Incremental Innovation in Construction

 The example of concrete

 

Construction of the built environment has an interlocking set of economic, political, legal, and social barriers that make innovating difficult. As long as current technology meets the expectations of clients and users for prices and dominant products, there will be significant market imperfections such as network economies, lumpiness, split incentives, requirements for collective action, and transaction costs that inhibit diffusion of more efficient, advanced technologies. There is also an institutional structure that imposes regulatory hurdles or other policy disadvantages, favours existing technology or discourages new entrants, and a financing system based around incumbents. Educational curricula, career paths, and professional standards use existing technology. And because organizations, people and technical standards are embedded within a production system, the tendency is for technologies to develop along defined trajectories unless or until deflected by a powerful external force.

 

Construction of the built environment is a project-based system of production with complex professional, organizational, contractual and working relationships, and is geographically distributed. Moreover, the context is one of wider networks containing many small and medium size firms with a range of organizational and institutional relationships, where external contracting is common. All these factors are seen as inhibiting, although not preventing, innovation and diffusion of new technology. Within such a system incremental innovation improves industry products and processes without affecting the structure of the system. 

 

In construction, many technical advances have come from materials suppliers or component, plant and equipment manufacturers, who have been responsible for the introduction of new products and equipment, such as excavators, cranes, facades and lifts, using incremental innovation directed at improving existing products and processes. Across the construction supply chain firms don’t create new industrial networks to develop or exploit new technologies such as lifts and elevators, glass facades, and interior wall systems, instead these firms become part of the existing network, which is the modern construction production system. As a well-developed industrial system many of its sub-markets are expected to be concentrated and oligopolistic, with a few large, well-established firms exactly like those economic historian Joseph Schumpeter suggested would be most likely to engage in R&D, invention and innovation.

 

The process where inventions are developed, tested and extended, and finally put into production is one of incremental innovation. Firms refine specific parts of a production system, usually in response to something changing elsewhere in the system as production and distribution methods evolve over time, step by step. Although this form of innovation is incremental, it should not be dismissed as unimportant. Examples are the increase since 1950 of mining truck loads from 4 to 400 tonnes and the increase in lifting capacity of tower cranes to over 1,000 tonnes. Another example is the development of computer-aided design (CAD) software, which went on for two decades before Autodesk was started in 1982, one year after the first IBM PC. Over the decades Building information models (BIM) have advanced through 2D and 3D versions to the 4D (schedule) and 5D (cost) iterations today. Now software linked to cameras on helmets or drones can provide real time augmented reality (AR) images from a building site linked to the BIM model of the project.

 

Building and construction products and processes are the outcome of a long development path. Many of the industry’s global leaders are well-established, Bechtel for example is over 100 years old, and other firms like Hochtief, Skanska, and AECOM can trace their origin stories back over a similar period. Shimizu is over 200 years old. Most of today’s manufacturers also have their roots in nineteenth century firms. It’s a remarkable fact that construction today is a production system that has been developing for more than 150 years, since the arrival of steam, steel and concrete, using incremental innovation to gradually improve products and processes. 

 

In the industry life cycle, after emergence and the initial growth stage, technology stabilises around standardised products and processes. In many cases industries are oligopolistic, with a few specialized firms in market niches or layers in the supply chain. Consolidation leads to industry concentration with large firms dominating their markets, the car industry is an example. Construction materials like cement, concrete and glass, and components like building management systems, interior walls, plumbing fixtures, lifts and elevators are all oligopolistic industries in an established supply chain.[i]

 

 

Incremental Innovation: The example of concrete 

 

The development of concrete is an example of how effective incremental innovation in construction can be. By the 1880s the increasingly widespread use of concrete had changed its status from hobby to a modern industry, as scientific investigation into its material properties revealed its shear and compressive characteristics. With the development of reinforced concrete there was change in architectural concepts of structures and approaches to building with concrete. The industrial standards of concrete technology influenced ways of thinking based on building systems and standardized building elements. These became identified with what was known as the Hennebique System, a simple to use system of building with reinforced concrete columns and beams patented in 1892. By 1905 Hennebique’s system had spread across Europe and elsewhere and his company employed 380 people in 50 offices with 10,000 workers onsite.[ii]

 

Concrete then set the agenda for the development of construction as a technological system over the next hundred years driven by the modernist movement in architecture, as it explored the possibilities of these material for increasing the height and scale of buildings, and modern construction materials and methods.[iii] For over one hundred years, since Hennebique, there has been ongoing refinement and development of the world’s most widely used construction material, as shown in Table 1.

 

Concrete shows how incremental innovation in materials played a significant role in the reorganization of site production methods as mixers, pumps and chemicals were refined and developed in a long process of interconnected innovations. One of the characteristics of a successful technology are these spillover effects, with advances in one industry leading to complimentary developments in related industries. 

