anticipation” (p. 72-73).

In Matter and Memory, Bergson (1912) [2004] stressed that “[t]o call up the past in

the form of an image, we must be able to withdraw ourselves from the action of the

moment” (p. 94). He cautioned

“But inasmuch as learnt memories are more useful, they are more remarked. And as the acquisition of these memories resembles the well-known process of habit, we prefer to set this kind of memory in the foreground, to erect it into the model

6 See Mutch (forthcoming) who, although maintains reservations over a ‘strong’ process philosophical standpoint that constantly emphasises flux, also called for more attention paid to practices.

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memory, and to see in spontaneous recollection only the same phenomenon in a nascent state, the beginning of a lesson learnt by heart” (p. 94-95; original emphasis).

Applying this style of thinking, expertise is not about adapting the general to the

particular through replication of the past, but interactional where adaptation is about

replying to emergent situations, where the past and future melts into the ever-moving

present. In this way, expertise is not just about the automatic (and mundane)

application of past frames, but an effortful accomplishment in interaction with others7.

As Nayak and Chia (2011) wrote

“The individual person is not to be understood as a discrete, bounded entity relating externally to its environment in such a way as to leave its basic, internally specified nature unaffected. Instead, each individual is essentially a socio-cultural nexus of historically shaped relationships such that their identity and characteristics are not bestowed upon them in advance of their involvement with others.” (p. 283)

In summary, taking a process philosophical standpoint, two key points have been

highlighted that would allow us to go beyond conventional framing of expertise in the

construction literature. First, it is important to consider the labels ‘expert’ and

‘expertise’ (as a noun) alongside the making of expertise (as a verb). Second, there

is a need to also attend to the qualitative lived experience of the making of expertise

as it happens through conflating the past and the future, as individuals reply in

interaction with others as they act in the present. Thus, the making of expertise is an

ongoing, ever-evolving process of becoming. These points will now be illustrated in

the next section through a vignette of the making of expertise in an airport

environment.

An illustrative vignette

The context

In this section, an illustrative vignette is presented based on an ethnographic case

study of how MyAirport, an international airport in the North of England, was

undergoing a transition to develop more sustainable airport operations. This growing

emphasis on environmental concerns and climate change opened up an opportunity

7 This is also inspired by a contemporary reading of the organisational routines literature, in which scholars such as Feldman (2000), Cohen (2007) and Dionysiou and Tsoukas (2013) maintain that there is nothing mundane about routines and that routines are effortful accomplishments that can offer a source of generative capacity and continuous change. This strand of the organisational routines literature also borrows from a process philosophical standpoint.

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for us to study how MyAirport was working to find a balance between the need to

develop its infrastructure for capacity growth while discharging its environmental

duties. Access was granted in July 2010 for one of the researchers to shadow the

Environmental Department of MyAirport Group – the corporate parent of MyAirport –

in order to observe how MyAirport was thinking and doing ‘sustainability’ at the time.

The shadowing period lasted a total of 18 months until February 2012, which allowed

a sufficient period of time for us to examine how ‘sustainability’ was enacted

specifically through ongoing infrastructure development and maintenance projects at

MyAirport.

MyAirport’s engagement with the ‘sustainability’ agenda started in earnest in the

1990s when it sought to build a new runway. This coincided with the formation of a

small team to look into environmental issues, which would become the precursor to

the Environmental Department. As one of the longest serving member of the

Environmental Department recollects,

“Yeah, [my job scope has] fundamentally changed! In 1988 when I came here, noise was what it was all about. Erm, people complained, and meeting their demands was on the back of our desire to see growth of the airport since the 1970s. And that was the bulk of the airport business, and basically, we were told, we needed to do several things if we wanted to see growth. We used the word ‘Sustainability’, which hasn’t been invented. They wanted to be able to live in harmony with the local community, as far as the noise was concerned.”

Noise abatement has always been a matter of concern for MyAirport, and this

veteran was employed for his expertise in this area. In order to minimise resistance

to proposals for the expansion of MyAirport and the construction of a new runway

from local communities in the surrounding areas, MyAirport launched an

environmental programme in 1990. Concerns for environmental issues grew beyond

noise abatement to include ecological protection, especially in terms of protecting

and replenishing the flora and fauna as a consequence of the construction of the

second runway. By the mid-1990s, an environmental team was formed, and a lead

with environmental expertise (specifically, a doctorate in the field of ecological

management) was appointed. During this time, the environmental team was housed

within the Strategy Unit in MyAirport’s organisational structure. The first

environmental plan was accomplished in 1996, and approval for the construction of

the second runway was granted in 1997, paving the way for the expansion of

MyAirport’s operations.

