June 3, 2009: The President of the Association of General Contractors (AGC), Doug Pruitt, convenes a forum of interested leaders and professionals in Washington DC to address the question, "How do you drive innovation in an industry that doesn't innovate?"
Fall 2009: The National Research Council releases the book, Advancing the Competitiveness and Efficiency of the U.S. Construction Industry, which emphasizes the importance of innovation for meeting construction's economic and environmental challenges.
The green building movement and concerns over energy independence are highlighting the construction industry's need to deliver solutions. Many in the industry are trying to raise up an innovation movement, but pushing innovation in a highly fragmented industry, is not likely to meet with much success. The assumption of this paper is that innovation is a result of a healthy, or integrated, industry rather than a remedy for what ails it. The three-fold aim of this paper is to help the reader understand:
The construction industry's desire to innovate is tied to the issue of integration. Innovation will happen when integration happens. Integration will open up innovation. As integration leads to innovation, productivity will increase. Performance based structures and practices will be integral to establishing this movement.
Innovation will be stimulated and catalyzed through a combination of: (1) Cyber Discovery and Development, (2) Prototype and Composite Development, (3) Product, System and Prefabrication Development, (4) Project Level Development, and (5) Applied Research and Development.
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Innovation solutions are being pursued by a small number of designers, builders, manufacturers and software developers with the scale and mass to produce them. For the industry-at-large however, the Performance Paradigm, borrowing from the computing and internet "cloud computing" model will consolidate research and development into Cloud Innovation Centers. Available via the internet, a wide variety of innovative systems and products will be brought to market.
According to the U.S. Commerce Department, construction’s productivity has declined by 20% since 1964, while all industries' productivity increased by over 200%.1
The consensus is — and has been for decades — that construction lags in productivity because it lacks innovation. By this logic, improving innovation would cause higher productivity. As it turns out, however, innovation is not a cause, but the natural result of an integrated, performance-based industry, just as lack of innovation is the natural result of a fragmented industry. Too often innovation is treated as a solution itself that could fix the industry — the technological band-aid that could heal the productivity disease. Rather, innovation must be treated as a benefit of a healthy, integrated industry, and therefore industry reforms must first attend to fundamental structures and practices. Innovation will follow.
The purpose of this paper is to advance key transitions in structures and practices that will promote industry health and integration, and, ultimately, innovation. Because innovation and these transitions are part of a larger performance paradigm shift that construction must undergo in order to produce high performance buildings, this paper first discusses the bigger issue at hand: the shift from an industrial paradigm to a performance paradigm. The analysis then identifies specific Obstacles to Innovation, current industry structures and practices that impede innovation. The majority of the paper describes innovation in the performance paradigm, and is divided into three main areas: (1) five Innovation Categories that represent emerging sources of innovation (e.g., computational modeling and prototype practice) ripe for recognition, application and integration, (2) a strategy for Capacity Development and Application to promote integrated innovation among large and highly resourced manufacturers, building producers, software developers and other researchers, and (3) borrowing the transformational concept of cloud computing from the computing science, Cloud Innovation is a strategy for bringing premium research and development services to the building community by way of consolidated and networked innovation organizations.
THE PERFORMANCE PARADIGM
This is one in a series of white papers presenting a comprehensive solution for construction's productivity and innovation problems. The solution begins with understanding how construction still operates according to an industrial paradigm; the solution ends with an industry-wide shift to the emerging performance paradigm. While the industrial paradigm is characterized by linear logic and fragmentation, the performance paradigm uses computational science and systemic thinking to produce high performance. With new technology systems, building performance is no longer a vague marketing slogan, but a quantifiable quality.
Building performance is the quality of a building’s operation when measured against a standard. Consequently, without a standard, performance is guesswork. Because standards and measures are currently non-existent for whole buildings, building producers and building processes, no one can know quantitatively what the industry's performance is, much less how and where to fix it. Why don't standards and measures exist? Construction is massively complex. It has so far been impossible to collect, archive, organize and standardize sufficient building data for a comprehensive analysis. However, new technologies are emerging that use computational modeling to convert construction's complexity into useful data models.
