The Role of Public Agencies in Fostering New Technology and Innovation in Building (1992)

Few studies of the building-related industries include any consideration of changes in technology that have actually occurred over the past several decades. The committee undertook a brief and selective review of these changes to provide a basis for its assessment of the rate of innovation in these industries.

The U.S. Office of Technology Assessment (1987) characterized technological innovation in the construction and materials industries in four categories: (1) development of new technologies within individual firms; (2) application or modification of new technology developed outside of the firm; (3) combining existing technologies in novel ways; and (4) incremental advances in existing techniques. It is generally difficult to distinguish innovation in the second two categories, although members of the committee suggested that these account for the preponderant share of all innovation in building, for both the construction process and the products thereof.

Much is made of advancements in computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) in the automotive and electronics industries. Similar advancements are changing the ways that building designers and constructors do their jobs, and are increasing productivity in the process.

Early progress in the field was spurred by the development, in the 1960s, of the COGO system (named for its ability to handle coordinate geometry) that helped highway engineers locate new routes and structural engineers analyze building frames. The innovation of an effective and—for the time—user-friendly program that solved problems common to almost all parts of the diverse engineering profession spurred development of tools for soil and rock mechanics, steel and concrete structures, highway construction planning, and an array of other applications.

These tools required large computers and programming sophistication that limited their value to those professionals and firms who were sufficiently large or specialized to justify the investment needed to gain access to a system. The general-purpose CAD systems that began to appear in the 1970s, offering more effective data management and faster updating of the huge number of drawings required for the construction of a large facility, had the same problem.

The appearance of powerful desktop computers—the PC (personal computer) and distributed workstations—signaled a change. Programmers made great strides in developing easier-to-use software, and the total investment required to begin using CAD came down to levels that virtually any engineer, architect, or planner could afford.

However, the machines still were tied to the office desktop. Applications in construction were limited primarily to project scheduling and accounting, and to designers' revisions of preconstruction drawings into ''as-builts." Now, in the 1990s, the situation is changing quickly.

Constructors are finding that CAD systems allow them to ask 'what if' with respect to how hoists, cranes, and other large equipment will fit and infract on the job site. The systems help coordinate trades. They facilitate calculation and control of materials quantities. Powerful portable computers—the new generation of "laptops"—are durable enough for use in the field. With data connections to the central office, site superintendents and field engineers can have full access to all available information about a project.

The new technology, while boosting productivity, is creating what ENR,³⁹ chronicle of the construction industry's day-to-day activities, termed "cultural chaos." Traditional ways of conducting business among owners, designers, and constructors are changing as constructors acquire design capability, and designers, having already input data for their own purposes, find it easy to make quantity estimates and do other tasks normally left to the constructor. Both groups, as well as owners who could find such data useful in subsequent management of their facilities, are unused to sharing and cooperation. Issues of potential liability and copyright ownership are arising. Those involved in

design-construction development, because they create the design files and then use them in-house for construction, avoid some pitfalls and are leading in this broadening application of computers in aid to design and construction.

Space heating, cooling, lighting, and other activities make the building sector one of the primary consumers of energy in the U.S. economy. The oil crises of the 1970s and continuing increases in energy process, concerns about global warming and other large-scale environmental effects of energy use, and building owners' ongoing efforts to control operating costs have motivated substantial effort to develop new technologies for the control, conservation, and reduction of energy use.

One study of both gas and electric household appliances shows that the 1985 average efficiency of new appliances purchased, as well as the efficiency of the most efficient new appliances available, are consistently better than the estimated average efficiencies of appliances in service (see Figure E-1); (Geller et al., 1987). In many cases, the best available unit is 30 to 40 percent more efficient than the average unit purchased, and current research and development activities promise to reduce unit energy use as much as 40 to 50 percent more during the 1990s.

Space heating and ventilation are major energy consumers in buildings, as well as important factors in determining how well a building is judged to perform. Innovations in these areas thus have both monetary and non-monetary payoffs. The committee conducted an informal survey of federal government mechanical engineers and produced a list of 16 specific innovations that have entered practice in the past 25 years (see Table E-1). The committee made a similar survey of government electrical engineers (see Table E-2). Two items on the lists are identical (item 3: variable frequency drives, and item 6: energy-monitoring and control systems).

