|
Items in cart [0] |
Questions? Call 888-624-8373 |
PAPERBACK PDF BOOK Free Resources |
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2009. National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Terms of Use and Privacy Statement |
Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter.
Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
Do not use for reproduction, copying, pasting, or reading; exclusively for search engines.
OCR for page 55
4
Research and Development in Construction
Research and development (R&D) in construction includes a
broad range of activities directed toward improving quality, pro-
ductivity, and efficiency of the materials, equipment, labor, and
management of construction. The value of R&D activities is well
accepted as means for improving productivity and generating new
ideas in electronics, telecommunications, genetic engineering, and
other technical fields. The linkages between construction research
and application, however, have been more difficult to document, de-
spite advances made during the twentieth century in new equipment
and materials, largely because of the great number of mostly small-
scaTe builders and equipment and materials producers. For this same
reason, the construction industry has greater difficulty mobilizing
resources needed to support substantial research programs.
As a result, the committee observed several troubling trends:
. Other countries appear to be putting more effort than the
United States into construction R&D;
. Other countries are working hard to improve the "hardware"
of construction by improving construction methods and developing
technology for automation (including robotics);
. A more innovative environment exists in most foreign firms
because R&D has been integrated into overall operations;
55
OCR for page 56
56
BUILDING FOR TOMORRO W
. Other countries are willing to back longer-range research ef-
forts through the slow but methodical methods needed;
~ R&D in other countries tends to be proprietary to the com-
pany sponsoring it, leading to some duplication but increasing com-
mercial rewards for success;
.
Vertical integration within large foreign construction firms
has made easier the utilization of research results by the operating
units of their companies;
. There is less emphasis on research related to the "manage-
ment" of construction by firms in other countries, since they tend
to acquire these technologies through joint ventures with American
firms or by sending their young professionals to U.S. universities for
training.
U.S. CONSTRUCTION RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
Accurate appraisals of R&D investments in the U.S. design and
construction industries are stubbornly elusive. Available statistics
are scarce and often recorded in a manner that can be misleading. In
another study* done by the Building Research Board the following
observations were made on R&D expenditures in the U.S. design and
construction industries:
. Construction contractors (both general and specialty)-$54
million
.
$838 million
million
Manufacturers of construction materials and equipment
Federal agencies (both consumers and nonconsumers) $200
All other sectors (based on estimate) $111 million
Total annual construction-related R&D $1,223 million
Based on a total volume of construction of some $312 billion in
1984, these estimates represent about 0.4 percent of sales invested
in R&D, far less than other mature industries such as appliances at
1.4 percent, automobiles at 1.7 percent, or textiles at 0.8 percent.
(This expenditure level is also well below Japanese construction R&D
expenditure rates.) U.S. contractors, architects, end engineersinvest
less than 0.05 percent in R&D as a group, a fraction of the amount
they spend on liability insurance alone.
~ Construction Productivity' National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 1986.
OCR for page 57
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN CONS TR ACTION
57
Both lack of resources and competing priorities are factors in
this low level of R&D expenditure. Faced with intense price compe-
tition, many designers and constructors find it difficult to appropriate
substantial resources for R&D. Tax regulations that may require cap-
italization of R&D expenditures increase the demands R&D would
make on current cash flows. The natural aversion to risk of many
businessmen makes R&D spending that may yield no immediate
commercial benefit more difficult to justify even when business is
good, and easy to cut when times are bad. Not one of the many
nedium and small firms can afford a meaningful research program,
and there are few mechanisms to facilitate joint funding of research
that will yield distinct benefits to the participating firms.
What the optimum level of U.S. construction R&D spending
ought to be is a complex question for which the committee found
no ready answer. Observation of U.S. performance in introducing
technological innovation and an eroding competitive position make it
apparent that the level of spending viewed either as an investment
for increased productivity or as an indication of openness to new
ideas is too low.
Direct government involvement in construction research is lim-
ited but significant:
.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has been a principal
source of support for university-based research activities for the U.S.
design and construction industries. Through the NSF, National En-
gineering Research Centers are being established, such as the Center
for Advanced Technology for Large Structural Systems (ATESS) at
Lehigh University. In addition to NSF funds of $10.4 million over
a five-year period, other state-related institutions and the private
sector are providing matching funds. The major goal of the ATESS
center is to do research and develop technology benefitting U.S.
structures-related industries in design, fabrication, and construction,
and inspection and protection of structures in service.