For the sake of the economy, the environment and energy independence, the industrial paradigm is no longer viable for construction. Conventional buildings tax the environment, and conventional "green” buildings tax the economy. As political, social and marketplace forces begin to demand high performance buildings; the low performance industry must change. Construction must shift in order to perform.
So, the performance paradigm shift revolves around five key transitions in the industry's structures and practices:
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Performance Standards and Measures— The organization and analysis of the performance of the building product, the building project team, and the building delivery process. It requires collection and standardization of construction data.
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Function-based Computing —The sophisticated computational modeling system necessary for planning and processing complex project data. This cyber modeling system simulates standards for projects, and also validates and calibrates performance measures.
- Operating Building Focus — An industry focus on the life-cycle performance of the completed building — functional, operational and environmental (shift focus away from services, documents and production in accordance with those documents).
- Integrated Innovation — Performance standards and measures promote new interdisciplinary and integrated practices that naturally encourage innovation. Standards-driven innovation begins with manufacturers, but will soon spread to the building community generally.
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Integrated Optimization — Rather than optimizing a fragmented system, construction first needs to establish an integrated system, and then optimize that. There are, in fact, three main building systems that need to be established and optimized: the building organization, building process, and of the operating building.
When these transitions have been made, then the construction industry can be said to have entered the performance paradigm. The benefits of such a shift are many, and include high performance "green" buildings produced by a high performance industry, as well as the national and global recognition — and hopefully emulation — that will attend successful examples of innovation and optimization in such a complex industry.
OBSTACLES TO INNOVATION
The upcoming white paper, “Industry Perspectives” provides a detailed survey of the many obstacles to innovation that are woven through the construction structures and practices. Chief among these is fragmentation, or, rather, a multi-dimensional fragmentation that extends across disciplines (site, architectural, structural, mechanical, electrical, and functional), process tiers (design, management and coordination, building production and material production), building life-cycle (the process/becoming from completed building/being) and project team discontinuity (the reshuffling of people and organizations project after project). This discontinuity keeps the industry near the bottom of the experience/learning/improvement curve, where innovation doesn't happen. To transition into the innovating performance paradigm, construction must replace fragmented structures and practices that inhibit innovation (particularly new product and system development) with structures of multi-dimensional integration that encourage innovation.
Research and development good enough to solve future building challenges will not come from isolated designers or constructors working in isolated disciplines. It will not come from isolated projects either. This multi-dimensional fragmentation inhibits the interdisciplinary and consolidated approach necessary for holistic research and development practices. That is, without interdisciplinary perspectives, without systemic approaches to production and building cycles, and without the long-term collaboration of project team members needed for practical optimization and also research-guided innovation, the construction process will always resemble a series of "one-night-stands," where the objective is always the same, but the site, the project relationships, the performance and process always change. Moreover, the absence of integrated structures and practices creates an unusually diffuse and "shallow" construction community: because construction is fragmented into isolated disciplines, process tiers, building and project units, it's easy to enter most trades. The start up capacity is low in terms of capital, equipment and even skill level. This accounts for the four million design, construction and subcontracting firms that, due to their number, lack the depth and scale to bring innovation necessary for high performance.
