As with the desired shift to Modern Methods of Construction in the design and construction industry, we need to address the cultural blockers to the change, and lower the barrier to entry so that it becomes both the right thing to do, and an easy thing to do.. We want the transition to cleaner technologies and fuel sources to become an irresistible, straightforward decision for investors, which means making them more profitable, and working with the grain of human behaviour.
Leadership and facilitation here are key.In Design to Value, all elements of the project stay in play.
Collaborative teams question the value drivers as they go along and they even question the problem statement.Sometimes problem statements can be rewritten – part way through a project, answers might be found but the team may determine they are insufficient, and perhaps the very question they are answering needs reframing.Everything has to be fluid.
This approach means that the architect or engineer does not simply design or build a structure; they become part of the business, seeking to solve a problem or open up new ways of working..In one instance, Bryden Wood were asked to design a factory.
They observed that workers had to wear heavy personal protective equipment (PPE) to enter a certain room.
They asked themselves, ‘What if we imagined a scenario in which we didn’t need the chemical that makes the PPE necessary?’ Although it was beyond the scope of construction, they realised that wearing PPE for eight hours a day is hot and difficult, uncomfortable and inefficient, at odds with the values of the enterprise.It requires a change in the skill sets required in laboratories: scientists who develop skills in equipment engineering and coding or hardware and software engineers who develop skills in science.
The current education system does not produce cross-fertilised disciplines (although skills like coding are becoming more endemic in the cohorts entering the workforce today).. Perhaps a more pressing problem is the fact that the new workforce of the 2020s is not keen to travel into an office or laboratory to work, preferring working remotely.. For research work and smaller more specialised laboratories, the automation story is different.Without the scale, the investment in robotised systems against simple improvements in efficiency does not add up.
The released value of scientists being freed up to spend more time analysing, discussing, collaborating and thinking is not well quantified.Islands of automation may be seen as investable to allow new science.. Added to this there is not a joined-up ecosystem that looks at today’s smallscale testing as tomorrow’s large-scale roll-out, meaning that testing protocols are often developed in ways that inhibit or slow future automation.. Change, adaptation and flexibility.
(Editor: High-End Doorbells)