The highest aqueduct the Romans ever built, described as "the most daring construction" of its day, supplied the provincial town of Nemausus (modern Nimes) in Gaul (France) with a daily estimate of 44 million gallons of water. The most spectacular part of it is now known as the Pont du Gard. The description on the UNESCO World Heritage List of this remarkable feat of engineering reads: "The hydraulic engineers and ....architects who conceived this bridge created a technical as well as artistic masterpiece." The construction industry; where there is opportunity to participate in "remarkable feats of engineering", where there is a great variety of career opportunities to choose from, where one can contribute in tangible ways to improved ecology, national security and the national economy, is attracting fewer young people than in decades past. This reality is a symptom of what ails the industry; it's low productivity and lack of innovation. The industry's ability to draw new talent is critical. The Performance Building Institute wants to address issues like these.
Today the industry is at a turning point. Opportunities to apply and even help develop game-changing research exist for the next generation of design and construction professionals. Transitioning out of industrial-era structures and practices, the industry will benefit from the expertise of those studying architecture, engineering, construction. Beyond the traditional building sciences, people trained in other fields (computer science, manufacturing, energy and natural resources, management, graphic design and the humanities) will play a more vital role in the construction industry. Contributions from a wide variety of professionals will be key to a successful transitioning of the industry.
The construction industry offers an enormous opportunity to impact the economy, ecology and national security — and therefore our culture and society's well being. With the increasing demand to produce innovative, cost-effective, high performance buildings, industry leaders are asking hard questions and trying to solve what may appear to be "unsolvable", i.e., low productivity and a lack of innovation plague the industry. But, our questions are influenced by the answers we seek. That is, the industry's focus on improvement is best when lined up with what the market is demanding. In other words, we mustn't work to improve the record player, when what the market wants is an improved iPod. In its quest to discover and produce high performance buildings, a new generation of design and building professionals are needed to apply systems thinking, computational science, and new energy to generate construction's version of the iPod.
This is a call for tomorrow's construction industry professionals to bring the kind of systems thinking and computational science that made the iPod possible, that converted the library's card catalog to a computer, that gave us wikipedia. As it is, the current construction industry labors under practices and structures from the days of the record player. There are opportunities now for you to engage in research and discovery that will help grow you and the industry.
The Performance Building Institute's proposed performance paradigm is one answer to construction’s industrial-era structures and practices. You may learn more about the performance paradigm through the Performance Building Blog and a series of white papers available on this website. 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.
If this interests you, please contact the Institute by email info@performancebuilding.org.