The federal government laboratories such as the Army's Con-
struction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL), the Navy's Port
Hueneme Civil Engineering Laboratory, the Tyndall Air Force En-
gineering and Services Research Center, and the National Bureau
of Standards' Centers for Building Technology and Fire Research
conduct research on a diverse range of topics with military and civil
applications.
OCR for page 58
58
BUILDING FOR TOMORROW
~ Grants from the Army Corps of Engineers have produced ma-
jor new research programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology and the University of Illinois.
The Construction Industry Institute at the University of Texas
at Austin is an outstanding example of research without direct gov-
ernment support. More than 65 organizations representing owners,
contractors, and 25 academic institutions have combined their re-
sources to tackle advanced construction research. The institute then
represents an important model for broader public-private partnership
in construction research.
OTHER EFFORTS NEEDED
An exarn~nation of research ideas for addressing societal needs,
undertaken by the Technical Council on Research of the American
Society of Citric Engineers in 1979, indicates a long list of research
suggestions, most oriented toward improving the methodology of
engineering. The list includes a large number of projects related
to improving methodology, many of which could be valuable in the
international arena.*
The architectural research community is based almost exclu-
sively in universities, so that the potential exists for linking such
research to teaching programs. The civil engineering research com-
munity is also largely based in universities, but there is some me-
chanical, electrical, or electronic research of direct relevance to the
construction sectors being done by these other departments. To a
limited extent both architectural and civil engineering research in-
stitutions do projects related to mechanical and electrical systems.
Most research institutions have projects tied to computer-based de-
sign and engineering, but more work is needed, particularly to bring
new results into practice, through teaching and professional outreach
programs.
While spending on research often exceeds U.S. rates, the work
going on in construction sector research programs in other coun-
tries tends to mirror programs in U.S. universities and government
laboratories, with three major exceptions:
*Addrc`sing Societal Needs of the 1980's Through Civil Engineering Research, The
American Society of Civil Engineers, New York, New York, 1979.
OCR for page 59
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN CONSTRUCTION
59
. The work supported by the Swedish government on behalf
of the building industry tends to be much more people-oriented,
describing user requirements and how these requirements should be
accommodated in design. However, there does not appear to be
any better match between the research programs and the teaching
programs in the universities than in the United States.
. The Soviet Union has six major research units within its con-
struction agency Gosstroy. Five of these units do traditional science
and engineering research of the type done in government building
laboratories around the world, but one research unit concentrates on
"cybernetics." Not much is known about the work of this unit, but
it potentially could represent an interesting area for collaboration.
With their government's strong encouragement, the six large,
integrated Japanese construction companies all support research by
internal units. These programs include hundreds of people, excellent
facilities, and a broad spectrum of subjects (see box).
This committee has not undertaken to recommend a complete
agenda for research in construction and design, and planning of
such an agenda by a single centralized body would in any case be
unproductive. However, committee members feelthat certain types
of research are clearly needed, such as these two examples:
1. The general subject of "diagnostics" is talked about within
the architectural research community as an area for methodological
improvement. Work on this subject could be greatly enhanced if uni-
versity researchers and practicing architects worked in parallel with
firms that are in the business of designing and marketing diagnostic
instruments. A program that provides special funds to research units
(as contrasted with individuals) within universities that had already
obtained an agreement for matching funds from instrument compa-
nies would encourage vertical integration between the architectural
sector and the equipment-producing sector.
2. The development of safety methods for structures during the
construction phase could benefit from case studies. For example,
the NBS Center for Building Technology has just completed a study
of the collapse of L'Ambiance Plaza in Bridgeport, Connecticut, a
building which was being constructed using the lift-slab method.
This collapse could serve as a case study for a structural engineering
faculty to develop a continuing education course for engineers in
practice, thus providing a link among a federal laboratory, university
research, and professionals. While this subject is unique and timely,
OCR for page 60
60
BUILDING FOR TOMORRO W
OCR for page 61
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN CONSTRUCTION 61
_ ~--- ~ ~' ~--~ - _ _
the concept is to have this work serve as a model for similar projects
on a range of structural safety problems and solutions.
