We encourage our clients to join us on this journey by allowing others to benefit from the knowledge and systems we create for each project.
I quickly transitioned to a forerunner of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority where I spent nine years in central government before taking on my current role as Programme Director for the Construction Innovation Hub, with the aim of delivering the Construction Sector Deal.I’ve worked through three different governments - Labour, Coalition and Conservative - but through them all there has been an increasing focus on the importance of infrastructure and transforming construction.. One thing I’ve noticed through this period is that we tend to think of ourselves in the engineering community as being innovators.
We think we're quite good at working out what needs doing, but actually, the real skill, and one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned during my time in government, is that working out what to do can be quite easy.It's working out how to get it done that becomes hard.. At present, our focus is on transforming construction into a more future-facing sector.We need to ask important questions about how to make it more inclusive and representative of the society it serves.. To begin, it’s essential to recognise that we can’t achieve our goals working in isolation.
Problems like carbon emissions, poor build quality, labour shortages and the housing crisis - they can all be improved if we collectively refocus our energies and unify our processes.The creation of the Construction Innovation Hub is a response to this need.
The Hub aims to overcome the industry’s current fragmentation and adopt a new, data-driven, industrialised construction approach.
The goal is to harmonise, digitalise and rationalise demand across industry projects and programmes.As we move forwards, this will be vital to transforming construction; creating a community or ‘movement’ and sharing best practice will benefit us all.. IKEA enhancement.
Ikea is another excellent example of a Platform that most people are familiar with.As well as the physical components, Ikea have also created their own ecosystem..
So, while there is a ‘kit of parts’ that includes components common to lots of different pieces of furniture (fittings, hinges, drawer bases and sides, dimensional grids etc.), the process has also been highly standardised: the format of the instruction book is always the same, and you only ever need a limited selection of common tools.. Ikea also have their own configurator for kitchens, ‘3D Kitchen Planner’, which allows users to create a 3D model which generates a list of components and a price.