Table 1. Incremental innovation in concrete since 1800

Source: Jahren, P. 2011. Concrete: History and Accounts, Trondheim: Tapir Academic Press.

Innovation is continuing today with 3D concrete printing (3DCP). Research into 3DCP has focused on developing the equipment needed and the materials used, and by 2019[iv] over a dozen experimental prototypes had been built. By 2022 the commercialisation of 3DCP was underway, with two types of systems available. One using a robotic arm to move the print head over a small area, intended to produce structural elements and precast components, the other a gantry system for printing large components, walls and structures. 3DCP combines BIM models, new concrete mixtures and chemicals, and new printing machines. Again, a combination of new materials and new machinery is required for this technology to work.

 

In 2022 the Additive Manufacturing Marketplace had 34 concrete printing machines listed, ranging from desktop printers to large track mounted gantry systems that can print three or four story buildings. Companies making these machines are mainly from the US and Europe, and Table 2 also has details on the type and size of a selection of machines. There are also several companies offering 3DCP as a service at an hourly or daily rate.[v]

 

Concrete printing is only one part of the development of additive manufacturing. In mid-2022 the Additive Manufacturing Marketplace listed 2,372 different 3D printing machines from 1,254 brands. The number of printers and materials used were: 364 metal; 355 photopolymers; 74 ceramic; 61 organic; 34 concrete; 24 clay; 20 silicone; 19 wax; and 19 continuous fibres. Many of these printers could be used to produce fixtures and fittings for buildings. Producing components onsite from bags of mixture avoids the cost of handling and transport, and for large items avoids the load limits on roads and trucks. There are also printing services and additive manufacturing marketplaces being set up. These link designers to producers with the materials science, specialised equipment and print farms capable of large production runs and manufacture on demand. Examples are Dassault Systems 3DExperience, Craft Cloud, Xometry, Shapeways, 3D Metalforge, Stratasys and Materialise.

Table 2. Some companies making 3D concrete printers

Source: Additive Manufacturing Marketplace, 2022. 

 

 

Conclusion

 

Innovating in a complex, long established industrial sector like construction of the built environment can be difficult. The institutional architecture can impose regulatory hurdles or other policy disadvantages on new technologies, and government expenditures often support existing technology. Lenders are risk averse. There are subsidies and price structures that favour incumbents and ignore externalities like the environment and public health. Educational curricula, career paths and professional standards are oriented to existing technology. The dominance of existing technologies is further reinforced by imperfections in the market for technology such as network economies, lumpiness, split incentives and the need for collective action.[vi]

 

The construction industry has become used to incremental innovation and a gradual rate of change since the modern industry emerged over the last few decades of the nineteenth century. At the beginning of the twentieth century there was a great deal of resistance to change: ‘the older assembling industries like engineering were slow to change. Each firm took a proprietary pride in its own work’, and the trades were ‘fearful of technological unemployment and fought all changes in conditions of work.’[vii] Nevertheless, by the 1920s construction had reorganised the system of production around concrete, steel and glass. 

 

We are at a similar point today. The development of digital construction using combinations of BIM, offsite manufacturing, 3DCP, drones and robots, is an emerging new system of production, and the adoption and adaptation of these technologies will depend on incremental innovation continually improving their performance, which can only happen if they are put to use. There is a strong case here for public clients, who will be major beneficiaries of the improved efficiency of digital construction, to sponsor demonstration projects that use these technologies and measure the improvements in waste, carbon, defects, time and cost that are delivered. 

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[i] Syverson, C. 2019. Macroeconomics and Market Power: Context, Implications, and Open Questions, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 33, 3, 23–43. Syverson, C. 2008. Markets: Ready-Mixed Concrete, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 22, 1, 217–233.

[ii] Pfammatter, U. 2008. Building the Future: Building Technology and Cultural History from the Industrial Revolution until Today. Munich: Prestel Verlag.

[iii] Cody, J. 2003. Exporting American Architecture 1870-2000, London: Routledge. 

Huxtable, A. L. 2008. On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change, New York: Walker Publishing Company.

[iv] Sanjayan, N. and Nematollahi, B. (eds.) 2019. 3D Concrete Printing Technology: Construction and building applications. Butterworth-Heinemann.

[v] https://www.aniwaa.com

[vi] Bloom, N., Van Reenen, J. and Williams, H. 2019. A toolkit of policies to promote innovation. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 33(3), 163-84.

[vii] Hughes, T. P. 1989: 495. American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm 1870-1970, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 

The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Construction

 Technological Change and Constructing the Built Environment

I was once attacked by a colleague for, as he put it, ‘not considering the great mass of people employed in construction’. We were working for a government inquiry into collusive tendering and discussing recommendations to improve productivity and efficiency in the final report. At the time there were significant changes affecting the Australian industry that had far more impact than the legislative and regulatory reforms the inquiry led to. The industrial relations system was moving from a centralised award based one to a more decentralised system with enterprise bargaining and site agreements. International contractors were entering the market and the larger engineering and architecture practices consolidating. As the industry began to recover from a speculative office building bubble and the economy rebounded from a deep recession, construction employment increased and continued to grow for the next few decades. Construction as used here refers to all the firms and organizations involved in design, construction, repair and maintenance of the built environment.