For example, consider the difference between construction's multi-dimensional fragmentation and other industries' relative integration, and what this difference means for innovation. For most industries, innovation in the planning or design process benefits from interdisciplinary design teams, and innovation at the manufacturing level benefits from long-term designer-producer-manufacturer-vendor relationships that extend over multi-generational projects. In the example of the automotive industry, the design process for a new car integrates the designer, product engineer, developer engineer and manufacturing engineer, who can all innovate according to their combined, interdisciplinary understanding of car: the designer's aesthetic focus and the product engineer's innovative solutions will be encouraged or checked by the manufacturing engineer's understanding of the possibility of manufacturing such a design, and vice versa. Moreover, the relationship between manufacturers and vendors in most industries is multi-generational and covers thousands of products: the same team will collaborate on engines for generations of cars (there is no specification for an "engine" that is subsequently bid out among competing, independent "engine vendors." on a car by car basis). Therefore, innovations developed between a producer/manufacturer team on one "project" are continued and improved in subsequent projects. This is not the case in construction, where the manufacturers independently design and manufacture products — without collaboration from building designers — that may or may not serve the product function in the final building. Furthermore, commodity-based bidding practices actually discourage innovation at the sub-disciplinary level, because a new product or system development is a “proprietary product or system” that is effectively excluded from other projects (see the "Performance Standards and Measures" paper for a further explanation of this). According to this procurement practice, architects and engineers do their best to arrange the various component products and systems into a particular building system. This disjointed, haphazard process is repeated, from scratch, with every new building. Rather than the product of integrated, interdisciplinary design and relationships, innovation is left to chance. This same difference is also felt in the industry's organizational mass. Like the auto industry, the construction industry is huge. Unlike the auto industry, which is concentrated in a few large companies and their suppliers, construction is diffused over millions of firms. While Toyota, Apple Inc., and General Electric have the management, the vision and the funds for state-of-the-art research and development, your hometown's local contractors may not. Without some form of consolidation, construction will simply lack the mass to produce the level of innovation that the economy and environment require. Please note that this is not a call to wipe out the local and regional firms. In fact, one solution proposed specifically equips and enables local and regional firms to engage in innovative, high performance practices. Despite this inhibited and inhibiting state, there are emerging technologies and organizations with great innovative potential. The next section identifies these areas in a series of Innovation Categories, and concludes with a section on Strategies and Solutions for promoting innovation through multi-dimensional integration. INNOVATION CATEGORIES
Innovation Categories are five sources of innovation from different corners of the industry and academia. If construction adopts an integrated and systemic approach to research and development, these innovation sources may provide the economic and environmental solutions necessary for building in the high performance paradigm. Category 1: Cyber Discovery and Development Cyber Discovery Initiatives — CDI is the National Science Foundation's term for "revolutionary science and engineering research outcomes made possible by innovations and advances in computational thinking."2 Basically, if the construction community is going to defrag and become a systemic, integrated community where all parts interact in time and space in a coherent way, there needs to be an extremely sophisticated and powerful information processing system to organize and analyze this system. A million contractors with a million calculators cannot do this, but CDI can. Currently, Building Information Modeling (BIM) is the construction industry’s CDI hero. Even in its adolescence, BIM is already proving its value. However, BIM's potential remains largely uncharted, and construction will be an exciting horizon for software developers with advanced computational skills. The white paper, "Function-based BIM," details the future development of the BIM family, which provides the integrated holistic planning, design, procurement, construction and facility operation technology that many have envisioned. As fragmentation is dealt with, CDI will be free to operate among the integrated disciplines, process tiers, project stages, project teams, etc. This should lead to cyber discoveries in both the process performance side and the building performance side of construction. Category 2: Prototype and Composite Development For the first million toilet rooms designed last year, let’s say there were close to 800,000 toilet room composites designed. Other than colors, patterns and textures, less than 150 toilet room composite designs could have satisfied the majority of those 800,000. A small fraction of the thought and capital that went into designing 800,000 separate units could have sufficed for those 150 composites. The mass and scale of the final designs and production coordination would justify more total expenditure per unit: no one is going to invest in a team to research the most efficient, environmentally friendly, lovely and highly performing toilet room possible for a single project. However, if that model toilet room would serve as a composite for 8,000 projects, research and development costs would be justified. This principle holds true for the vast majority of spaces that make up the built environment. So, how does prototype practice work now, and how will it work once the shift is made to the performance paradigm? Although prototypes and composites are currently designed and used, like all current construction phenomena, fragmentation prevents their development and optimization. By establishing structures and practices of integration and consolidation in prototypes, this area will become a center of innovation. Currently, prototypes are possible at a variety of building process levels (the material level, the family level, the sub-assembly level and at the assembly level.) Every building is a super-composite of prototypical materials and products that differ at what is called the point-of-prototype. For a McDonalds or Wal-Mart, the point-of-prototype can be at the whole building level (i.e., there is little differentiation, other than site adaption). For most custom buildings, the point-of-prototype is at the material and family levels. A door hinge, an example of prototyping at the material level, is not custom manufactured, but selected out of a catalog and replicated thousands of times. When a prototype is taken beyond the material or customary assembly that is typical within a discipline (architectural, structural, etc.), that compound prototype is a composite — also known as a "kit-of-parts." Whole door assemblies or interior wall assemblies are routinely prototyped (at the contract document level) today. These are system composites. Prototyped rooms, or groups of rooms within spaces, are spatial composites. Generic references to prototype would include compound prototypes — composites.
