Research from the Cambridge Laing O’Rourke Centre for Construction Engineering and Technology has received two major honours at the 2026 Industrialised Construction Awards, recognising both the excellence of its research and its impact on industry practice. The Centre’s project, Improving Productivity in Industrialised Construction Through Data Driven Collaboration, won Collaborative Project of the Year and was also named the overall Winner of Winners. The award recognises the work of Dr Danny Murguia, Assistant Research Professor, and Dr Ashan Asmone, Research Associate, whose research has helped shape the Centre’s contribution to industrialised construction
The award-winning project was delivered in collaboration with Mace and Landsec and reflects a distinctive strength of the Centre’s work: combining academic research with direct application on live construction projects. By bringing together project data, industry expertise and a shared performance review, the research has shown how collaboration across the supply chain can improve productivity, strengthen decision-making and support more consistent delivery.
At the heart of the project is the Cambridge Framework for Construction Performance and Productivity, developed to help organisations consistently measure productivity and turn operational data into practical insights. Applied at Timber Square, the framework enabled project partners to analyse delivery across key packages, including the structural frame, cladding, and CAT A fit-out. This created a shared evidence base that helped teams identify constraints, refine strategies, and replicate high-performing practices.
The award is a strong endorsement of research that goes beyond theory. The Centre’s work is helping industry partners understand performance in greater detail, benchmark productivity more effectively and use evidence from live projects to drive improvement. In this way, the research is contributing not only to academic understanding of industrialised construction, but also to better delivery in practice. It also reflects the influence of Professor Cam Middleton, whose leadership was instrumental in shaping this work and whose legacy continues through the Centre’s research and its impact on industry.
This success also sits within a wider programme of research excellence at the Centre. Alongside the winning collaboration project, the Centre’s Cambridge Digital Productivity Twin for Industrialised Construction was shortlisted for the Digital Innovation in Industrialised Construction award. That project demonstrated how digital models, programme data, CCTV, labour records and site information can be integrated into a single platform to provide near-real-time insight into construction productivity and performance.
Together, these achievements underline the Centre’s leadership in industrialised construction research. They show how Cambridge research is helping the sector measure productivity more effectively, collaborate more openly across project teams and use digital innovation to support better decisions on live projects.
Congratulations to Danny and Ashan on this outstanding achievement.