 

Where these longer run trends were going was not obvious at the time. There have been significant changes in the range of activities and types of firms involved in construction of the built environment over the last few decades. Two trends underpinning those changes were the increasing use of multi-disciplinary project teams as the boundaries between professional disciplines became less distinct, and the inhouse versus outsourced decision about provision more common. Facilities management is an example, an activity that used to be done internally but is now often outsourced, sometimes but not always to construction contractors. Consultants bid for work as contractors, and contractors do consultancy and project management. Urban planning was once primarily associated with design, but is now linked to real estate and development. The process of structural change in industry occurs as technology, institutional and firm capabilities develop and change over decades.

Figure 1.

When considering the relationship between construction of the built environment and technological change the past is really the only guide available, so the starting point for this discussion is the first industrial revolution in England at the beginning of the nineteenth century when modern construction and its distinctive culture began to form, followed by the twentieth century’s attempts to industrialise construction. This history is important because, after more than 200 years of development, construction of the built environment happens today within an established system of production based on a complex framework of rules, regulations, institutions, traditions and habits that have evolved over this long period of time.

 

But how useful is history and how can it be used? Are there appropriate historical examples or cases to study to see if there are lessons relevant to the present? The answers depend to a large extent on context, because a key characteristic of the history of technology is the importance of institutions and the political and social context of economic outcomes. Also, understanding how policies were developed in the past and how effective they were requires understanding the changing context of policy implementation. However, as economist Paul Samuelson pointed out ‘history doesn't tell its own story and ‘conjectures based on theory and testing against data’ are needed to uncover it. Drawing the right lessons from history is a nuanced exercise. 

 

Over time industries and products evolve and develop as their underlying knowledge base and technological capabilities increase. The starting point for a cycle of development is typically a major new invention, something that is significant enough to lead to fundamental changes in demand (the function, type and number of buildings), design (the opportunities new materials offer), or delivery (through project management). Major inventions give a ‘technological shock’ to an existing system of production, which leads to a transition period where incumbent firms have to adjust to the new business environment and new entrants appear to take advantage of the new technology. Economist Joseph Schumpeter called this process creative destruction, and it leads to the restructuring and eventually consolidation of industries. That is what happened to construction and related suppliers of professional services, materials and components after the first industrial revolution. 

 

The drivers of development for industries in the twenty-first century are emerging technologies such as augmented reality, nanotechnology, machine intelligence, digital fabrication, robotics, automation, exoskeletons and possibly human augmentation. Collectively, these digital technologies are described as a fourth industrial revolution, and their capabilities can be expected to significantly improve as new applications and programs emerge with the development of intelligent machines trained in specific tasks. Innovation and technological change is pushing against what are now long-established customs and practices of the industries in the diverse value chain that designs and delivers the projects that become the built environment.

 

How technological change affects these industries differs from more widely studied industries like computers, automobiles or aerospace because of the number and diversity of firms involved in designing, constructing and managing the built environment. With the range of separate industries these firms come from, construction of the built environment is the output of a broad industrial sector made up of over a dozen individual industries. Not an ‘industry’ narrowly defined, but a broad industrial sector that is organised into a system of production with distinctive characteristics. A second difference is the age of these industries, many of which are mature industries in late stages of their life cycle. These differences create a different context for questions about industry, innovation and technological change, about how firms compete and how the system of production is organised as fourth industrial revolution technologies like digital twins and drones spread through construction and the pace of digitization increases. 

 

As well as the contractors, subcontractors and suppliers for new builds, there are also many firms and people mainly engaged in the alteration, repair and maintenance of the built environment. The broad base of small firms is a distinctive feature of construction, and these family-owned firms engaged in repair and maintenance work will largely continue to use the materials and processes they are familiar with. Old technologies can survive long after the innovations that eventually replace them arrived, such as the telegraph, fax machine and vinyl records with telephones, email and CDs. Stone, tile, brick and wood have been widely used materials for millennia, and industrialized materials like corrugated iron and concrete are ubiquitous. For maintaining and repairing the existing stock of buildings and structures, many of the skills, technologies and materials found today will continue to be used far into the future. That does not mean firms mainly involved in repair and maintenance will not be affected in some way by the fourth industrial revolution. 

Figure 2. 

Construction of the built environment has characteristic organizational and institutional features because it is project-based with complex professional and contractual relationships. How firms utilise technology and develop technological capabilities differentiates them within this location-based system of production. Emerging technologies in design, fabrication and control have the potential to transform construction over the next few decades, possibly less, and the book suggests firms will follow low, medium or high-tech technological trajectories, determined by their investment in the emerging technologies of the fourth industrial revolution. 

