The continued overall stagnation and even decline in construction productivity is no longer tenable. Neither is the industry’s failure to innovate. The current industry continues to be frustrated under an industrial era paradigm — with its structures and practices that cannot meet the mounting political and social pressures to develop low cost, high performance “green” buildings. The answer is for construction to adopt a performance paradigm — one characterized by computational science and systems thinking and management approaches.
In the performance paradigm there will be a heavy emphasis on performance standards and measures, innovation, sustainability and technology. Your future could be affected based on how well you adopt in these areas. As such, it may be prudent to study and plan for the future in this context. One important consideration will be the architects, building producers and specialty contractors that you align with — and their position on the performance paradigm.
You can learn more about the performance paradigm shift through research articles (aka white papers) and a Performance Building Blog . The introductory paper, "Performance Building" describes the five key transitions pushing the industry towards the performance paradigm:(1) Performance standards and measures, (2) Function-based computing, (3) Completed operating building focus, (4) Integrated innovation, and finally (5) Integrated optimization. The result of these transitions is a transformation from conventional “gray” and “green” buildings to high performance “green” buildings.
The Performance Building Institute presents a comprehensive set of technologies and strategies for accomplishing construction's transition into the performance paradigm. If this interests you, please contact the Institute by email info@performancebuilding.org.