While the committee decided to exclude the housing sector from much of its discussion, members noted that the refinement of dimensional lumber in the late nineteenth century, by Bemis and his successors, was a major innovation in home building. Arguments have been advanced to suggest that uniquely American 2 x 4 stud and balloon-or platform-frame building systems are highly flex-

ible, inherently economical, and even "democratic," because virtually anyone can use them with a minimum of special knowledge or skill. ⁴⁰ A recent study of the home-building industry identified more than 100 specific innovations in housing construction that have supplemented this basic system since 1945 (see Table E-3); (Slaughter 1991).

In the areas of nonresidential building, the past several decades have witnessed the introduction of a variety of new structural materials and techniques for enclosing space and resisting loads, and for constructing these structures. Table E-4 lists major examples.

The development of fabric tension structures can be traced to the pioneering work of Frei Otto in the 1960s, but building applications did not achieve widespread or notable commercial use until nearly two decades later with the advent of Teflon-coated fabrics, which promised longer life and better performance (Otto, 1969).

These new fabric materials provided lightweight and relatively inexpensive cover for such large, open spaces as sports stadiums and performing arts arenas. Their development resulted from close collaboration among architects, structural engineers, and product manufacturers. The design of several very attractive

buildings (notably the Hajj terminal in Jedda, Saudi Arabia), involving cooperation among a broad cross section of design, engineering, and product development specialists, demonstrated the new potential for coated-fabric structures.

Lightweight steel stud framing systems emerged from a combination of factors, including the desire to find a fire-resistant substitute for wood-based framing products, mainly for light commercial applications; a concerted effort on the part of U.S. steelmakers to move from automotive applications into the building industry; a general degradation in the quality and availability of dimensioned framing lumber; and participation of the U.S. gypsum industry in the development of design, engineering, and construction methods.

Design professionals, including architects, interior designers, and engineers, worked with building code officials, steel fabricators, and architectural specialty manufacturers to develop standard solutions and approaches, which continue to be developed for both residential and commercial applications.

The steel framing industry has developed a series of structural (rather than veneer, partition, or furring) applications for lightweight steel, including approaches that can be applied to low-rise multistory buildings. The brick and concrete masonry industries, which traditionally captured a larger proportion of labor and materials in such markets, have resisted these innovations.⁴¹

Raised-floor wire management systems emerged as a direct response to the explosion in wire-based computing and communications technologies in offices and the need to provide a convenient, safe, and flexible means for handling wires. Initial raised-floor product designs, produced mainly to provide electrical continuity and adequate underfloor wire management space, failed to perform adequately from the standpoint of appearance, cost, and acoustical quality.

When architects, interior designers, and electrical engineers were retained by several key manufacturers in subsequent product design efforts, a second generation of more satisfactory raised-floor systems emerged. European product manufacturers have developed thinner raised-floor systems that do not employ structural frameworks to support removable floor tiles.

Personal environment control furniture systems resulted from the proliferation of electronic office equipment, but they were also a response to difficulty experienced with conventional building mechanical systems in providing for human comfort in office environments. Architects, mechanical and electrical engineers, interior designers, and furniture manufacturers collaborated to develop a new concept for servicing individual workstations, based on the principle of placing controls and output devices where they are needed, rather than in remote locations.

In contrast to experience with raised-floor wire management systems, the early involvement of a broad range of design disciplines and extensive concept testing with potential users appears to have avoided unsuccessful initial results.

Geller, H., J. P. Harris, M. D. Levine, and A. H. Rosenfeld. 1987. The role of federal research and development in advancing energy efficiency: A $50 billion contribution to the U.S. economy. Annual Review of Energy 12:357–397

Office of Technology Assessment. 1987. International Competition in Services: Banking Building Software Know-How . Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Otto, F., 1969. Tensile Structures: Cables, Nets and Membranes. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Slaughter, S. E. 1991. "Rapid" innovation and the integration of components: A comparison of user and manufacturer innovations through a study of the residential construction industry. Ph.D. thesis submitted in the field of Management of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.