16

The role of expertise in MyAirport’s narrative on engaging with sustainability

How did ‘expertise’ play out in MyAirport’s narrative of engaging with sustainability?

On the one hand, expertise lay in the esoteric (Delbridge et al., 2006, and Addis,

2013), which allowed colleagues in the Environmental Department to be marked out

as a specific group with specialist knowledge. The veteran was hired for his

expertise in noise abatement. The lead of the department was selected for his

expertise in environmental management represented by his doctorate qualification.

On the other hand, expertise in the Environmental Department was also observed to

be changing, often in reply to MyAirport’s strategic and tactical matters of concern at

a particular point in time. For example, in strategising for the approval of the second

runway construction project, the work of the environmental ‘experts’ was organised

within the Strategy department, as MyAirport needed to produce a plan of what it

needed to do. Once the approval of the additional runway was given, the

environmental experts started to put their expertise to work with colleagues in the

Operations and Engineering departments. More recently, as a result of the financial

crisis and the retirement of the CEO, a change in the strategic direction of MyAirport

meant that the environmental experts found themselves needing to justify their

existence through their involvement in strategy once again. Therefore, the

environmental experts appeared to be neither here nor there, as they oscillated

between strategy and operations in their everyday struggles to claim their stake in

the liminal spaces of MyAirport (see Räisänen and Löwstedt, 2014; and also

Czarniawska and Mazza, 2003). Environmental expertise is interactional.

Although environmental expertise is clearly marked in the intelligence around noise

abatement and ecological conservation issues, we also observed intuitive responses

that would make environmental ‘expertise’ relevant. Two examples stand out in this

regard, that of noise abatement and bats. In the first example, noise pollution is

often a significant matter of concern and a source of complaints for airports. This is

the case in MyAirport as well. What is, however, peculiar is the siting of MyAirport

and its runways, which in turn bears implications for landing and take-off routes for

aircraft and how noise pollution and abatement measures are considered. At the

northern and eastern ends of the two runways lies an economically-deprived

neighbourhood, whereas at the western end lies a very affluent part of the North of

17

England. Virtually all the complaints received by MyAirport of noise pollution come

from residents in the affluent neighbourhood, and none from the economically-

deprived end. In part, this is because MyAirport is seen as a major employer for

residents in the less well-off neighbourhood. Besides, when plans were approved for

MyAirport’s expansion of the runway, the airport also provided for the installation of

double-glazing for these residents8.

Appeasing the residents of the affluent neighbourhood was less straightforward.

Despite advancements made in aircraft and engine design such that noise levels are

reduced, MyAirport continued to receive complaints of noise pollution from residents

in the affluent neighbourhood. The initial response was to get the noise abatement

experts in the environmental department to undertake a noise contour analysis to

examine the severity of the problem. Despite collecting data on noise levels and

flight paths and demonstrating real reductions in noise levels made following the

runway expansion programme, the more affluent residents continued to complain.

Complaints of noisy aircraft were even reported at times when no aircraft was

recorded as landing, taking off or flying near MyAirport. As the Environmental

Department was, at that time, organised within the Operations Department, a

decision was made to prescribe a particular approach for all aircraft that takes off in

the direction of the affluent neighbourhood and to impose a fine on airlines that do

not adhere to such prescription. As a consequence, it is standard practice today that

all aircraft departing MyAirport in the direction of the affluent neighbourhood has to

bank sharply upon take-off, a manoeuvre that is neither fuel-efficient nor

environmentally friendly, so that pilots avoid flying over the less dense, affluent

neighbourhood. The noise abatement expertise was made irrelevant in searching for

a reply to the dissatisfaction of MyAirport’s wealthy neighbours.

Let us now turn to the second example. But, before we go into the issue of bats, it

must be noted that birds pose a serious threat to flight safety for airports around the

world. It is therefore no surprise that a significant part of the work done by

MyAirport’s Environmental Department is concerned with ensuring birds do not

8 A sound insulation grant scheme has been and continues to be in operation since 1972. MyAirport supports up to 80% of the costs associated with insulating an affected property today.

18

disrupt incoming and departing aircraft. As the veteran of the Environmental

Department remembers of the founding member of the department recalled,

“Birds! That was Professor X’s background, he was probably the first full-time ‘bird scarer’ in the country back then. It wasn’t just about going out scaring birds, making sure the grass wasn’t too green, or too short. It was quite scientific actually, they had quite expensive kit which was used across various areas, and I remember that he was essentially the environment department, he was it!”

