Centers of Excellence for Construction Education and Research: Concept, Configuration, and Impact

Construction’s sustainability push at the nexus of housing, health, and energy has created a diverse ecology of centers, institutes, hubs, and centers of excellence (COEs), but sector-specific guidance remains thin. We synthesize a multiple-case scan with semi-structured interviews of directors and senior staff across several countries. Using abductive coding, we combine literature-informed themes with inductively derived subcodes to examine how labels and positioning work; how affiliation, people and roles, finance, and research and engagement infrastructures shape performance; and why only a minority adopt the COE label. We identify six forms of impact: stakeholder reputation, policy and regulatory influence, scientific contributions, institutional effects for hosts and funders, industrial and technological outcomes, and societal co-benefits. These are paired with context-adaptable qualitative and quantitative measures. We also identify common risks: policy and regulatory shifts, political changes that reshape funding, resistance to climate-mitigation measures, and administrative friction in cross-institutional work. The contribution is a grounded sector definition of COEs, a process map from establishment to evaluation, an interview-derived impact framework, and a risk register with mitigation tactics. We conclude with practical considerations for construction education and practice and limitations related to sample composition.