TL;DR: Construction struggles with innovation and change. Disruption will likely come from an outside or SME player, rather than the large incumbent firms. What incumbents can do is look at our processes and try to identify and eliminate non-value adding activities using Lean thinking. We can then leverage technologies available to us to tackle waste in our processes - including machine readable specifications, digital marketplaces, and Smart Contracts.
Super Pumped
It was a busy week of travelling this week. First to visit out team in Cambridge on the British Antarctic Survey projects and then a meetup with the UK&I Digital Engineering and wider digital transformation team.
During all the travel I listened to a very good book - Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber by Jason Isaac - which really is addictive listening - like a great fiction story (but not!) - whilst also given plenty of insight into start-up life, scaling, and disruption of industries.
Partially because it was close to mind from the Uber book, also because disruption is a fairly common topic in Digital circles, I ended up having two very interesting conversations about disruption of the construction industry.
Having reflected on the conversations since, and finished the book, I’ve came to two realisations:
Disruption is about looking at a process from a new angle, seeing the inefficiencies and friction inherent in them, and then redesigning the process to reach the end-product with much greater efficiency and, sometimes, add value to the end-product. Basically, make it easier. (proper definition of Disruptive Innovation here on Wikipedia)
In construction it is unlikely the disruptive innovation will come from top down strategy - it will come from an individual or group in a small project or team. That will be an issue for large companies who may struggle to scale due to:
Restrictive governance and policy
Failure to capture or recognise
Resistance to change
And from Uber what I recognise is the sheer amount of rule breaking and hard cash it took to scale and grow their network. From evading law enforcement to giving riders free rides and drivers bonusses (to the value of £100’s millions of dollars!)
Based on the above it is more likely that true and foundational change in our industry will come from an outsider or more agile start-up or SME. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible for the incumbent big players to be that kernel but it’s just a lot less likely.
What do we do then?
What can these big legacy firms do, with layers and layers of governance and a defined cultural makeup? Well, I don’t know - but below is my thoughts for this week…
Lean and Value
From one of the conversations I had we ended up concluding that it comes down to lean thinking - which feels very underutilised in the industry.
Where’s the value, where’s the waste?
I won’t be going too far into the detail on individual processes in construction - but I think I can take the 40,000ft view of the general construction processes.
As my experience is in contracting this may be biased to that side of things. I also tried to keep in mind technology available to us right now in the industry - and assessed processes with the knowledge that they could be employed.
Value adding
Clear requirements and standards
Construction specific knowledge and experience
Sequencing and logic
Site supervision
Specialist designer, supplier, and contractor delivery
Non or Low Value adding
Manual information exchange - delivery, authorization, and acceptance
Production and utilisation of human readable of standards, and specifications
Commercial management and payments
Snagging and non-conformities
Layers of management - lead → sub → sub → sub (the final row in the chain being the one actually doing the work!)
Managing Change and overlapping project stages
Where I’d like to focus
It is really interesting to me that so much inefficiency exists still in the industry, there is so much potential there. I’m not naïve enough to think that this is a purely technical issue - this is a very old industry, set in it’s ways.
I’ve provided a table below showing areas I’m particularly interested in pursuing:
Final Thoughts
I recognise that none of the above is a unique thought. Better minds than mine have considered how to ‘fix’ construction, came up with very similar solutions, and continue to try to make them work. If anyone is reading this and is already on this journey please reach out - I’d like to be part of your work.
Equally, if anyone out there is reading this and would like to discuss these in further discussing these ideas - get in touch. (that’s what this blog is all about!)
Construction is such a great industry - what we do, how we can impact peoples lives - is just awesome. It can be so much more though, and I hope to play some small part in transforming our great industry to be even better.
I would love to continue the conversation on this. Is the industry ready for disruption? What are your ideas? Give me your thoughts below or send me a message on LinkedIn:
Want to discuss the post within your own organisation or connections? Please consider sharing below:
Did you enjoy this post? If so, please consider subscribing below:
Please also consider sharing this SubStack with your connections and colleagues: