Bazley, B. I.
2002
CMHC, Technical series 02-104
| "There are many proven innovative technologies available to the residential construction industry, but even with modern and aggressive information dissemination techniques, it still requires 15 to 25 years for a new technology to be widely adopted by the industry. This means that, on average, the Canadian residential construction industry makes use of only some 50 per cent of the available quality-enhancing or cost-cutting innovations at any given time. And half of this advantage happens only during the last five to six years of an innovation's introductory period. The unique structural nature of the industry and limited resources pose inherent barriers to pursuing innovation adoption.
The delay in uptake can limit advances in housing construction quality, cost efficiencies and environmental benefits. A key question, therefore, is how to encourage builders and subcontractors to more rapidly adopt innovative approaches, using proven technologies, tools and practices.
The proposed strategy and work plan for this project differ from the three traditional means of disseminating information: training, demonstration and research networks or construction centers. Training often focuses on individual technologies and usually ignores issues of costing, marketing and interpersonal and inter-trade relationships. Demonstration housing projects and construction centers tend to highlight entire systems and are frequently used primarily as marketing tools. Such projects or centres often address non-quantifiable issues, such as healthy housing or energy conservation.
An alternative approach, proposed and tested in this study, involves the simultaneous introduction of numerous, costeffective innovations which a builder and subcontractors first apply to one or two houses. It is anticipated that some innovations will prove a success, some will generate a neutral response, and some will be dropped. Once the builder and trades see the benefits of certain innovations, it is thought that they will continue to use them, forcing competitors to adopt these or other innovations in order to remain competitive.
The approach focuses on results rather than processes and is considered more aggressive than one of simply encouraging innovation adoption. The objective is to help ease and multiply pro-innovation decisions. In this way it is similar to adoption programs found in major manufacturing spheres such as the auto or aircraft industry.
For these reasons, the approach is referred to as "forced" innovation adoption. |