 

A broad view of what future construction might look like is based on successful solutions being found for the many institutional and technical problems involved in transferring fourth industrial revolution technologies to construction. Without downplaying the difficulty of those problems, similar challenges have been met in the past, but those solutions led in turn to a reorganization of the system of production. 

 

There are very many possible futures that could unfold over the next few decades as technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), automation and robotics develop. However, the key technology underpinning these further developments is intelligent machines operating in a connected but parallel digital world with varying degrees of autonomy. These are machines that have been trained to use data in specific but limited ways, turning data into information to interact with each other and work with humans. The tools, techniques and data sets needed for machine learning are becoming more accessible for experiment and model building, and new products like generative design for buildings plans, drone monitoring of onsite work and 3D concrete printers are available.

 

Intelligent machines are moving from controlled environments, like car manufacturing or social media, to unpredictable environments, like driving a truck. In many cases, like remote trucks and trains on mining sites, the operations are run as a partnership between humans and machines. There are also autonomous machines like autopilots in aircraft and the Mars rovers. As well as rapid development of machine intelligence, technological change in the form of new materials, new production processes and organizational systems is also happening. Sensors and scanners are widely used, 3D concrete printing is no longer experimental, cloud-based digital twins are available as a service, and online platforms coordinate design, manufacture and delivery of building components using digital twins. 

 

A period of restructuring of construction occurred in the second half of the 1800s when the new industrial materials of glass, steel and reinforced concrete arrived, bringing with them new business models, new entrants and an expanded range of possibilities. The development of modern construction was not, however, a smooth upward path of progress and betterment. It went in fits and starts as new inventions and innovations arrived, slowly then quickly, often against critics of the modern system of production and workers, fearing technological unemployment and lack of government support during a time of technological transition, who resisted new technology and sometimes sabotaged equipment. The issue in the past, like today, was in fact not the availability of jobs but the quality of skills during the diffusion of new technologies through industry. 

 

The only previous comparable period of disruptive technological change in construction of the built environment is the second half of the nineteenth century. Between 1850 and 1900 construction saw the rise of large, international contractors, who reorganized project management and delivery around steam powered machinery and equipment. In particular, the disruptive new technologies of steel, glass and concrete, which came together in the last decades of the century, led to fundamental changes in both processes and products. If that is any guide, we can expect technological changes to operate today over the same three areas of industrialization of production, mechanization of work, and organization of projects that they did then. And today, just as in 1820 when no-one knew how different construction would be and what industry would look like in 1900, we can’t see construction in 2100. That is a long way out, and we can only guess at the level of future technology. We can, however, use what we already know from both history and the present to form a view of what is possible over the next few decades based on what is currently understood to be technologically feasible.

It should be clear that the role of fourth industrial revolution technologies will be to augment human labour in construction of the built environment, not replace it. Generative design software does not replace architects or engineers. Optimization of logistics or maintenance by AI does not replace mechanics. Onsite construction is a project-based activity using standardized components to deliver a specific building or structure in a specific location. The nature of a construction site means automated machinery and equipment will have to be constantly monitored and managed by people, with many of their current skills still relevant but applied in a different way. Nevertheless, in the various forms that building information models, digital twins, AI, 3D printing, digital fabrication and procurement platforms take on their way to the construction site, they will become central to many of the tasks and activities involved. Education and training pathways and industry policies with incentives for labour-friendly technology will be needed.

Figure 3.

 

Because construction involves so many firms and people the technology driven changes discussed here will have significant and profound economic and social consequences. This would be a good opportunity for government and industry to work together to develop policies and roadmaps for those firms, and to support ‘the great mass of people’ employed in construction of the built environment who will be affected by them. The future is not determined, although technological change and creative destruction continue to reshape and restructure industry and the economy, decisions made today create the future.

 

 

From the Introduction to my new book available from Amazon on technological change and construction. 

BIM Mandates and Construction Industry Policy

BIM as Industrial Strategy 

 

Construction of the built environment is subject to many government regulations, legislation and policies. On the demand side interest rates, taxes, public infrastructure spending, urban development and housing policies are all important, but are also external to the built environment sector itself and they determined by a wide range of factors beyond the sector. There are the effects of planning and environmental regulations, and restrictions limiting the supply of new housing or infrastructure, an issue that has featured in recent debates and spills over into other issues around affordability of housing and the cost of major projects. All costs the complex institutional and policy environment entail are crystalised at the moment a contract is signed for a new building or construction project, as part of a total cost that typically includes finance and land, or access to it. The remaining share of the project cost is design and delivery, so that is what built environment industries can affect. On the supply side the issues are about efficiency, productivity and production costs.