Although architects and engineers have been making and using prototypes and composites for years, their potential is largely unrealized. Per usual, this is due to multi-dimensional fragmentation. When building teams and processes are integrated, prototypes and composites become valuable devices that reflect the interdisciplinarity and sustainability that attends multi-dimensional integration. Consider the above example of the 800,000 individual toilet rooms designs, most of which could have been satisfied by 150 integrated toilet room composite designs. When the 150 composites are integrated across disciplines, the interdisciplinarity integrates the knowledge of architectural, mechanical, electrical and functional systems. When the composites are integrated across process tiers, the inter-process integrates functional planning, design, product selection and production, and assembly. When the composites are integrated across the building life-cycle, sustainable design integrates all stages of the composite's life. Finally, when these composites are integrated temporally, project continuity integrates composites across multiple projects. In this situation of multi-dimensional integration, the interdisciplinary and inter-production team continues to improve the sustainable composite designs project after project. This prototyping strategy may seem to pertain more to optimization than to innovation (see “Integrated Optimization”). It is true that prototyping is optimization's quintessential practice, whether or not the prototype is innovative. However, because prototyping is also the quintessential practice of multi-dimensional integration, and because multi-dimensional integration stimulates holistic innovation, the position here is that prototyping will be an important area of future innovation. That is, once interdisciplinary and inter-production teams are able to collaborate over multiple projects (and aided by a system of performance measures and standards and functional modeling technologies), the multi-dimensional perspective will be able to see problems and solutions that the traditional uni-dimensional perspective has not. Moreover, because prototyping is more financially sustainable (mass and scale of final production will justify more total capital and intellectual expenditure per prototype), the innovations will reflect the benefits that attend generous investment.
Regarding toilet rooms and prefabrication, The Chronicle of Higher Education chronicles a successful example of prefabricated "bathroom pods" used for a 2008 project at Rice University.3This illustration indicates, multi-dimensional integration brings together in a "bathroom pod" the disciplines (architectural, mechanical, electrical and, functional), and sub-disciplines as well as the process tier (pods are designed, manufactured, and delivered to the site ready for installation). The reported advantages are "efficiency and reduction of waste," as well as ease of installation.
This high performance pod could rival, in terms of performance, the currently reigning pod in electronics: iPods and bathroom pods are prototypical products with obvious functional and formal differences, but there's no reason why the level of performance should differ. If the same kind of integrated project team that goes into researching, designing, testing, and manufacturing an iPod were applied to bathroom pods (or utility room pods, wall pods, kitchen pods, laundry pods, etc.), and if these bathrooms enjoyed a similar scale and range of production (in April 2008 over 206,000,000 iPod units sold worldwide), there's no reason why their performance couldn't rival the success of other prototypical products in other industries.
