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Innovation in construction is essential for growth. The industry strives to remain competitive using a variety of approaches and needs to engage structured initiatives linked to proven innovation concepts, techniques and applications. Even in mature markets like the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) sector, where business behaviour is generally considered as being risk averse, it is increasingly important to embed innovation into mainstream business practices. In Construction Innovation and Process Improvement a number of wide ranging issues from construction practice in different countries with different contexts are presented to provide a rich collection of literature embracing theory and practice. Chapters are divided into three broad themes of construction innovation relating to: Theory and Practice; Process Drivers; and Future Technologies. Several questions are posed, including for example: What is particularly unique about construction innovation in theory and practice? What are the major drivers of construction innovation? What factors are needed to support and deliver future construction technologies? In attempting to respond to such questions, the book sheds new light on these challenges, and provides readers with a number of ways forward, especially cognisant of the increased role of globalisation, the enhanced impact of knowledge, and importance of innovation. All these can have a significant impact on strategic decision-making, competitive advantage, and sustainable policies and practices. Part One deals with change management, technology, sustainable construction, and supply chain management; Part Two addresses innovation and process improvement drivers, including strategic management, concurrent engineering, risk management, innovative procurement, knowledge management; Part Three explores future technologies in construction – and particularly, how these can be harnessed and leveraged to help procure innovation and process improvement.
This myth-busting book shows large companies can construct a strategy, system, and culture of innovation that creates sustained growth. Every company wants to grow, and the most proven way is through innovation. The conventional wisdom is that only disruptive, nimble startups can innovate; once a business gets bigger and more complex corporate arteriosclerosis sets in. Gary Pisano's remarkable research conducted over three decades, and his extraordinary on-the ground experience with big companies and fast-growing ones that have moved beyond the start-up stage, provides new thinking about how the scale of bigger companies can be leveraged for advantage in innovation. He begins with the simply reality that bigger companies are, well, different. Demanding that they "be like Uber" is no more realistic than commanding your dog to speak French. Bigger companies are complex. They need to sustain revenue streams from existing businesses, and deal with Wall Street's demands. These organizations require a different set of management practices and approaches -- a discipline focused on the strategies, systems and culture for taking their companies to the next level. Big can be beautiful, but it requires creative construction by leaders to avoid the creative destruction that is all-too-often the fate of too many.
Modelled on the concept of Industry 4.0, the idea of Construction 4.0 is based on a confluence of trends and technologies that promise to reshape the way built environment assets are designed, constructed, and operated. With the pervasive use of Building Information Modelling (BIM), lean principles, digital technologies, and offsite construction, the industry is at the cusp of this transformation. The critical challenge is the fragmented state of teaching, research, and professional practice in the built environment sector. This handbook aims to overcome this fragmentation by describing Construction 4.0 in the context of its current state, emerging trends and technologies, and the people and process issues that surround the coming transformation. Construction 4.0 is a framework that is a confluence and convergence of the following broad themes discussed in this book: Industrial production (prefabrication, 3D printing and assembly, offsite manufacture) Cyber-physical systems (actuators, sensors, IoT, robots, cobots, drones) Digital and computing technologies (BIM, video and laser scanning, AI and cloud computing, big data and data analytics, reality capture, Blockchain, simulation, augmented reality, data standards and interoperability, and vertical and horizontal integration) The aim of this handbook is to describe the Construction 4.0 framework and consequently highlight the resultant processes and practices that allow us to plan, design, deliver, and operate built environment assets more effectively and efficiently by focusing on the physical-to-digital transformation and then digital-to-physical transformation. This book is essential reading for all built environment and AEC stakeholders who need to get to grips with the technological transformations currently shaping their industry, research, and teaching.
The construction industry is currently experiencing accelerating developments concerning societal demands along with project complexity, internationalization and digitalization. In an attempt to grasp the consequences of these demands on productivity and innovation, this edited book addresses how innovation is likely to take place with a more long-term perspective on the construction sector. While existing literature focuses on organizational discontinuity and fragmentation as the main reasons for the apparent lack of innovation in the industry, this book highlights the connectivity of construction actors, resources and activities as fundamental for understanding how innovation takes place.Through 15 empirically grounded chapters, the book shows how innovation is part of construction processes on various levels, including project, firm and industry, and that these innovation processes are characterized by organizational and technological connectivity over time. Written by European business management scholars, the chapters cover empirical cases and examples from both a multi-organizational and a multi-international perspective in terms of covering the viewpoints of different industry actors and the contexts of several different European countries including: Sweden, Norway, the UK, Italy, France, Hungary and Poland. By illustrating how connectivity is part of innovation processes in the creation of single-product innovations, of various innovations within and across projects, as well as a fundamental aspect of the processes in which innovations cross nations, the book provides a new angle on how to understand construction innovation and where the industry might (or needs to) be heading next. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in construction management, project management, engineering management, innovation studies, business and management studies.
