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.
Michael Benfield February 2017
-Ends -
Prof. Dr. Michael Benfield is a Chartered Environmentalist. He predicts that current pressures for more housing will increase demand for Off-Site Production and
MMC (Modern Methods of Construction) leading to new standards of professional capability, project design and the development of new management tools for
the housebuilding and construction sector. Listing Chartered Builder, Chartered Surveyor and Chartered Manager amongst his credentials, he chairs leading UK
timber engineers Benfield ATT. Based in Caldicot, Monmouthshire, they are a ‘full service’ timber Design and Build group using 3D design as a key efficiency tool.
www.BenfieldATT.uk
Images: 1) The Timber Engineer 2) Building Prototype in Factory 3) Explaining the process on-site