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In Construction, Are We Better or Worse at Innovation than We Think We Are?

Most people wouldn’t think of construction as being a particularly innovative industry. But we’re actually better at innovation than most people give us credit for. It’s just that we’re not yet quite as good as we need to be.

When you list some of the innovations that have changed the way we build there are quite a few. Increased mechanisation, reinforced (and soon to be self-repairing) concrete, offsite, CAD, BIM, RTS. But is our list as impressive as other industries? Can we compete innovation-wise with just in time manufacturing or Silicon Valley? Probably not.

Much of the innovation we do is short-term and small scale. We are an industry that delivers projects with fixed durations – and that probably constrains our thinking. Tight margins also encourage a ‘play it safe’ mentality and limit our time and risk-taking capacity. Regulations can also be a hurdle as any new material or method has to prove that it is compliant with specifications, building regs, health and safety and environmental rules.

Or maybe those are the excuses we give ourselves because we’re not sufficiently bold with how we embrace new ideas.

The Innovation Mindset

Innovation is frequently misunderstood and confused with invention. The vast majority of inventions never see the light of day, either because they are not practical or don’t have a practical application. Innovation is the process that takes those ideas and inventions and converts them into something that delivers value.

The innovative mind is always questioning how things are done and is hungry for big ideas that can transform processes. The construction industry mindset is project-focused and concentrates its energy on solving immediate practical problems (something we are exceptionally good at).

Our Innovation Maturity

Osborne’s Improvement Opportunity (IO) App is a signal that we are serious about building an innovative culture, alongside our customers and supply partners. It allows us to capture ideas immediately, evaluate them, and adopt and develop those that add value, which could be time saved, improved safety, better performance or lower emissions.

We’re gradually getting better at networking with other businesses to develop smarter solutions, and better at collecting and evaluating data to prove the value of innovations. There’s also a supportive approach from the management teams across our businesses to embed an innovative culture.

We also promote innovation by working with organisations such as the Transforming Construction Hub whose remit is to bring together academics and industry to foster that cross over. And we plan to work with the Centre for Smart Infrastructure to develop our infrastructure capability.

In fact, Infrastructure has done a lot of innovative work, for example, on delivering access for all improvements for stations and bridge works within 24-hour closures. These projects are not completely unique but they are used to capture successes that can be applied to the next project.

We need to be better at quantifying the benefits of innovation and realising those benefits financially We still give too many of the benefits of innovation away for free in the procurement process.

And that throws down a challenge for the whole industry. How can we create an environment in which individual companies can realise the value of innovations that ultimately benefit everyone?

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