It is interesting to look at how innovation has developed in different industrial sectors, especially in those related to, or comparable with the Building Industry. The car, aircraft, train and yacht building industries all have similarities to the building industry: Their products include shelter and protection, and provide environments to sustain human life, but each product is produced in a very different way. This is the result of economies of scale, market competition, and the flexibility of governing business structures to adapt and meet market challenges. This set of videos below suggests a set of parameters with which innovation can be measured on a set of sliding scales. These might be:
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| Measuring levels of innovation |
In the car industry, humans are mainly need to check that the automated work has been carried out correctly. Plant, logistics, sequencing and timing etc., is all set out to handle the specific components which make up the product.
Boeing has the world's largest assembly line building. This Air Bus video shows plant, production facilities and lifting machinery are all set up to ensure the rapid assembly of the aircraft, with the most efficient human interaction.
Trains come together in more traditional engineering workshops with lifting systems which can be used for a variety of tasks depending upon the order. This video shows less automation than the others, with engineers in control of their work and responsible for their own programme.
Yacht building is even more of a manual operation. The assembly here takes place in a workshop using a combination of computerised design and analysis, digitised pre-production followed by skilled and unskilled labour. Working with composites can be a messy business despite the clean and elegant product it can create.
This video expresses how prefabrication and off site construction can assist with the speed and quality of a house build, but the constructional tolerances are not as tight as the other examples and there is a lot more physical labour and man-handling of materials and components to get them in to place. Innovations in this example have shortened the number of site processes, but the shape and form of the product has not changed significantly. It could be argued that much of the innovation is hidden in the end.
Innovation in the building industry might not be as progressive as these other industrial sectors but it is making advances. It is noticeable though, that while the more actively innovative sectors let performance dictate form, as if capturing the industrial zeitgeist, the building industry seems to value aesthetics and often traditional forms and materials. It's worth an investigation to see how much this leads the development of the industry, or if it happens as a consequence.
