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CABA Home & Building Automation Quarterly, Autumn, pp. 23-24, 2001-09-01
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Bullis, R.
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International symposium tackles key issues of construction innovation
Bullis, R.
A version of this paper is published in / Une version de ce document se trouve dans :
CABA Home & Building Automation Quarterly, Autumn 2001, pp. 23-24
www.nrc.ca/irc/ircpubs
INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM TACKLES KEY ISSUES
OF CONSTRUCTION INNOVATION
By Robert Bullis
Published in the (CABA) Home & Building Automation Quarterly
Abstract
This article reviews key information contained in three of the many
presentations made at a construction innovation symposium held in Ottawa in June 2001. Speakers came from all over the world and presented some unique
perspectives on the issues and challenges affecting innovation in the construction industry.
Resume
Cet article passe en revue les informations principales contenues dans trois des nombreuses présentations qui ont été données lors du symposium sur l’innovation en construction à Ottawa au mois de juin 2001. Des conférenciers venus du monde entier ont présenté des points de vue uniques sur les problèmes et les défis en matière d’innovation dans leurs pays respectifs.
The International Construction Innovation Symposium, held in Ottawa in June, represented a unique gathering of stakeholders from the construction industry worldwide. The symposium brought together one hundred respected figures in the construction industry from 15 countries
--representatives from private industry, the public sector, academia, and the research community -- to discuss the key issues related to innovation in the industry.
For CABA members, three of the speeches presented at the symposium held special interest. John Voeller, senior vice-president, chief knowledge officer and chief technology officer of Black and Veatch in the U.S., spoke about The
Likely Impact of Technology on Construction This Decade.
Innovation requires integrated thinking, he stated, and one of the greatest challenges facing the construction industry is the lack of sharing and collaborative work.
Voeller identified several technologies that will have a significant impact on construction in the next decade, paying particular attention to a pro-active technology he termed ‘inorganics,’ a class of technology that he defined as an “autonomous, goal-seeking software entity that knows your requirements and can monitor processes to seek
alignment or to sense circumstance.” Or, in other words, a non-human participant that can tell you of an alignment, do a resulting task, trigger other actions without your
involvement, and let others know to proceed or change direction. Voeller pointed to inorganics as a way to
augment the depletion of experienced people in the industry, and called it a necessary and intrinsic element of future e-commerce in construction, where technology’s reality goes beyond procurement over the web or using project web sites.
In calling for a change from passive to proactive
technology, Voeller cautioned that the construction industry needs to become a world leader in this area, or face having things like e-business and e-commerce become mechanisms that mean bigger mistakes are made more often -- and are harder to find.
Raymond Cole, Professor at UBC’s School of
Architecture, discussed Transition Towards Sustainability:
Matching Technical and Cultural Advances in the second
presentation of note, exploring the inevitable developments that will shape the changes to construction in response to mounting environmental issues.
Cole, citing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change, noted two possible ways that construction might respond to the earth’s climate change: first, through environmental policy and regulations; and second, through innovation in building design, beginning with demonstration, then leading-edge projects, and finally mainstream practice.
Cole also identified two types of technological advances that will ultimately inform building design. First, green technologies that hold direct influence and impact on how buildings are constructed; and second, those that change the context in which design and building occur. Because world views are ultimately the ones that inform what
construction could and should be doing, the construction industry should focus on this second type of technology.
Currently, the two conflicting world views are of
ecological constraint and of perceived freedoms permitted by new technologies such as the emergence of hydrogen
technology, and Cole suggested that the reconciliation of the two views is where the future green building would ultimately unfold.
“Notwithstanding the importance of social and economic needs and constraints,” Cole noted, “the health of the
biosphere will remain the limiting factor for
sustainability.” Respecting limits, at the centre of the ecological debate, encourages reconfiguring how cities and buildings are formed in accordance with natural limits.
However, technologies such as hydrogen and the fuel cell are about no limits and no constraints. Such technologies will influence human values and shape the future environmental debate; they will transform ideas about energy, the
environment, and the strategies we implement.
To achieve sustainable practice, Cole said, we need to move beyond the piecemeal improvement we use to improve the environmental performance of buildings. Comprehensive leaps may be more risky and challenging, but they also allow the
creative integration of systems and strategies, and a more co-ordinated way to trade off one cost item against another.
Cole’s final point concerned making sustainable building practices more prevalent. Construction’s
responsibility, he said, is “to show clear leadership and to create a context that encourages and facilitates” by
returning to a more basic approach to the services that buildings offer and how they’re provided. And, more important, he finished, by “committing to a more
comprehensibly integrated way of thinking and practice.” The third presentation of interest to CABA members was by John Cordonier, vice-president of Canadian development with Bentall Corp., who spoke about Managing Innovation:
Acquiring a C2000 Building. Cordonier presented an overview
of Bentall’s participation in the C-2000 Program in the mid-1990s, the success of which, he said, depended on careful selection of the participants. “The character traits of the owner/developer, the government agency, the design team and the user group had to be receptive to, if not advocates for, innovative design and construction.”
Even after selecting the participants and the site, the status quo presented a barrier, Cordonier said. Traditional thinking had to be challenged in a non-threatening way.
of innovation, as does inertia, which he called a catch-all for the many reasons people have for not wanting to do
things that require energy.
Successful participation in “...the initiative to promote the adoption of advanced technology in management techniques in commercial buildings through pilot projects and monitoring information transfer,” he said, required the selection of innovation-friendly participants; an
appropriate setting; support; a design and construction
process that minimized risks; verification; and follow-up to measure results, create industry awareness, and implement strategies that had evolved.
The broad consensus at the symposium, underlined by these three presentations, was that more and better co-operation is needed within the construction industry, and between the industry and its partners and clients. Such improved co-operation will raise the knowledge level of industry stakeholders and allow the industry to take its place as a world leader in the use of the myriad new technologies available.
_____________________________________
Robert Bullis is an Ottawa freelance writer who wrote this article on behalf of the National Research Council’s Institute for Research in Construction. The symposium was
organized by IRC under the auspices of CIB, the
International Council for Research and Innovation in
Building and Construction. IRC will be publishing the key presentations on the Internet and will advise CABA members of the web site address as soon as possible.