Unlike an iPod, the possible combinations of spaces and systems is much more complex for construction, hence the necessity of establishing some process for determining a good space or system for prototype. Pareto's Principle (aka, the 80-20 rule or law of the vital few) is a good place to start. At each level (material, family, sub-assembly, etc.) prototypes and composites would be established for twenty percent of the applications found in eighty percent of instances of a particular space, system or project type. In the example of the bathroom pod: of all bathrooms at least eighty percent would be candidates for prototyping. The other twenty percent would be custom designed and procured because of unique requirements or conditions, or simply because the customer wanted a custom bathroom.
After the What of prototyping is dealt with, the next question is How to prototype. Here again BIM emerges as the best technology for the task. BIM, working in an integrated environment, will power the development of composite design solutions.
The Geometric-based BIM illustration graphic shows a typical structural corner room level bay, a series of exterior wall assembly, and entry assembly composites. As the various composites are modeled under the principles of integrated innovation and optimization, they are stored in a virtual catalog for access by the design team. The virtual catalog may include actual products and manufacturers, generic products, or a combination. In either event the composite objects in the model have information embedded within, or links to associated data tables that hold and maintain associated information—catalog cut sheets, performance characteristics, cost, labor productivity units, etc. See the "Function-based BIM" paper for further explanation. Prototyping is difficult for architects to accept as it apparently undermines the traditional function of architecture, which is associated with unique designs that have sometimes approached artistic genius. However brilliant the 150 toilet room prototypes are, they're not High Art. The express concern for architects, in fact, is the commoditization of design, which turns art into a mass produced, completely generic product. It's true: prototyping will reduce the overall need for architects and engineers for some portion of the building market (there will always be a need for Gehry's and Calatrava's). However, "creativity" may be realized in many, many ways, and creativity and genius will be necessary to design large portions of projects according to high performance standards. Moreover, prototyping will redirect architects and engineers' efforts away from re-inventing routine spaces and systems and toward bigger and newer functional and aesthetic challenges which the performance customer will require. In sum, because prototyping establishes integrated structures and practices that develop a product across multiple disciplines and across thousands of projects, they create fertile, well-funded environments for the exchange of interdisciplinary knowledge and information — that is, fertile environments for innovation attentive to the integrated building system and integrated building community. Category Three: Product, System and Prefabrication Development Although there is a difference between Manufactured Products and Systems and Prefabricated Assemblies and Systems, they are presented here together because the lines of distinction often blur. The difference: manufactured products and assemblies are intended for any generic project; prefabricated assemblies and systems are intended for a specific project and are "made to order." At present, manufacturers are the primary source of innovation for building products. Although fragmentation and commodity-based bidding practices discourage manufacturers from performing new product or system development, there are some areas where high performance innovation has made inroads. Examples include building automation systems, high performance glass, etc. It seems probable, then, that once obstacles to innovation are removed, manufacturers will be best poised to launch innovative building products. The problem of causality is especially tricky here. Does the supply of innovative products cause a demand for them, or does the demand for them cause a supply of innovative products? (What comes first: the high performance egg or the high performance chicken?) That is, manufacturers will pursue collaboration with other manufacturers, architects and constructors to develop integrated and interdisciplinary products and systems, if the building community demands them. The current premise is that manufacturers will break this causality cycle: manufacturers will begin to supply innovative, integrated products and systems that the building community can't afford to ignore. Prefabrication is another potential area of innovation that the building community can't afford to ignore. Prefabrication naturally integrates disciplines and process tiers into controlled, automated and low-cost environments that are perfect for innovation. Prefabrication minimizes construction time and time spent in adverse weather and site conditions (lower labor costs), and can locate building composition at a remote site with easy access to skilled labor, easy waste disposal or recycle, and with all the benefits of self-supporting, ready-made components, and quality control. The saved time, capital and ingenuity can be redirected to innovation. Once the prefabricated practice is consolidated and standardized, early prefabrication