TY  - CONF
TI  - The role of lean leadership in enabling data sharing across industry-academia boundaries
C1  - Singapore, Singapore
C3  - Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC 34)
SP  - 1300
EP  - 1311
PY  - 2026
DO  - 10.24928/2026/0301
AU  - Saleh, Amira
AU  - Vezina, Etienne
AU  - González, Vicente A.
AD  - PhD Candidate, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, asaleh2@ualberta.ca, orcid.org/0000-0002-3835-3931
AD  - Engineering Director, AECON, Edmonton, Canada, evezina@aecon.com, orcid.org/0009-0002-8130-4948
AD  - Hal Kvisle Professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Digital Lean Construction, Infrastructure Human Tech (IHT) Lab, Strategic Projects Insight Centre in Engineering (SPICE), Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Alberta, Canada, vagonzal@ualberta.ca, orcid.org/0000-0003-3408-3863
ED  - Hamzeh, Farook
ED  - Poshdar, Mani
ED  - Garcia-Lopez,, Nelly P.
AB  - Access to reliable project data is essential for addressing complex, data-dependent research problems and supporting learning and improvement in Lean project environments.  However, industry-academia collaborations that depend on such data often face privacy, security, and approval constraints that restrict information sharing. This paper presents a qualitative descriptive case study of an industry-academia collaboration aimed at enabling access to project documentation for research purposes. The study examines how data access negotiations unfolded over approximately ten months between an academic research team and an industrial projects contractor. Initial attempts to obtain data were hindered by confidentiality requirements, fragmented approval pathways, and organizational silos. Over time, structured communication, staged data-sharing practices, and the involvement of an internal company champion supported coordination and allowed for the progressive expansion of data access. Findings describe how privacy constraints shaped collaborative relationships and formal data-sharing processes, and how trust developed through repeated interaction and demonstrated reliability. Interpreted through a Lean perspective, the study shows how data access can be understood as an information flow process and how internal champions enable coordination and learning. The paper offers empirical insight and practical guidance for data-dependent industry-academia collaboration.
KW  - Lean construction
KW  - industry-academia collaboration
KW  - information flow
KW  - lean leadership
KW  - trust.
PB  - 
T2  - Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC 34)
DA  - 2026/06/22
CY  - Singapore, Singapore
L1  - http://iglc.net/Papers/Details/2578/pdf
L2  - http://iglc.net/Papers/Details/2578
N1  - Export Date: 19 June 2026
DB  - IGLC.net
DP  - IGLC
LA  - English
ER  -