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.
As a subcontractor, it is not clear what the implications to your business will be. As general contractors have transitioned into managers, coordinators and brokers there will also be implications to the role of your customers as well. In the performance paradigm there will be a heavy emphasis on performance standards and measures, innovation, sustainability and technology. Your future could depend on how well you adopt in these areas. As such, you should begin to study and plan for the future in this context. One important consideration will be the owners, architects, engineers and building producers that you align with — and their position on the performance paradigm.
Subcontractors are invited to discuss and study the performance paradigm through research articles (aka white papers) and a Performance Building Blog . The introductory paper, "Performance Building" describes the strategies, structures and practices behind 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.