innovations will probably be directed toward multi-disciplinary and sustainable building solutions. However, as always, the whole system must be considered. If sustainability is the ultimate system objective, then it's counter-productive to prefabricate units of such bulk and weight common to commercial and industrial construction and then transport them at a great capital and energy costs. To the end of sustainable prefabrication making sustainable products, there will be a number of considerations. To note just a few: (a) light-weight, high strength frames and composite structures, (b) packaging innovations to reduce job site debris and disruption associated with unloading and storing, (c) labor productivity and waste generation connected to the products installations and assemblies, and (d) well balanced and strategic manufacturing locations from the point of the natural resources to the project locations. There may need to be more mini-manufacturing and fabrication centers as a result. Other examples of areas of innovation for prefabrication include: (a) exterior curtainwall and wall panel systems are ideal units for pre-manufactured or prefabricated solutions, (b) integrated interior wall and ceiling systems need prefabrication solutions that will reduce amounts of field installed drywall (this trade is cheap, messy and very low-tech, but remains a staple of most building projects. It forces the use of piecemeal installation of mechanical and electrical systems and drags projects down and out. It is a large contributor of debris that has to be removed from the project site as well. The office systems furniture industry has actually accomplished much of this, but is not cost effective or applicable to many space use types), and (c) whole composites of rooms, whether mechanical, electrical, utility, and toilet, etc. will be prime candidates as well. The accurate evaluation of proposed assemblies of manufactured, prefabricated or pre-assembled systems or rooms requires a sophisticated cost and performance measurement system. Although such prefabricated units may initially appear more costly than the piecemeal approach, any holistic evaluation demonstrates how cost effective they are. Other cost-saving factors associated with prefabrication include: Of course, as infrastructure and capacity for such systems development grows, productivity and quality will also be improved, which will reduce cost and increase value. In the white paper, “Performance Standards and Measures,” the concept of a Product Productivity Index (PPI) is addressed.4 The principle is that key building products and systems will have a PPI that proportions the value of the product by the labor effort/cost needed to install it. This measure will drive manufacturers and fabricators to continue to develop their goods with increasingly improved PPI, which will increase the overall project productivity. Category Four: Project Level Development CDI, Prototyping, and Pre-fabrication are currently advancing, though at a very slow rate because of the sluggishness created by fragmentation. These innovation categories will experience breakthrough opportunities under the performance paradigm. Currently, at the project level there is very little if any innovation that takes hold throughout the industry. Areas of innovation will emerge under the performance paradigm. This will especially be the case as owners and their building producers begin to measure the building performance. Measurement, combined with incentives and rewards based on building performance will generate a great deal more interest in pursuing innovation. Modeling and technology tools will also catalyze the environment that will bring designers, mechanical and electrical specialists and managers together to work toward solutions at the project level. Modeling will be even more important at this level, even though there should be more physical “laboratory” and testing sites set ups. So whether virtually, or in a physical mock up setting, innovators will emerge among the project level architects, engineers, building producers and specialty contractors. Any one of these will be motivated to develop an idea and then go through construction’s version of the Deming/Shewhart cycle: plan, do, study/test/check, and act. Admittedly, there is a degree of speculation in this category because heretofore it has not been a source of innovation. Given the right environment, tools, and encouragement while also reducing the barriers to innovation, the likelihood of significant innovation coming from the designers and the field is very high. Category Five: Applied Research and Development Universities and vocational research institutions are obvious centers of information and innovation that will be better integrated into the construction industry in the performance paradigm. As owners and building producers become increasingly aware of the need to innovate, they will naturally turn to universities for consultants and researchers. Combinations of these Categories Many innovations will come from a combination of these categories. Examples may be helpful here. Energy solutions will be necessarily inter-disciplinary. Through technology, heating, cooling and lighting controls have been entrusted to the specialized disciplines of automated mechanical and electronic systems. To a certain degree, in the course of advancing more sustainable objectives, the solutions fall outside of the realm of the specialized automated mechanical and electrical disciplines. As with natural ventilation