As will be discussed further in Chapter 6, the development of
advanced concepts for infrastructure poses an international challenge
of enormous proportions. The present practice of dealing with urban
transportation, water and energy supplies, waste management, and
communications is based on inventions developecI nearly a century
ago. In the largest cities of the world these old inventions are clearly
not well suited to dealing with present problems, and in the small
communities of the developing world there has always been a kind
of hand-me-down, makeshift quality to the nature of infrastructure
investments.
New technology for infrastructure could possibly help the United
States avoid the endless cutting and patching of our lO~year-old sys-
tems, and could also provide whole new market opportunities in the
international sphere. There should be special programs to concen-
trate on infrastructure development within the university research
community. These programs should encourage university units that
are skilled in the areas of the "emerging technologies" to explore
ways of creating new or higher-performing systems for infrastruc-
ture. Technologies such as new ceramics, advanced microelectronics,
biotechnology, and genetic engineering should be incorporated into
joint programs with the architectural and civil engineering faculties,
and especially to provide graduate students from these technological
areas the opportunities to work on infrastructure. In such programs
universities could associate with trade and professional groups, such
as the American Public Works Association, to introduce engineers in
practice to new technologies and their capability.
The committee recognizes that some engineering schools can best
be encouraged to expend research and teaching in construction by
OCR for page 62
62
BUILDING FOR TOMORROW
evidence of employment interest for their graduates. Programs may
be needed to link employers with graduate programs in construction
by having the university offer special graduate programs for mature
employees of professional firms.
As the Japanese mode! illustrates, university-based activity is
not the only way that construction R&D can be accomplished, but
in the United States, academic institutions have become the primary
centers of research. This pattern is unlikely to change in the fore-
seeable future, nor is it clear that it ought to change. What is clear
to the committee, however, is that better mechanisms for linking
research to construction practice are needed.
There is a need as well to increase the speed with which ideas
from one field of research are tested for their value in other fields,
and with which ideas of value enter practice. The case of the Bell
Laboratories (Case Study 4), drawn from an industrial situation
very different from construction, is nevertheless instructive because
of their great success in linking research to the market. In construc-
tion, where the market is distributed among so many suppliers and
buyers, projects built with federal government funds can be used to
demonstrate new technology. A good example is the introduction to
U.S. transit construction of precast concrete segmental tunnel liners
(see Chapter 6~.
The U.S. Department of Commerce has noted, "Over the next
twenty years it is totally reasonable to expect that we will see
widespread application of the following technologies: advanced mate-
rials, microelectronics, automation, biotechnology, computing, mem-
brane technology, superconductivity, and lasers."* Today and in the
near future many other new technologies may be added to the list.
Mechanisms are needed to expose these new technologies and con-
struction to one another, and to produce design and construction
professionals competent to make the connections required for inns
vation. Besides institutional research, there must be training and
education.
*Effect of Structural Change in the U.S. Economy on the Uric of Public Works
Scr~nccs, U.S. Department of Commerce, Washington, D.C., 1987.
OCR for page 63
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN CONSTRUCTION
CASE STUDY 4:
THE BELL TELEPHONE LABORATORIES
63
The invention of the telephone is perhaps the single best modern
example of how new technology can alter building and infrastructure.
The BeR Teieph one Laboratories have for more than 60 years been
one of the leading U.S. centers of research and innovations that have
changed how to design and build individual structures en c] cities, as
weR as the more basic structure of the economy and society.
The committee recognizes that the Be]] Labs are a product of
a private sector monopoly company that had vertical integration
and an ability to make elective decisions about resource allocation
and management strategy, with greater ease than is the case in U.S.
design and construction. Nevertheless, many characteristics of the
Bed Labs can serve as a useful mode] for institutional arrangements
needed to strengthen U.S. building research. It is instructive to look
at the history and accomp~ishmeIIts of this organization:
The invention of the telephone was not inspired by a pre-existent
popular demand. Rather, it came about largely through the ingenuity
and vision of one man Alexander Graham Bell. His belief that there
was a great potential need for two-way voice communication over a
distance, a need of which few men had been conscious, was confirmed
by its immediate success and spectacular growth in spite of early
technical limitations.