Yet, bats were to become an unexpected, major stakeholder in MyAirport’s runway

expansion programme. Unlike birds where precautions were to be taken to avoid

accidents at the airport, bats were to become one of the protected species in

MyAirport9. As one would expect, the building of a new runway would invariably

attract fierce opposition from environmental activists. In MyAirport, environmental

activists managed to breach the security fencing to stage their protest against the

runway expansion programme. In January 1997, a group of activists built

treehouses and bored tunnels to occupy the premises of MyAirport for several

weeks. In reply to these protestors, and in response to increasing European

legislative instruments on environmental protection, MyAirport mobilised the

Environmental Department, led by the newly-assumed lead with a doctorate in the

field of ecological management, to ensure the protection and replenishment of flora

and fauna lost as a result of the runway expansion programme. Consequently, a

house was built for the bats. The ecological protection measures amounted to

£17m, eventually accounting for nearly 10% of the entire development cost of the

runway expansion programme. This level of ecological protection set a high

benchmark for future construction projects in the region. Environmental expertise, in

this example, shifted from precautionary measures against birds to the protection of

bats as the Environmental Department sought to appease the environmental

activists.

These exemplary responses found in the noise abatement strategies and the

protection of bats demonstrated that expertise was simultaneously both intelligence

and intuition as the ‘experts’ in the Environmental Department replied to the evolving

complaints and protests. Intuitive responses not only made environmental

‘expertise’ relevant, but were also found to expand the influence of the

Environmental Department in MyAirport’s everyday practices. To illustrate this

9 Bats are also unlike birds in that bats are mammals that fly.

19

further, consider the extraction below taken from one of the interviews with an

Environmental Assessor at MyAirport.

Researcher: What was it like when you first started?

Environmental Assessor: It was completely different, obviously, I had never worked in the airport before, erm, intimidating! Just the scale of the place, and the knowledge everyone had, and experience, compared to me, who was fresh out of University. I think I quite quickly got a swing of it, and thankfully, that role actually just started. It was a new role. The job was mainly focused on waste, and giving out some advice and that sort of things, which if I am honest, just didn’t keep me that busy. But, when I actually started, I was told that the role would be split between supporting [colleague A] on waste management, operational side of things, and supporting [colleague B] on climate change. It became very evidently that I would say after that, there were just more and more of the climate change, which I very, very quickly took over.”

A few observations can be made from this notable extract. Firstly, although the

Environmental Assessor was recruited for her university degree qualification in waste

management, she very quickly realised that her lack of experience in the scope and

scale of airport operations meant that her expertise was limited. In Dreyfus’ (1982)

terms, she was still a novice in possession of the body of knowledge on waste

management but not yet embodying this in the practical context of managing waste

in an international airport. Secondly, she was consciously trying to gain legitimacy

within MyAirport. As events were unfolding, she realised that what she was hired for

was not keeping her sufficiently busy at work. She sought to widen her circuit of

credibility (Styhre, 2011) by engaging with colleagues in other related fields. In so

doing, she attempted to expand her jurisdiction (Abbott, 1988). What started out as

waste management soon morphed into climate change as she moved around and

began to move other colleagues in MyAirport to accept her and her expertise.

Therefore, rather than seeking replication in adapting her abstract expertise on

waste management to MyAirport’s needs, the environmental assessor could be seen

as replying to specific matters of concern as these emerged in time (Bergson, 1983,

and Linstead, 2002).

Her endurance paid off as she managed to become an acceptable member of staff in

MyAirport generally, and the Environmental Department in particular. It is worth

20

noting that her role in MyAirport became threatened in the organisational

restructuring exercise initiated by the new CEO. Her ability to engage with other

colleagues soon proved valuable as she was able to seek redeployment outside of

the Environmental Department. This illustrates, at least in the case of the

environmental assessor in question, that she had neither a grand plan waiting to be

accomplished in the future nor a desire to cling on to her past qualification that

initially defined her expertise (Whitehead 1920; 1978, and Bergson, 1983). Rather,

she was living in the present and responding to and learning from situations and

events as they were emerging (Boyd, 2013).

Duration, according to Bergson (1983), is about creating the “absolutely new” (p. 11).

This brings us to the third observation. What was striking in the two quotes

presented here, of the novice environmental assessor and the veteran member of

the Environmental Department above, is the emphasis that things were ‘completely

different’ or ‘fundamentally changed’. Thus, expertise in the Environmental

Department was not seen as some thing, but an ongoing, incessant process of

renewing as past experiences extended into the future in the everyday practices in

MyAirport. To paraphrase Chia (2002), the Environmental Department was

constantly morphing into something else, even though it is represented crudely in

this vignette as islands of stability, swinging back and forth from strategic to

operational concerns, in a sea of chaos.