 

A brief, general discussion on BIM and industry policy follows, before discussing the importance of BIM mandates. The pervious post was on the experience of the UK after 2011 in promoting use of BIM. That is an example of an industry policy that has worked, after the UK government launched a new broad-based industrial strategy to improve competitiveness with a BIM mandate for public construction included. 

 

 

Promoting Building Information Modelling

 

BIM had its origins in 1960s 2D drawing programs that developed into architectural drawing software. Two companies dominate the market, Autodesk was founded in 1982 and Bentley Systems in 1984. The first version of ArchiCAD’s file exchange solution was released in 1997, which allowed multiple designers to work on a collaborative platform. At this point enthusiasts began believing in BIM as a universal panacea for the problems and issues endemic to construction. Twenty-five years later they are still waiting, despite the fact that BIM is no longer a new technology but an application widely used in construction, one that is now offered as a cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) to manage and maintain project digital twins.

 

Countries took different approaches to promoting BIM. Broadly, Scandinavian and western European countries, Singapore and the UK followed a government-driven approach, but Australia and the United States (US) a more industry-driven approach. However, the US General Services Administration (GSA) established the first public sector program in 2003, the National 3D-4D-BIM Program, on best practices for design and construction teams. The GSA was also the first client to require mandatory use of BIM in 2007, for program verification. The first government BIM roadmap was from Singapore, for 2010-2015, by the Building and Construction Authority, with a second in 2016 that included BIM for facility and asset management and the BIM for DfMA Essential Guide for integrating BIM and DfMA.[i]

 

The UK Government Construction Strategy 2011–2015 mandated fully collaborative 3D BIM for all public projects by 2016. Importantly, the UK also began publishing BIM standards to provide guidance for industry on how to produce, exchange and use information in BIM. In 2015 standards BS 8541-5 and 6 on offsite construction and modular buildings were released. The Construction Strategy was extended to 2016–2020, with a single shared building model to be held in a centralized repository for operation of assets over their life cycle[ii]. By 2020 most western and northern European countries had plans to mandate BIM in some way, although the level of use varied greatly between countries, with BIM adoption in the UK, Denmark, Germany and France similar to the US, Canada and Singapore, but Southern European use much lower. 

 

In the US many land use and building codes are local,  and a range of different approaches has been followed. The US also has standards and guides from both government and industry. The GSA 2009 Guides were on 3D imaging and 4D schedule management, extended to life-cycle management in 2011. The American Institute of Architects published six series of guidelines after 2007 for the use of BIM in the design and operations of projects for architects. The National BIM Standard was published in 2009, updated in 2012, and is in its third version. The US followed an industry-driven approach and, compared to Singapore and the UK with their BIM mandates, the government was less involved.

 

In Australia, the Commonwealth Government released a national BIM initiative in 2012 and recommended requiring full 3D collaborative BIM for all Australian government projects by 2016. However, with no mandates or targets for use nothing actually happened. As in the US, policies and uptake varies across the states. In 2018 the Queensland government started mandating BIM, to be expanded to all built assets by 2023[iii]. Other states are following.

 

Industry Policy and Industrial Strategy

 

 These is little practical difference between a country’s industry policy and national industrial strategy. They are both typically framed around competitiveness and productivity, focus on innovation and R&D, and follow pathways and roadmaps through scenarios and scoping studies. Some industries like agriculture, steel and automobiles are regarded as strategic and have always been surrounded by rules and regulations and subject to government intervention. Governments’ have science and technology policies that influence industrial structure and macroeconomic policies that affect economic development. For many countries the emphasis in industry policy has shifted to industry 4.0 technologies and AI, as governments and industry respond to these technologies.   

 

Government policies targeting supply side issues are not as high profile as others, they don’t get regular updates like monthly unemployment or quarterly GDP statistics and capture attention like announcements of interest rate changes. Because productivity has become the measure used for industry performance, despite the statistical questions that raises, it has often been the target for government policy. However, many policy measures affect productivity in the long run, such as education, training, infrastructure, innovation and R&D, tax and capital expenditure subsidies, and pilot or demonstration projects. When the intention of such policies is to influence a country’s economic structure and performance they are described as industrial strategy or industry policy.  

 

Industry policy was out of favour for a couple of decades before the financial crisis in 2007-08, especially in countries like the US, UK and Australia, although the European Union and many Asian countries followed well developed national strategic plans. In the West this was partly ideological, a view that it is about government intervention and picking winners, and partly because some issues traditionally addressed by industry policy like tariffs and market access moved into negotiations around trade policy, at both the global level with the WTO rounds and in the increasing number of bilateral trade agreements. Traditionally manufacturing was the focus for industry policy, but after 2007 the approach became more about coordinating a wide range of policies to achieve objectives across the economy and society. The rollout of protective equipment and vaccines during the Covid pandemic in 2020-21 both tested and accelerated this new approach.