By the end of the first fifty years a great new industry had been
developed. There were nearly seventeen million telephones in the
United States, almost twelve million of them in the Bell System. And
in perhaps no other field had the force of scientific research in support
of engineering development been so effectively demonstrated.*
As the AT&T Company Annual report for 1913 said:
At the beginning of the telephone industry there was no art of
electrical engineering nor was there any school or university conferring
the degree of electrical engineer. Notwithstanding this the general
engineering staR was soon organized, calling to their aid some of the
most distinguished professors of science in our universities.
As problems became more formidable and increased in number
and complexity, the engineering and scientific staff was increased in
size and in its specialization so that we now (1913) have working
at headquarters on the problems of the associated companies some
550 engineers and scientists carefully selected with due regard to the
practical as well as the scientific nature of the problems encountered.
*A History of Engined ring and Scicnec in the Bail System, Bell Laboratories,
Murray Hill, New Jersey, 1975.
OCR for page 64
64
BUILDING FOR TOMORRO W
It can be said that this company has created the entire art of
telephony and that almost without exception none of the important
contributions to the art has been made by any government telephone
administration or by any other telephone company either in this
country or abroad.
By 1924 the technical programs of the Bell System had so grown
in range and intensity, and in number of personnel, as to suggest
formation of a single new organization to handle most or all of these
activities. Such an organization was formed on December 27, 1924,
and started operations on January 1, 1925, under the name of Bell
Telephone Laboratories, Incorporated. This corporation had a dual
responsibility- to the AT&T Company for fundamental researches
and to the Western Electric Company for the embodiment of the
results of these researches in designs suitable for manufacture. At the
date of incorporation, the personnel numbered approximately 3,600,
of whom about 2,000 were members of the technical staff, made up
of engineers, physicists, chemists, metallurgists and experts in various
fields of technical endeavor....
Technological innovation had formed the indispensable core for
telephony's growth up to 1925, but was even more significant to the
future because so much of it was fundamental: the way was being
prepared for more powerful systems yet to come, which would be
essential to the enormous expansion felt to be lying ahead. Perhaps
more significantly, the application of scientific methods to solving
the "system" problems of telephony set a pattern that influenced
industrial research and development by demonstrating the power
of these methods and developing techniques of management that
encouraged their use.
Backing up the work on systems, which had laid the groundwork
for so much that was yet needed, were the successful management
techniques which had been developed for conducting and applying
research, the means for closely controlling the quality of manufactured
product, and a type of organization providing close integration of the
user, technical developer, and manufacturer.
The Bell Labs have produced the transistor, the laser, the solar
cell, and the first communications satellite, as we]] as sound motion
pictures, the science of radio astronomy, en c] crucial evidence for the
theory that a Big Bang created the universe. While they are a private
laboratory (in the distinction made in the United States between
government and private research work), their fin ancia] support was
largely generates' from a kind of tax on every telephone in the United
States (before the breakup of AT&T in 1984), which in turn was
a]]owec! by their rate examiners (a public institution designed to
monitor a monopoly utility). The potential for direct emulation by
a government/industry research center is limited, therefore, but the
operating principle of striving for increased systems performance by
OCR for page 65
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN CONSTRUCTION
65
teams of scientists, engineers, manufacturers, en c] systems operators
is a good one.
Today's telephone caller uses components Bell never dreamed of,
today's driver depends on systems Daimler and Benz never thought
of, and today's homeowner switches on a power and light system that
Edison never envisioned. These discoveries have long since been em-
bedded in mammoth networks of technology that no single individual
invented.
Technological systems evolve through relatively small steps mark-
ed by the occasional stubborn obstacle and by countless break-
throughs. Often the breakthroughs are labeled inventions and patent-
ed, but more often they are social innovations made by persons soon
forgotten. In the early days of a system such as electric light and
power, inventors played the prominent role. Then as the system ma-
tured and expanded to urban and regional networks, others came to
the fore. Electric light and power systems today are not just scaled-up
versions of the Pearl Street station that Edison introduced in New
York City in 1882. By the turn of the century, for example, it was the
utility manager, not the inventor or engineer, who played the major
role in extending round-the-clock service to many different kinds of
customers to the night shift chemical plant as well as the rush-hour
electric streetcars.*
*Thomas P. Hughes, The inventive continuum, Science 84, November 1984.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
civil engineering