and lighting, other solutions combining cyber discovery, prototyping; product, system and pre-fabrication development, and project level development will result — as designers, building producers, manufacturers and researchers are brought together. Future systems will enable whole buildings to function like more natural “air and light handling units” in a way that will reduce the size and scope of mechanical and electrical systems, and significantly reduce the energy required for buildings to operate. Innovations in the area of building codes and regulation, too, will be an integrated affair. Most current building codes were adopted decades before sustainability was an issue. As a result, to make buildings safe, constructors made them increasingly heavy and full of additional building program, scope and systems. By now there should be substantial data available regarding the effectiveness of these codes, and, perhaps, alternatives to the traditional logic ("heavier is safer"). In the context of sustainability, and with the power of new technologies, producers and code authorities need to investigate better methods for protection and safety. If this is done in conjunction with an integrated innovation movement, it's possible that material composites, high strength (light-weight) materials, and innovative programming will come together to produce lean, green, safe, and healthy buildings. In the high performance industry there will be new building codes and regulations that are responsive to sustainability goals without compromising safety and well being. In sum, it's not that construction doesn't need innovation, or that there's no one capable of producing premium innovation. There are many innovative needs and many innovative individuals capable of producing — indeed, already producing — new products and systems that reflect advances in computational science, prototype practices, and project-level development. However, as long as the construction industry is fragmented and diffused, there will just be a bunch of isolated innovative individuals in isolated disciplines trying to solve the same problems project after project. Construction needs consolidated, powerful, interdisciplinary innovation for projects throughout the industry — in short, it needs to develop sufficient capacity to support premium innovation. The next section proposes some strategies and solutions for building capacity. CREATING AND APPLYING INNOVATION THROUGHOUT THE INDUSTRY To meet performance standards and measures, manufacturers and building producers must become fluent in systems thinking and computational science. Unfortunately, this is more complicated than making Deming required reading for all project managers and having an architect around who knows BIM. In fact, to meet performance standards and measures, manufacturers and building producers will have to pursue serious capacity building. Capacity, in this case, has two essential parts: (1) a research and development team profoundly proficient in computational science and systemic, interdisciplinary thinking. These are the cognitive skill sets and training that researchers possess (in the form of in-house R&D teams or as an out-sourced service provided by an innovation organization (see below)). (2) the integration of research to include all disciplines and process tiers not typically available to any one construction organization in the current industrial paradigm. In short, true capacity building is a complicated, time-consuming and expensive task that is probably out of the question for the majority of building producers and even manufacturers. Where capacity exists, there will be at least four organizational centers from which innovation will naturally emanate: These organizations, though very large, constitute a small portion of the construction community. The question remains: where and how does Cloud Innovating Centers It may be helpful to introduce the concept of cloud computing from the information technology industry, which has an IT dilemma similar to construction's innovation dilemma. To participate in an online, digitized marketplace, many businesses have to house their own IT department - an expensive investment. Cloud Computing and cloud services have emerged as virtual IT suppliers that provide IT services to businesses that otherwise lack the capacity to house their own IT department. The rationale behind cloud computing is compelling; per usual, Wikipedia's article is helpful: Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet… Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the "cloud" that supports them. Cloud computing customers do not generally own the physical infrastructure serving as host to the software platform in question. Instead, they avoid capital expenditure by renting usage from a third-party provider. They consume resources as a service and pay only for resources that they use….Cloud computing users can avoid capital expenditure (Cap Ex) on hardware, software, and services when they pay a provider only for what they use... Other benefits of this time sharing style approach are low barriers to entry, shared infrastructure and costs, low management overhead, and immediate access to a broad range of applications. (Emphases added, "Clouding Computing," Wikipedia) It should be clear at this point how cloud computing could serve as a model for innovation in construction. Instead of expecting every architectural, engineering or construction company to come up with the state-of-the-art research and development team, Cloud