The book is developed to provide significant information and guidelines to construction and project management professionals (owners, designers, consultants, construction managers, project managers, supervisors, contractors, builders, developers, and many others from the construction-related industry) involved in construction projects (mainly civil construction projects, commercial-A/E projects) and construction-related industries. It covers the importance of construction management principles, procedures, concepts, methods, and tools, and their applications to various activities/components/subsystems of different phases of the life cycle of a construction project. These applications will improve the construction process in order to conveniently manage the project and make the project most qualitative, competitive, and economical. It also discuss the interaction and/or combination among some of the activities/elements of management functions, management processes, and their effective implementation and applications that are essential throughout the life cycle of project to conveniently manage the project. This handbook will: Focus on the construction management system to manage construction projects Include a number of figures and tables which will enhance reader comprehension Provide all related topics/areas of construction management Be of interest to all those involved in construction management and project management Provide information about Building Information Modeling (BIM), and ISO Certification in Construction Industry Offer a chapter on Lean construction The construction project life cycle phases and its activities/elements/subsystems are comprehensively developed and take into consideration Henri Fayol's Management Function concept which was subsequently modified by Koontz and O'Donnel and Management Processes Knowledge Areas described in PMBOK® published by Project Management Institute (PMI). The information available in the book will also prove valuable for academics/instructors to provide construction management/project management students with in-depth knowledge and guidelines followed in the construction projects and familiarize them with construction management practices.
Construction innovation is an important but contested concept, both in industry practice and academic reflection and research. A fundamental reason for this is the nature of the construction industry itself: the industry and the value creation activities taking place there are multi-disciplinary, heterogeneous, distributed and often fragmented. This book takes a new approach to construction innovation, revealing different perspectives, set in a broader context. It coalesces multiple theoretical and practice-based views in order to stimulate reflection and to prepare the ground for further synthesis. By being clear, cogent and unambiguous on the most basic definitions, it can mobilise a plurality of perspectives on innovation to promote fresh thinking on how it can be studied, enabled, measured, and propagated across the industry. This book does not gloss over the real-life complexity of construction innovation. Instead, its authors look explicitly at the challenges that conceptual issues entail and by making their own position clear, they open up fresh intellectual space for reflection. Construction Innovation examines innovation from different positions and through different conceptual lenses to reveal the richness that the theoretical perspectives offer to our understanding of the way that the construction sector actors innovate at both project and organizational levels. The editors have brought together here leading scholars to deconstruct the concept of innovation and to discuss the merits of different perspectives, their commonalities and their diversity. The result is an invaluable sourcebook for those studying and leading innovation in the design, the building and the maintenance of our built environment.
The first edition published in 2010. The response was encouraging and many people appreciated a book that was dedicated to quality management in construction projects. Since it published, ISO 9000: 2008 has been revised and ISO 9000: 2015 has published. The new edition will focus on risk-based thinking which must be considered from the beginning and throughout the project life cycle. There are quality-related topics such as Customer Relationship, Supplier Management, Risk Management, Quality Audits, Tools for Construction Projects, and Quality Management that were not covered in the first edition. Furthermore, some figures and tables needed to be updated to make the book more comprehensive.
This richly-illustrated reference guide presents innovative techniques focused on reducing time, cost and risk in the construction and maintenance of underground facilities:A primary focus of the technological development in underground engineering is to ease the practical execution and to reduce time, cost and risk in the construction and mai
1. Serendipity and innovation -- 2. The innovation process -- 3. Innovation in construction -- 4. The history and future of innovation in the construction industry -- 5. Strategy and innovation -- 6. Organizing for innovation -- 7. Managing the risks of innovation -- 8. Conclusion : we need a reality-check.
Clients have been identified as critical for building delivery but have been under-researched with only a few studies about them. This book seeks to address this gap. A deeper look into the nature of construction clients and their relation to building users exposes more fundamental questions related to the activity of building and the activity in the building. These fundamental questions include 'How do clients get what they want?', 'How do clients cope with the building process?', and 'How are clients being shaped by building(s)?'. This book on clients and users is structured around three main themes: Agency is concerned with the classical agency/structure dichotomy on actions, roles and responsibilities or, put differently, whether actors can act freely or are bound by structural constraints. Governance is related to the interplay between clients and the supply system: clients govern the supply system but are at the same time governed by the supply system through different processes and mechanisms. Innovation deals with construction innovation and what part clients and users play in this struggle between change and stability. The book includes theoretical and conceptual frameworks on what constitutes clients and users as well as case studies on R&D themes of relevance to practice.