Innovation

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What is Innovation?

Innovation is something that is new to you that you are adopting to better a product or process.

Innovation is

"the latest thing".

Albert Einstein view was that "in order to solve the problems of today, we need to think differently than we did when we created them".

Innovations must be simple & focussed if they are to be effective, otherwise it will confuse people.

Innovation is vital for economic growth.

Buyers are often seeking innovative approaches to ensure continuous improvement & more cost-effective products, processes & services from a supply chain.

Often a requirement in tenders to demonstrate how you are innovating.

Incremental Innovation - A small improvement in current practice and has minimal impact on other components/systems.

Architectural Innovation - A small improvement within a specific area or core concept but requires significant development in other areas.

System Innovation - A set of complementary innovations which work together to provide new functions.

Modular Innovation - Significant improvement within a specific region but requires no change in other components or systems.

Radical Innovation - A completely new concept or approach which often renders previous solutions obsolete.

Incremental & Radial Change?

Incremental changes are small step changes towards something whilst radical change is a significant leap towards something.

What are Disruptive Technologies?

Advances that will transform life, business and the global economy (e.g. clout technology, advanced robotics, 3D printing, renewable energy...)

PwC Survey Results

97% of CEOs see innovation as a key concern for their business.

64% said innovation & operational effectiveness were equally important to the success of their company.

Focus of innovation is changing, with CEOs looking for new sources of revenue rather than improving existing products.

Key Constraints to Innovation:

Lack of financial resources

Existing organisational culture

Top Areas for Innovation:

Products - 48%

Technology - 45%

Customer Experience - 44%

Systems & Processes - 43%

Business Model - 41%

Drivers for Innovation

Company values

Project driven (e.g. time constraints)

Client demand & end-users

Rewards

Internal business benefits

Marketing benefits

Individual need

Cost efficiency

Sustainability

Technology

Global competition.

Barriers to Innovation

People

Scared of the cost

Have over-inflated expectations - "excessive belief causes agonising hangovers' (Financial Times)

Are reluctant to make the effort

Are unable to balance innovation, standardisation & are unwilling to adequately assess the risk.

Are reluctant to accepting the risk of making a mistake.

'Scared of the Cost'

John Ruskin stated it is worse to pay too little than too much as paying too much can loose you a little money, but paying too little can loose you everything as the what was bought is incapable of doing what it was required to.

'Reluctant to Make the Effort'

'Innovation is the exploitation of new ideas' (Sir George Cox)

"People are Unable to Balance Innovation & Standardisation & Unwilling to Assess the Risk

Other Barriers:

Cost

Fragmentation of the industry.

Methods of procurement.

Lack of in-house design or creative skills

Lack of customer demand

Access to external design or creative skills

Manufacturing or development issues

Regulatory issues

'Design not important'

Lack of R&D investment - 80% of contractors unaware that research grants are available.

Gartner Hype Cycle

Bringing Innovations to Market - 'Crossing the Chasm'

Factors of Winning Companies

Led by enthusiastic champions

Know their customers

Unlock the potential of their people

Deliver products that exceed their customers expectations

Continuously introduce differentiated products

Factors Causing the Best Companies to Win

Quality

Low cost

Functional performance

Delivery time

Reliability

Product support

Styling/design

Marketing

Customer support

Customised product

Innovative product

Partnering is Dead

Industry believes partnering/alliances are key to innovation.

However, companies tend to keep their best ideas to themselves to provide a competitive edge.

Ideas need to be shared and competition removed if innovation is to be realised.

CIOB Innovation Survey in 2007

Results showed the following were considered the most innovative things over the past 5 years:

Internet

IT Developments

Mobile Phones

Off-site Production/Pre-Fabrication

Computer Aided Design

The following were considered the best innovations to encourage:

Carbon reduction

Sustainable energy/energy efficiency

Improved off-site fabrication

Training

Robotics

The following were considered the best methods to encourage innovation:

Freedom of employees to act as they see fit to overcome problems.

Reward schemes/bonuses

Training

Partner collaboration

Research/innovation manager or department

Types of Construction Innovation

Quadrocopters

Compact, robotic flying machines capable of constructing buildings remotely.

Being tested for their uses within construction sites.

Modular Assembly

Offers most effective way to ensure future buildings & construction sites maximise efficiency & minimise defects.

3D Printing

Small & large scale applications for construction.

Laser Scanning

Used to easily & accurately capture significant amounts of information during a site analysis.

Will play an every increasing role in the future.

Other Innovations:

Quadrocopter drones

Harvesting algae - growing on facades as biofuel.

Self-healing concrete

Transparent concrete

Robots

Printing components

Near-site manufacture.

Flexible structures

Reactive facades

Community integration - link & integrate public realm & transport system into building.

Smart systems

Categories of Innovation

Incremental Innovation - a small improvement in a current practice which has minimal impact on other components or systems.

Architectural Innovation - a small improvement within a specific area or core concept which requires significant modification in other components or systems in order to function.

Modular Innovation - a significant improvement or a new concept within a specific region which requires no changes in other components or systems.

System Innovation - a set of complementary innovations which work together to provide new attributes or functions & together can significantly advance the state of knowledge or practice.

