National Academies Press: OpenBook

Federal Policies to Foster Innovation and Improvement in Constructed Facilities: Summary of a Symposium (1996)

Chapter: SUCCESS IS NOT SERENDIPITOUS: MAKING CONSTRUCTION INNOVATION WORK IN THE REAL WORLD

« Previous: IDENTIFYING THE BARRIERS TO CHANGE
Suggested Citation:"SUCCESS IS NOT SERENDIPITOUS: MAKING CONSTRUCTION INNOVATION WORK IN THE REAL WORLD." National Research Council. 1996. Federal Policies to Foster Innovation and Improvement in Constructed Facilities: Summary of a Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9065.
×

SUCCESS IS NOT SERENDIPITOUS: MAKING CONSTRUCTION INNOVATION WORK IN THE REAL WORLD

Ken P. Chong
National Science Foundation

The central theme of this symposium is federal policies to foster innovation. We have heard a lot about design-build. I'd like to give some observations. I recently drove on the autobahns of Europe. I noticed they don't have too many potholes there, and there is no speed limit either. I understand that their pavements are twice as thick as ours. They not only design-build, they also have to maintain it for a certain number of years. That may be one way to go.

The global picture of what is at stake when we talk about this improvement in innovation in constructed facilities is as follows. The total cost of construction in the world is about $1.5 trillion; that is 10 to the 12th power or roughly 10 percent of the gross national product of the world.

The U.S. share of that is about $500 billion, according to a recent National Science Foundation-Civil Engineering Research Foundation survey (NSF/CERF). About one-tenth of that, about $50 billion, is in the federal construction area. This level of funding could act as a catalyst to promote innovation. And that's precisely what we have in mind. The U.S. construction industry, again according to the NSF/CERF survey, accounts for about 0.5 percent of the sales in research and development (R&D) in this country. Industry in the U.S. spends on average about 3.4 percent of its funds on R&D. The construction industry really spends about only one-seventh of the U.S. industrial average on R&D. According to an Office of Technology Assessment report for Congress, this is 30 times less than Japan and about 8 times less than the major European counterparts.

Infrastructure in this country is worth about $20 trillion. According to Dr. Dave Sharmer, one of the administrators of the Department of Transportation, constructed infrastructure of transportation is about $2.4 trillion. So of this $20 trillion worth of infrastructure, about $2.4 trillion of that is in transportation. A lot of these constructed facilities are 50 years old or more. Like the interstate

Suggested Citation:"SUCCESS IS NOT SERENDIPITOUS: MAKING CONSTRUCTION INNOVATION WORK IN THE REAL WORLD." National Research Council. 1996. Federal Policies to Foster Innovation and Improvement in Constructed Facilities: Summary of a Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9065.
×

system, they were built in the Eisenhower era and are deteriorating. Deterioration is caused by corrosion, stress fractures and fatigue, overuse, and other factors. If you look at corrosion alone, the estimate is $250 billion a year in corrosion losses in the United States. Any new technology that we can develop to monitor, predict, sense or mitigate the corrosion early, will be quite beneficial. Suppose for example, we could mitigate the effects of corrosion and make the structure last 10 percent longer? That could equal a cost savings of $25 billion. This is about seven times the budget for NSF, which is $3.5 billion.

With that kind of perspective, you can see that innovation pays. We are looking at life-cycle performance, efficiency, improved quality. The life cycle is a useful concept. We still need to overcome some of the challenges. For example, how do we characterize and quantify the life-cycle costs so that the policy makers can make intelligent decisions? As an example, let's say we spent 10 percent more initially on the material or on the construction of a structure to double the life of this structure and save energy. Those are tremendous payoffs. But how can we quantify those payoffs? That is one of the challenges.

Figure 1 illustrates one of the initiatives which I have helped to develop at the National Science Foundation. It is called Civil Infrastructure Systems and is a $55 million initiative.

FIGURE 1 Civil Infrastructure Systems

Suggested Citation:"SUCCESS IS NOT SERENDIPITOUS: MAKING CONSTRUCTION INNOVATION WORK IN THE REAL WORLD." National Research Council. 1996. Federal Policies to Foster Innovation and Improvement in Constructed Facilities: Summary of a Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9065.
×

We are looking into the next generation of infrastructure, which we think should possess some of the following characteristics. The structure doesn't tell you whether it is about to collapse or not. It doesn't have the intelligence. It doesn't have the sensors. It doesn't have the control. The next generation of structures might have some or all of these things. They may be more environmentally friendly and provide the feedback and the control to the user to make it more comfortable to stay in. These are some of those attributes that we think are the payoffs.

Suggested Citation:"SUCCESS IS NOT SERENDIPITOUS: MAKING CONSTRUCTION INNOVATION WORK IN THE REAL WORLD." National Research Council. 1996. Federal Policies to Foster Innovation and Improvement in Constructed Facilities: Summary of a Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9065.
×

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Marcel H. Cheyrezy is Director of the Research and Development Department of the Bouygues Group and associate professor of civil engineering at the École Normale Supèrieure de Cachan. Mr. Cheyrezy received his engineering degree from the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussèes in Paris. Mr. Cheyrezy is Chairman of GMC—the Rilem Technical Committee.

Suggested Citation:"SUCCESS IS NOT SERENDIPITOUS: MAKING CONSTRUCTION INNOVATION WORK IN THE REAL WORLD." National Research Council. 1996. Federal Policies to Foster Innovation and Improvement in Constructed Facilities: Summary of a Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9065.
×
Page 47
Suggested Citation:"SUCCESS IS NOT SERENDIPITOUS: MAKING CONSTRUCTION INNOVATION WORK IN THE REAL WORLD." National Research Council. 1996. Federal Policies to Foster Innovation and Improvement in Constructed Facilities: Summary of a Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9065.
×
Page 48
Suggested Citation:"SUCCESS IS NOT SERENDIPITOUS: MAKING CONSTRUCTION INNOVATION WORK IN THE REAL WORLD." National Research Council. 1996. Federal Policies to Foster Innovation and Improvement in Constructed Facilities: Summary of a Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9065.
×
Page 49
Suggested Citation:"SUCCESS IS NOT SERENDIPITOUS: MAKING CONSTRUCTION INNOVATION WORK IN THE REAL WORLD." National Research Council. 1996. Federal Policies to Foster Innovation and Improvement in Constructed Facilities: Summary of a Symposium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9065.
×
Page 50
Next: EXPERIENCES FROM AROUND THE WORLD »
Federal Policies to Foster Innovation and Improvement in Constructed Facilities: Summary of a Symposium Get This Book
×
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!
  1. ×

    Welcome to OpenBook!

    You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

    Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

    No Thanks Take a Tour »
  2. ×

    Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name.

    « Back Next »
  3. ×

    ...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

    « Back Next »
  4. ×

    Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

    « Back Next »
  5. ×

    Switch between the Original Pages, where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

    « Back Next »
  6. ×

    To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter.

    « Back Next »
  7. ×

    Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

    « Back Next »
  8. ×

    View our suggested citation for this chapter.

    « Back Next »
  9. ×

    Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

    « Back Next »
Stay Connected!