Elevating CII Research – Adopting Gold Standards for Excellence

At CII, we believe that industry, academia, and our broader research community all benefit from holding ourselves to the highest standards. By clearly stating and defining these standards, we set aspirational values that guide our teams and continuously advance our research culture and impact. While not every standard is easy to achieve, and some may not always be fully attainable in particular contexts, our commitment to meeting the standards must be intentional and ongoing.

Recently, Dr. John Gambatese shared a document from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) outlining their “gold standards” for scientific research. These principles - rooted in transparency, rigor, and collaboration—offer a powerful framework for CII to adapt and apply. John and I decided to write this short article together to get us started with such a framework. Our goal is to make these standards explicit, central, and actionable in all CII research activities, and we expect our teams to work with us to pursue these standards.

Why Gold Standards Matter

• High standards benefit everyone: They foster trust, credibility, and impact for CII, our industry partners, and academic collaborators.
• Defining and stating standards is essential: Clear definitions help teams align, self-assess, and improve.
• Aspirational, not absolute: These are values we target and work to advance, not boxes to check.
• Intentional effort required: Achieving these standards takes planning, reflection, and commitment.
• Produce transformational research: Meeting the gold standards leads to research outputs that have a high probability of transforming the way we work in the capital projects industry.

Below are the core gold standard principles, adapted from NIH’s framework. For each, we describe what it means and how CII can benefit or improve.

1. Reproducibility: Independent researchers can test a hypothesis using multiple methods and consistently achieve results that confirm or refute it.

• Opportunity for CII: While our research projects are often unique, CII Research Teams (RTs) can strive to more formally develop hypotheses that their research will test or challenge. By clearly stating hypotheses and designing research to evaluate them with a high level of confidence, teams can strengthen the rigor and clarity of their work. Even when absolute reproducibility is difficult due to project variability, resource constraints, and ethical considerations, robust documentation, transparent methodologies, rigorous controls, and a hypothesis-driven approach will make our findings more credible and transferable.

2. Transparency: Open sharing of methods, data, results, and decision-making processes – within the boundaries of confidentiality.

• Opportunity for CII: While transparency is a core value, much of our research data is proprietary and shared with us under strict confidentiality commitment with our members. We are committed to honoring these agreements and do not disclose proprietary data outside the CII community. Instead, we focus on making our research methodologies, processes, and general findings as transparent as possible, so that members and stakeholders can understand how data was collected and analyzed and results achieved, even when the underlying data cannot be shared publicly. We also encourage publication in academic, peer-reviewed journals and the sharing of non-confidential insights to promote openness and trust.

3. Communication of Error and Uncertainty: Clearly disclose limitations, variability, and sources of error in research findings.

• Opportunity for CII: Most RTs do a good job here, but it remains important to emphasize – especially regarding validation – that opinion surveys used for validation are not acceptable. As of November 2025, all newly funded research teams are expected to avoid survey-based validation methods and should not publish conclusions derived from such approaches. Conclusions should be drawn after limitations are stated and incorporate the shortcomings associated with the limitations; conclusions should not embellish the results and must be defendable based on the research design and results. This commitment ensures that findings are presented with appropriate caution and transparency, maintaining the integrity and credibility of CII research.

4. Collaboration and Interdisciplinarity: Engage diverse teams across disciplines and organizations.

• Opportunity for CII: Leverage our tradition of cross-sector collaboration – owners, contractors, academics, service providers, and members at all career stages. We have also encouraged and in some cases required engagement of academics in areas adjacent to Construction Engineering and Management such as business/economics, psychology, and statistics, among others.

5. Skepticism of Findings and Assumptions: Foster a culture of critical evaluation and challenge assumptions.

• Opportunity for CII: Encourage teams to question their own findings and assumptions, and to welcome constructive critique. Maintaining an attitude characterized by presence and attention, healthy vigilance, questioning, and planning creates a proactive, organized approach that encourages questioning assumptions, investigating "weak signals" or minor anomalies, and taking action to prevent compromising research validity.

6. Structured Falsifiability of Hypotheses: Clearly state and rigorously test hypotheses, designing research so that results can potentially disprove them.

• Opportunity for CII: Move beyond fulfilling objectives to building and testing robust theoretical frameworks, even in applied research. Moreover, when applicable to the research scope and objectives, hypotheses should be stated such that they are specific enough to be tested, can be evaluated using empirical research methods, can be proven or disproven, and stated such that the research testing the hypothesis is ethical and replicable.

7. Unbiased Peer Review: Ensure impartial, expert assessment of research proposals and results.

• Opportunity for CII: Request written methodology agreements and documentation early on and make them public for accountability. Implement academic peer review, focusing on all aspects of the research plan and activities, and occur at critical points and decisions in the research process.

8. Acceptance of Negative Results as Positive Outcomes: Value and disseminating negative or null results as essential for scientific progress.

• Opportunity for CII: Encourage teams to see negative findings as valuable learning, not failures, and to share them openly.

9. Absence of Conflicts of Interest: Conduct research impartially, free from personal and organizational bias.

• Opportunity for CII: Because our research teams often include companies that may have a business interest in the topic, the role of academic partners as unbiased parties becomes even more essential. Academics help ensure objectivity and integrity by providing independent perspectives, rigorous methodological oversight, and impartial peer review. CII’s structure and guidelines are designed to minimize conflicts of interest, but we recognize that maintaining transparency and impartiality requires ongoing vigilance and a strong commitment to academic engagement.

Conclusion
By adopting and adapting these gold standards, CII can raise the bar for research integrity, transparency, and impact. Some of these principles are already embedded in our practices; others present opportunities for growth. Our commitment is to make these standards explicit, central, and actionable – guiding every research team toward excellence.

John Gambatese, Oregon State University (CII Funded Studies Committee Academic Advisor)
Daniel Oliveira, CII

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