Radical Innovation - a completely new concept or approach which often renders previous solutions obsolete, including interdependent components of systems.

These categories of innovation can be used to establish the degree to which the proposed innovation will require special skills, expertise & activities to be effectively implemented.

Implementation Stages for Innovations

The effective use of construction innovations can be planned by following a cycle of implementation stages and activities:

Identification

Evaluation

Commitment

Detailed preparation

Actual use

Post-use evaluation

Most implementation processes proceed through each stage.

In certain cases the evaluation stage may reveal new criteria which needs to be reconsidered in the identification stage

Therefore, the first 2 stages may cycle through a few repetitions.

Previous experiences with implementing other innovations can feed into decisions and organisation learning.

Implementation stages are common in many engineering & industry fields but certain aspects are particularly important for construction innovation.

Criteria to Evaluate Innovation Alternatives

Project Criteria

Cost

Long-term facility performance

Construction performance

Duration (design, planning & construction)

Technical feasibility

Worker safety

Environmental impacts

Risk of failure

Implementation complexity

Company Criteria

Reputation impacts

Unique capability

New market

Compatibility with & utilisation of existing capabilities

Improvement of existing capabilities

Appropriateness of benefits

Effective use of Innovation

Size of initial commitment

Crossrail

The industry has been learning from Crossrail in areas such as

Logistics

Traffic management

Underground conditions

Labour requirements

How to deal with local communities

Health & safety.

Office of National Statistics Survey

Only £33 million is spent on R&D every year, less than 0.2% of it's turnover.

Agriculture industry spends £127 million, 12% of it's far smaller turnover.

Two-thirds of the 459 respondents believe sustainability, specifically energy efficiency and carbon reduction require the most attention for innovation.

70% suggested manufacturers are producing the most innovations.

Most people said their firms only spend £10,000 a year on R&D and it should be more.

CIOB suggests a web-based for developing and sharing ideas would be helpful.

Companies are failing to apply for Government Grants which could help them innovate.

More than 80% of construction firms were unaware of the grants available to support innovation.

Only 4.1% of firms had applied for grants.

Drivers for Innovation

Cost efficiency - 42%

Time constraints - 24.8%

Sustainability - 18.1%

Client demands - 15.9%

Technology - 9.8%

Global competition - 3.5%

End users - 2.2%

Top 5 Areas Where Innovation Should be Focused

- Carbon Reduction

- Sustainable Energy/Energy Efficiency

- Improved off-site fabrication

- Training

- Robotics

Arups Skyscraper of the Future

Technologies incorporated include:

Modular building components that can be upgraded and rearranged over time.

Algae facades that produce biofuel.

Solar PV paint

Building systems fully integrated with smart grid and urban resource streams.

Continuous robotic assembly and maintenance of building systems.

Urban food production modules containing meat, fish and vegetable farms.

Building membrane which converts carbon dioxide into oxygen.

Recycling centre which automatically segregates and packages from waste feed.

Harvesting Algae

Growing algae in building facades.

Can be harvested and used for biofuel and shading.

Prototype building in Hamburg uses a facade where algae grows between a sandwich of glass, called 'bioreactors'.

Nutrient rich water inside the glass is fed with C02 which with sunlight allows algae to grow rapidly.

When enough has grown, the algae is separated and 'harvested' to an external biogas plant which converts it into fuel that the building can use.

The panels also shade the building and capture solar heat to generate hot water.

Integrated Photovoltaics

The next generations of PVs will be integrated into building materials.

Thin film solar panels are already being installed.

Oxford Photovoltatics is integrating solar cells into glazing panels to produce what looks like 'tinted glass'.

They have received £2 million in funding to take it from concept to intermediate scale.

It could provide 20% of a building's energy.

Humble Concrete

Surfaces that act as giant air filters to combat pollution and materials that can heal themselves.

Self-Healing Concrete

Contains limestone-producing bacteria which are activated by rainwater.

Could potentially increase the service life of the concrete and provide cost savings as a result.

Main problem is scaling up the technology as the healing agent that is required is expensive.

Smart Systems

The use of sensors which would monitor and control a building's behaviour to minimise carbon emissions.

Costs of achieving the reductions are more than people are willing to pay.

Industry needs to look at how costs can be driven down whilst increasing performance.

The recession and current economic environment puts pressure on companies to innovate and come up with new ways of doing things.

Robotics

Robots that can lay bricks and create highly intricate patterns to form the facade of a winery in Switzerland.

Flight Assembled Architecture

Use of flying quadrocopters - a remote controlled flying device with an electric motor and four propellers.

Could be used for functions such as motion capture, aerial photography and site mapping.

Believe they could be used to build complex cylindrical towers which could stand more than 600m high & house 30,000 occupants.

Will require the development of high-performance lightweight materials as current materials are too heavy.

Are perfectly suited for tensile structures where they could easily loop ropes, cables or wires around a structure.

Tensile construction offers optimum utilisation of their unique set of characteristics & constraints.

Envisaged that drones could work in areas unfit for humans or help in disaster relief & other emergencies.