 

Following the financial crisis governments looking for sources of economic growth and employment creation began focusing on specific sectors in manufacturing and services where they saw opportunity in global value chains. Industries like pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, semiconductors, aerospace, IT, AI, cars and steel have featured in the industry policies of many countries since then. Any policy intervention intended to strengthen the economy is an industry policy, and governments establish priorities and target industries. Countries protect or favour industries with legislation for many reasons but some of them are strategic and long term, like innovation programs with their associated challenges, roadmaps and milestones, and many of these programs currently involve digitisation in some form. 

 

While it is a fact that governments can have major impacts through regulation, tax, and R&D these policies are spread across departments, there are significant institutional constraints on government buying power. What history generally does show is that it is hard to get industry strategy right, implementation is difficult and outcomes are uncertain in dynamically evolving economies. There is also the problem that results take time to happen and thus take longer than the electoral cycle to develop, and there is often little benefit to the government of the day even if a policy is working well. Although inquiries in the UK, US and Australia into construction industry performance recommended leveraging purchases of materials, machinery and equipment and buildings and structures to push industry reform this was not widely used, despite being common practice in Asian countries like Singapore and Japan. 

 

Infrastructure is often found within a country’s national strategy for science and technology, required for building out the networks underpinning modern society and the economy. There is unrelenting pressure from public sector clients for the lowest possible cost of work, given the circumstances of the industry, and in many countries the public sector is the largest single client for construction work. Housing is another area with complex overlapping issues that affects the cost of delivery. The cost of major projects and lack of productivity growth in construction has been an issue for governments and major clients for decades, since productivity statistics first became available in the 1960s.

 

BIM Mandates and Industry Policy 

 

Building information modelling (BIM) has been promoted as the solution to the problems of poor documentation, fragmentation and lack of collaboration in building and construction for many years. It has not, however, been disruptive as we understand the idea, at least not so far. BIM has its origins in 1960s drawing programs, and Autodesk was founded in 1982, so this is not a new technology. Therefore, BIM does not qualify as transformative, rather it is the required enabler of further developments, a necessary foundation for the transition to the construction technological system in the digital age. BIM is more like digital plumbing underpinning digital construction than an elevator to higher performance.

 

BIM is plumbing because the digitized construction data it generates gets shared across the different built environment industries. At a basic level this is just sharing files and managing documentation. However, BIM can run on platforms, it allows access to cloud manufacturing, it is being combined with virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) systems for a holographic 3D virtual project that contains every detail of a building, and that information can be shared through a project management platform with all project participants. At this point the expectation is that VR will be used more on the design side by architects, planners and engineers, while AR will have a larger footprint on construction sites, although some construction firms have started looking at using VR in areas like safety and training. BIM is obviously central to these technologies. Other uses include drones matching site work to BIM plans for buildings and excavators measuring earthworks. Some clients are demanding as-built digital twins to manage their buildings with. 

 

Two reasons why BIM is not more widely used are inertia of industry culture and the incremental process followed by clients in requiring BIM. These are both discussed in the context of the UK below, which provides a good example of the policy approach now being followed by many governments. These policies broadly follow roadmaps with stages for BIM adoption, using both level of use and size of project as targets, that are intended to allow time for industry to adjust. A small number of countries have implemented national BIM mandates:[iv]

2004 Singapore for public construction projects 

2007 Finland for all public projects over 1 million euros 

2007 US General Service Administration and the Army Corps of Engineers required use 

2010 South Korea public construction over KRW 500 million from 2016

2011 UK for public building

2018 Spain for public construction

2019 Abu Dhabi for all major projects 

2020 Germany for Federal infrastructure projects

 

Many countries have published roadmaps, standards and guidelines since 2015 without so far following up with a mandate, for example Austria, Australia, France, Switzerland and Japan are at this stage. In every case the underlying assumption is that BIM will become business as usual over the decade of the 2020s, but at the beginning of the decade countries that were early movers like Singapore, Finland and the UK have the highest use of BIM.There are also state and city level mandates in the US and Australia. Wisconsin required BIM for projects over $5 million in 2010, and Queensland for public projects in 2018. By 2021 most major projects for both public private clients worldwide are done with BIM.

 

BIM mandates are important because the use of BIM unlocks the potential of digital construction, and affects the organisation of suppliers of materials, products and services for construction of the built environment as well. The deeply embedded nature of the culture and processes of this production system, and the large number of small firms involved, slows technological diffusion and limits voluntary uptake of new technologies like BIM. Therefore, government mandates in particular and client’s mandating BIM in general are needed. The experience of the UK is a good example.

 

 

Conclusion

 

The UK construction strategy applied to all firms involved in projects, and thus included designers, consultants and suppliers as well as contractors and subcontractors, and targeted technology adoption not the separate industries of residential building, non-residential building and engineering construction and the distinctive characteristics of each of those industries. The differences in the subcultures of these separate industries accounts for the differing rates of uptake found across firms in the UK since the launch of the strategy. Also, national and local governments, universities, regulators and industry bodies were all given significant but loosely specified roles in these policies to support industry engagement. 