Innovation Centers could be established to provide R&D services for the vast majority of the construction community. Cloud Innovation Centers would deploy innovative experts within various disciplines and production levels to serve the industry at large. In the same way that cloud computing provides services to users who could not otherwise access such services without great costs, cloud innovation would provide integrated and interdisciplinary research and development services to the building industry's product and system developers or other innovators who otherwise could not possibly generate that kind of multi-dimensional research themselves. This is particularly the case where innovation involves multiple disciplines or needs to be tried and tested at multiple process tiers. If the cloud concept or something similar doesn't evolve to support innovation needs, the industry could face major consolidation, as in the restaurant and retail industry. That is, the construction community's innovation needs could be satisfied by a Google-like cloud innovation organization that provides the capacity development building producers need to compete, or the construction community could become a set of Wal-Mart's or Lowe's that are big enough to support their own capacity development. CONCLUSION Innovation in construction will continue to be severely hampered until the industry makes the performance paradigm shift. However, once performance measures and standards are operating, the industry will re-organize itself to meet performance objectives. Like other high-performing industries, construction will integrate and consolidate, and will be able to pursue the Capacity Development and Application necessary to support premium research and development. This integration and consolidation could take any number of forms, but perhaps the organizational form most true to the spirit of the performance paradigm would be Cloud Innovation, the "cloud" of innovation organizations that would provide state-of-the-art research and development services to the construction community. It's great that our mp3 players and search engines are so innovative, but where we really need innovation is in our foundational industries, like energy and construction. As national concern grows over energy and the environment, there will be increasing demands for innovation and new product and system development in construction. Construction will become the next candidate for government mandates and legislation, which may not be an ideal solution. If, however, performance standards are implemented and the construction community starts researching and developing cost effective, innovative products and systems, then the economy can enjoy all the benefits of a market-driven solution. Political participation could then be more positive with grants and incentives to innovation. The vision for a highly innovative construction industry is currently focused on energy and the environment (necessity being the mother of invention). Sustainability will continue to be the primary recipient for research dollars. There remains pent up demand for innovation in other areas as well: technology advancements for functional (space-specific) equipment and systems, whether medical, educational or industrial, etc.; advancements in the integration of building automation systems toward smart building systems, which will become part of the overall facilities or asset management systems; systems and compound building assemblies that integrate disciplines an sub-disciplines; lighter and more productive building solutions; and new opportunity for development of construction field automation and related tools and equipment. The series of white papers, "Performance Building" may be the first comprehensive proposal and plan for addressing this issue of innovation in the construction industry. It is intended to take the matter primarily out of the discussion stage and into the action stage, and requires leadership to take these next steps. ____________________________ 2 “Cyber-enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI).” nsf.gov. National Science Foundation. 19 August 2009 ["Cyber-enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI)"].
3 “At Rice U., a Prefabricated Bathroom Saves Time and Money.” Chronicle.com. 30 July 2008. The Chronicle of Higher Education. 19 August 2009 ["At Rice U., a Prefabricated Bathroom Saves Time and Money"]. 4 Lea, George. Army Corps of Engineers. Personal Interview. June 2009. 
Most of the whole composites listed here already exist in some version, but because of the organizational fragmentation, have not been able to reach the scale or mass to achieve cost effectiveness. See picture showing a "bathroom pod" being installed in a student housing project at Rice University (its prototype was discussed above). There is a significant opportunity to expand this level of innovation and optimization throughout the industry at large.
innovation from the industry at large develop — the other ninety-plus percent of the building community — including emerging or average size manufacturers, fabricators, architects, engineers, builders, and subcontractors?
The cloud graphic illustrates how the Cloud Innovating Network would relate to potential innovators who would use the network for research and development. These centers or companies could be organized around particular market sectors, or possibly some other area where focused R&D is performed. There could be clusters of collaborating cloud innovating centers as well.