Concluding note

Expertise in construction is often seen as something esoteric, possessed by a

special kind of people. This ontological perspective of expertise is also inscribed in

the structures of professional institutions and occupational associations. It is argued

in this conceptual piece that viewing expertise in this way narrows the possibilities of

seeing ‘expertise’ in the making, situated in everyday interactions, situations and

practice. By drawing on the process philosophical writings of Henri Bergson and

others, and through an illustrative vignette of the evolving environmental expertise in

MyAirport, an attempt was made to show that expertise was not just a thing that

marked out the specialist from the rest. Expertise is also interactional, intuitive and

incidental.

21

It is interactional because experts no longer occupy privileged positions in isolation

of others (Hughes and Hughes, 2013). Rather, experts have to lay claim to their

legitimacy in interaction with others, experts and non-experts alike (Styhre, 2011;

Boudeau, 2013, and Räisänen and Löwstedt, 2014; see also Collins and Weinel,

2011). It is intuitive because expertise lies principally in the realm of the tacit, which

necessitates adapting the general to the particular (Polanyi, 1966, and Abbott, 1988).

However, adapting is not about repeating the past in a modified way. Adapting is

about replying to situated contexts as they happen in the moment (Bergson, 1983,

and Linstead, 2002). Thus, expertise is incidental as the so-called ‘experts’ navigate

through events of the day. There is a time and place in accounting for ongoing

change and development.

What implications can a processual reading bring to how we think and talk about

expertise in construction management research and practice? Taking a processual

standpoint, it is important that researchers and practitioners acknowledge the

difficulties of representation (see Styhre, 2004). Although there have been

longstanding debates on the extent to which one can render the tacit explicit, a

processual worldview would resist locking expertise up into separable categories.

Rather than emphasising intelligence and intuition, explicit and tacit knowledge as

opposing positions (states), there is a need to attend to these constructs as

relational, cut out of the same cloth of emergent practice. Instead of focussing on

what ‘expertise’ ought to be and its associated states of becoming, a processual

standpoint invites the possibilities of describing how expertise is constantly in the

making as individuals live through ongoing change in an infinite and often

indeterminate way (Wood, 2002).

For researchers, this implies a need to move towards more engaged forms of

scholarship (see Van de Ven, 2007, and Voordijk and Adriaanse, forthcoming).

There is a tendency for scholars in the field of construction management to rely on

the accounts of industry experts to gain access to knowledge about practices and

how these practices can be improved. In other words, these ‘experts’ are taken as

given, as stabilised entities that can only do good for the organisations they work for

and for industry at large (Selinger and Crease, 2002). A processual standpoint will

22

prompt a deeper reflection of ‘experts’ in situated practice. Thus, approaches such

as ethnography, which provided the material for the illustrative vignette presented

here, could offer an opportunity to suspend judgement of expertise in its label as a

noun and open up a critical (self-)reflection on the continuous process of expertise in

the making as a verb.

This ongoing and continuous process of becoming an ‘expert’ with multiple and

infinite possibilities would also prompt practitioners to treat ‘expertise’ not as a done

deal, but as an effortful accomplishment. Recalling a meeting attended at a

professional institution recently, there were representatives from a range of blue-chip

companies questioning how the official institutional competence framework, which

contained levels of excellence not dissimilar to the stage model proffered by Dreyfus

(1982) and Dreyfus and Dreyfus (2005), could apply to their respective organisations

in practice. It was concluded that modifications to the institutional framework were

necessary if one were to apply and adapt the framework to the local context.

Despite recognition of the flaws of a one-size-fits-all approach, the corporate

members seemed intent for the professional institution to design such a formal

framework. Adopting a processual standpoint would mean channelling such

wasteful effort on designing formal information on expertise in construction towards

focussing on the more informal expertise in-formation in everyday practices and

occurrences at the workplace. Again, labels matter much less than how these are

enacted in everyday situated practices. In emphasising expertise in the making,

therefore, practitioners and researchers are invited to go beyond finding the

extraordinary, and pay closer attention to how, as Chia (2014) points out, the

everyday ordinary can be made to become extraordinary.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Vivian Liang for her research assistance in collecting the data,

which forms the basis of the illustrative vignette presented here. This was also

supported with funding from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research

Council (EPSRC), Grant Reference: EP/H004505/1. I am also grateful for the

comments provided by the editors and three anonymous referees in shaping this

paper.

23

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