 

Achieving industry policy goals requires a great deal of coordination, determination and long-term commitment,[v]qualities not always associated with government policy. Over the decade after the UK government launched the new Industry Strategy in 2011 and the Construction Industry Strategy in 2015 there was investment in capability, new standards were developed, and BIM requirements increased usage. This new conception and practice of industry policy was about collaboration between the public and private sectors,[vi] rather than imposing unrealistic outcomes on the industry. Industry policies do not have to be original or innovative to be useful and effective, as the success of the UK after 2011 in promoting use of BIM shows. 

 

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[i] See Jiang et al. Government efforts and roadmaps for building information modelling implementation, 2021. BCA, BIM Essential Guide for DfMA. 2016.

[ii] UK Cabinet Office. Government Construction Strategy 2016-2020.

[iii] Queensland Government, Digital Enablement for Queensland Infrastructure, 2018.

[iv] Lee and Borrmann, BIM policy and management, 2020. Links to the relevant documents for each country can be found in the article. 

[v] Aiginger and Rodrik, Rebirth of Industrial Policy and an Agenda for the Twenty-first Century, 2020.

[vi] Chang and Andreoni, Industrial Policy in the 21st Century, 2020.

Industrialized Building and the Failure of Katerra

Why Modern Methods of Construction Don't Work

Offsite manufacturing, modular and prefabricated building have been transforming construction like nuclear fusion has been transforming energy: they have both been twenty years away from working at scale for the last 60 years. These ‘modern methods of construction’ have a dismal track record. The brutal economies of scale and scope in a project-based, geographically dispersed industry subject to extreme swings in demand have always bought previous periods of their growth and development to an end. 

 

While the history of prefabrication features major projects like the Great Exhibition in 1855 and more recently the Oresund Bridge in 2000, the reality is that prefabrication has only been successful in specific niche markets such as institutional buildings, or house manufacturers like the Japanese and Scandinavian firms Sekisui and Ikea. Failures like Katerra in mid-2021 and the mail order houses sold by Sears Roebuck a hundred years ago in the US are common. In the UK 2017 Industrial Strategy Construction was one of the four Sector Deals along with AI, the car industry and life sciences, with the aim to change the way buildings are created with a manufacturing hub for offsite and modular construction. By 2021 the focus had moved on, to the energy efficiency of buildings and new design standards. 

 

The up-front capital requirements of prefabrication make it a capital-intensive form of production, which brings high fixed costs in a cyclic industry characterised by demand volatility over the cycle. This means macroeconomic events often determine the success or failure of the underpinning business model and the success or the eventual failure of the investment. A batch of new US prefab housing firms failed during the GFC after 2007, for example, demonstrating the importance of the relationship between economic and business conditions and the viability of the business model for industrialised building.

 

Manufactured housing in the US also provides an insight into the institutional barriers to industrialisation in construction that exist in many countries and cities. Although the Department of Housing and Urban Development hasa national code, US cities discriminate against manufactured housing as local and county governments use a variety of land use planning devices to restrict or ban their use, and often place them in locations far from amenities such as schools, transportation, doctors and jobs. Despite these barriers, in 2021 there were 33 firms with 136 factories that produced nearly 95,000 homes. 

 

An ambitious attempt at offsite manufacturing (OSM) and industrialized building was made by Katerra, a US firm that was reinventing construction but has now gone into receivership. The manufacture of building elements and components somewhere other than the construction site has been variously called prefabrication, pre-cast and pre-assembly construction. Types of offsite construction are panelised systems erected onsite, volumetric systems that involve partial assembly of units or pods offsite, and factory built modular components or pods. The degree of OSM and preassembly varies from basic sub-assemblies to entire modules. Katerra manufactured prefabricated cross laminated timber (CLT) structures.  

 

 

Katerra

 

Katerra was a Californian start-up, founded in 2015. In 2017 it reached a $1 billion valuation, The company’s goal was complete vertical integration of design and construction, from concept sketches of a building to installing CLT panels and the bolting it together. On their projects the company wanted to be architect, offsite manufacturer and onsite contractor. This led to issues with the developers and contractors the company dealt with most of whom, it turned out, didn’t want the complete end-to-end service Katerra offered. 