Bouygues are trialling robots for tasks such as wall-drilling, roughening and sanding.

Printing Components

Prefabricated concrete components.

Case Study - Mott MacDonald's and Laing O'Rourke's £35 million Royal Victoria Building.

Building required a quarter fewer workers and delivered 20 weeks faster than using traditional techniques.

55% of the building was made offsite & delivered 'just-in-time'.

3D Printing

Only recently used in construction.

Foster + Partners planning to printing a space station for the moon using lunar rock.

3D printing involves the successive laying down of layers of material.

3D printing is unlikely to suit large sized components as the equipment would be too expensive.

Near Site Manufacture

Skanska developed flying factories which use offsite factories that can be moved from site to site.

The technique could deliver the benefits of offsite whilst overcoming the traditional barriers of capital investment & high transport costs.

Clients could benefits from a 28% reduction in cost per m2 and 30% shorter build times.

Laser Scanning

Surveying has come a long way.

Has the ability to easily and accurately capture large amounts of information about the entire construction process.

Can capture site conditions, plot the exact location of environmental features like tree locations and root spread.

Can be used during construction to monitor structure, check tolerances, measure deflection, check clashes...

Could compare the emerging construction with the BIM Model.

To utilise the benefits, all the different types of data collected would have to be inserted into a central portal for further analysis.

Funding Options for Innovation

HM Revenue and Customs Tax Credits for Previous Research & Development - Tax rebates of up to £50,000 available.

The Technology Strategy Board - £1,000-2,000 per project and £30,000-60,000 for fully funded Low Impact Building and Technology Feasibility Studies.

Research Councils - Up to 50% match funding for collaborative work that is academically significant.

EU - Major grants for international collaborative R&D.

European Investment Bank - Up to £200 million is available for supporting investments which further EU policy goals.

Implementation Stages of an Innovation

Identification

Evaluation

Commitment

Detailed Preparation

Actual Use

Post-Use Evaluation

ARUP 2050 Skyscraper

Flexible Structures

Modular components that can be upgraded and rearranged over time.

Materials maintain and repair themselves.

Structures can be assembled by robots.

Building elements designed for continuous adaptability.

Active structural dampers manage major seismic loads.

Sustainable Resources

Building processes and produces resources.

Cradle to cradle design.

Renewable and recyclable materials.

Buildings as integral components of urban food production.

Full integration with the city and its resource streams.

Reactive Facades

Facades that react to changing environmental conditions.

Surfaces for communication with the wider community.

Integrated food and energy production

Self-cleaning and automated.

Community Integration

Integration of public realm

Linked and integrated to transport systems

Public facilities and green spaces encourage exploration.

Spaces for community services and events.

A building that teaches and encourages sustainable practices.

Smart Systems

Intelligent building systems react to external and internal changes.

Sustainable systems provide ecosystem services.

Sensors, data and automation enable smart environments.

On-site energy, food and resource production.

Users engage and communicate with spaces.

Innovation in the Recession

With margins decreasing, construction companies need to innovate to cut costs with compromising quality.

The time and money required for innovations is causing a lot of companies to hold back.

The construction industry has not innovated to the extent that other industries have (e.g. car manufacturing)

When the time comes, companies who have not invested in R&D will get left behind.

If you put together an innovation that only one or two specialists can deliver, it puts you at extreme risk if it fails.

People can be too cautious about adopting new ideas.

The technology is here but it is how we finance and implement the technologies that is the problem.

Crossrail's Bond Street Station

Top-Down construction method used to construct a 2-storey deep basement.

One level used a secant piled box whilst the other a diaphragm wall that would be excavated at a later date.

Early Supply Chain Involvement is required for innovations to be incorporated.

The Optimised Contractor Involvement (OCI) approach is one of the best ways to get innovation.

Procurement is the key to the whole issue, the procurement process has to allow time for flexibility in design and subcontractors have to get involved early on.

If people are brought on early, are set the challenge, then they will deliver.

The message to the supply chain is clear: "come forward with your innovation and you will be heard".

Sharing Innovative Ideas

Sharing innovation is vital if UK construction is going to compete with the rest of the world.

Self-interest has to give way to the bigger picture.

Costain publicly highlighted the latest innovations it is accelerating to market in London's Natural History Museum last month.

Intelligent buildings are driven by intelligent clients.

Client's procurement routes is a key issue.

Clients such as Crossrail, Highways Agency and Network Rail are taking the lead.

The supply chain must also step up.

Modern World is Complex but Innovation Remains Key

Our thinking is hindered by environmental, financial, safety, technical and social constraints.

Engineering design today revolves around negotiating the constraints.

We must push through these constraints, as Victorian builders did in their time to drive innovation.

Timid thoughts and staying within limits will not be part of the solution.

The Culture is Changing

Interview with CEO of Topcon Position Group Ray O'Connor.

The primary driver is population growth.

With 7 billion people on the planet right now and 9 billion by 2030, in order for construction to meet the demand we have to technologically innovate to allow work to be done more efficiently and effectively.

BIM is another major driver for change.

The US are more progressive about changing rules in order to use a new technology that will allow them to do a job faster or with improved quality.

Europe is more conservative.

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