Gismos, Gadgets
and Good Design
IT & business innovations from
beyond the housing sector
Professor Dr Michael Benfield
In the early ‘noughties’ I ran a seminar for ‘Constructing Excellence’ on ‘Safety by Design’,
followed a few years later by one on ‘Designing Out Waste’. The purpose in mentioning them is
to emphasise the fact that, despite new products and new and updated regulations, like those
dealing with high speed electronic communications networks (Approved document ‘R’), the
house-building industry has made little progress so far this century.
Back then I argued for buildings to be designed via ‘partnerships’ that embraced
site constraints, programmed out risk, and ensured good immediate and ongoing
communications with present and future stakeholders. I pointed out that to do so required
‘design teams’ who not only knew their legal duties & responsibilities, but who understood
how the job would be done. In turn this meant grasping the logistics, getting to grips with
handling and ‘Temporary’ works, as well as embracing snagging and maintenance along with
the lifetime risks of the building both in construction, in use and decommissioning. Stressing that ‘good design’ is SAFE I also urged
participants to accept their responsibility for making others aware of all of these risks.
While today it’s pretty easy to specify IT related products for any building, like visual or fingerprint recognition access, remote video
surveillance, cell-phone heat and light control, and so on, doing so efficiently remains a major challenge. Indeed, arguably this is
more important than these ‘nice to have’ gismos and gadgets themselves. Home buyers and renters alike remain more concerned
about the cost and speed efficiency of new home construction, their comfort, running, and maintenance costs.
In several respects ‘Designing Out Waste’ was an extension of the earlier attempt to introduce
business innovations from outside the construction industry. Techniques and disciplines like ‘Six
Sigma’ and ‘Kaizen’ were applied across the whole design and build process to cut out waste in
design time, scheduling delays, and prototyping errors, as well as material waste, etc.
Once again an important element of this was the acceptance that building design needed to
become a collaborative exercise, rather than the God given domain of any one person. As in the
motor, aircraft and ship building industries, for example, recognition of the increasingly complex
nature of the building enterprise was seen as increasingly important.
Designing with partnering in mind emphasises communications, the importance of avoiding
delays, and the need to programme out errors. It also recognises the need to really know what
stocks & other ‘industry standard’ materials are readily available, how jobs will be done in
practice, and the need for a better and fuller understanding of the building and manufacturing
tasks involved.
Grasping the totality of the logistics involved was seen then, and remains today, of major
importance. Getting to grips with transport, ‘Right First Time’ and ‘Continuous Improvement’ processes were and are obvious
candidates for expanding the horizons of the design team. Equating the notion of ‘Lifetime Costs’ with the avoidance of delays and
the need to programme out errors, along with a sound knowledge of materials, processes and procedures remains vital. Although
accepting that good design avoids waste, then and now many ‘professionals’ - used to a more relaxed regime - found and find this
an unpopular constraint. Few, it seems are ready even now to accept responsibility for, and bear the cost of, any waste caused by
them.
As we move further toward ‘factory built’ homes clients and their professional advisors and consultants must understand that, to
produce a building in the factory requires all elements to be determined in detail before work commences, rather than muddling
through trying to resolve complicated design issues as a project progresses. While this is possible using sloppy ‘wet’ trade building
techniques, where adjustments can be made in-situ, complex off-site manufactured elements are much more difficult to alter.
Failure to understand this is both prejudicing MMC and costing clients and builders’ small fortunes to correct. Partnering for the
whole design, supply and construction chain is a vital process that must be developed to correct this.
Consequently, whilst moving with the times to incorporate all that is best and wonderful
and time saving and comfortable, and desirable in any building design we undertake,
manufacture, or build, I still find myself ‘shouting at the wind’ for fundamental shifts in
professional attitudes. However, the ‘winds of change’ are blowing and I do detect small
shifts. As construction moves ‘off-site’ into the factory these will greatly improve efficiency,
quality, and affordable delivery of all levels of social and private housing.
www.BenfieldATT.uk
Prof. Dr. Michael Benfield, 2017