 

The company started by developing software to manage an extensive supply chain for fixtures and fittings from around the world, but particularly China, and then added a US factory making roof trusses, cabinets, wall panels, and other elements. In 2016 the business model changed because architects weren’t specifying Katerra’s products. Katerra would design its own buildings and specify its own products. In 2017 it built a CLT factory that increased US output by 50 percent. The factory shut in 2019. Dissatisfied with design software that didn’t meet its needs, it developed a custom suite called Apollo. This was to be a platform for project development and delivery, well beyond the document control and communication of then available software from Oracle Aconex, Trimble Connect, Procore and SAP Connect. Apollo integrated six functions: 

1.      Report: use an address to find site information, zoning, and crime rates etc.; 

2.      Insight: design with the two building platforms; 

3.      Direct: a library of components used in the building; 

4.      Compose: for coordination between the different groups working on a project;

5.      Construct: for construction management (similar to Procore and Bluebeam):

6.      Connect: for managing the workforce on a project, with a database of subcontractors.

 

One of the company’s three founders was a property developer, and his projects provided the initial pipeline of work that made the company viable. Initially, buildings were designed by outside architects, but in 2016 the company started a design division. A second founder had a tech venture capital fund, the third and CEO did a stint at Tesla. Their ambition was to leverage new technologies to transform building by linking design and production through software, designing buildings in Revit and converting the files to a different format for machines in the factory. 

 

In 2018, after raising $865 million in venture capital led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund, Katerra acquired Michael Green Architecture, a leading advocate of CLT, and over a dozen other architects and contractors. In 2020 the business model changed again, by taking equity stakes in developments to boost demand. Katerra struggled to complete the projects. Accumulating losses and cost overruns during the Covid pandemic overwhelmed the company and in June 2021 Katerra Construction filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. 

 

In six years Katerra had grown to a 7,500 person company. That growth cost both money and focus, of the total US$2.2bn raised, SoftBank invested $2bn between 2018 and 2020. Without a clear focus, Katerra didn’t have a target customer base and got distracted by software and developing internet-of-things technology. The executive team was dominated by industry outsiders, but Katerra hired architects and engineers from traditional firms. Tension was inevitable. The fatal problem was execution, Katerra didn’t vertically integrate acquisitions into a company that did everything. It was fragmented and didn’t have a product platform or Apollo ready in time.   

 

With Apollo, Katerra was actually behind other companies developing platforms that manage design and construction in various ways. These platforms are at the technological frontier, a fourth industrial revolution technology for OSM with automated production of components. Other firms have developed different approaches to digital manufacturing and restructuring of firm boundaries to Katerra, integrating design and construction through development of digital platforms that provide design, component specification and manufacturing, delivery and on-site assembly. 

 

For example, in 2018 Project Frog released KitConnect, bringing together a decade of development into prefabrication and component design, and integrating BIM with DfMa and logistics. US start-ups in the wake of Katerra like Junoand Generate also don’t build factories but outsource assembly. Outfit offers homeowners a DIY renovation from its website, then orders and ships the materials and provides step-by-step instructions for completing the work (the Sears model again). Also in 2021, the IPO for PM software company Procore raised $635 at a valuation near $10bn, a record for construction tech. Rival Aconex was bought by Oracle in 2017 for $1.2bn. Platforms are in the process of becoming a basic part of construction tech. In the UK Pagabo launched a procurement platform in 2021, mainly for the public sector, using framework agreements for building work valued between £250k to £10m. Australian 2021 procurement IPO Felix had local start-ups Buildxact, SiteMate, Mastt, Portt and VenderPanel with competing platforms.  

 

 

Conclusion

 

The idea of construction as production was based on OSM, but after decades of development has yet to become a viable business model. There have been successes in manufactured housing, but often macroeconomic factors undermined their viability. Niche markets exist in institutional building, or wherever it is the most effective or efficient piece of technology available. This manufacturing-centric view of progress in construction, endorsed by numerous government and industry reports, is the end point of the development trajectory from the first to the third industrial revolutions.

 

The technological base of OSM is a mix of those from the first industrial revolution, like concrete, with second and third revolution technologies like factories and lean production. Despite all efforts this has not become a system of production because OSM does not deliver a decisive advantage over onsite production for the great majority of projects. Instead, construction has a deep, diverse and specialised value chain that resists integration because it is flexible and adapted to economic variability. Policy makers may neither like nor appreciate this brute fact, but economies of scale are the economic equivalent of gravity and OSM has not delivered. 

The constraints of OSM have outweighed the drivers and benefits. At this stage the market share of OSM remains small and niche, estimates are low single digits of total construction work in the UK, US and Australia. Success elsewhere is restricted to a few specific markets and project types. The problem is not the technology, which can be made to work, but the expected economies of scale are difficult to achieve because of a range of factors. Some of these factors are internal to construction, but others are external. In particular, macroeconomic events like financial crises or energy and commodity price changes can quickly undermine a business model. 

Norman Foster said in an interview ‘A building is only as good as its client’. With industrialized building the client is the producer, which is not necessarily a bad thing, however this has restricted its use to niche markets. How to apply the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution so they work with the economies of scale for onsite production in construction, beyond the OSM paradigm that has been followed for years without success, is the challenge