‘Housebuilders are backward when it comes to IT’

This post is in response to a discussion thread within the ‘New Homes Hub UK’ discussion group on LinkedIn as posted by Simon Wilkins.

The discussion addresses an issue that I have a long association with and which has been interesting to re-visit.

The Curate’s Egg
Rather like the curate’s egg, the industry is good in parts and there are certainly some housebuilding companies who are genuinely modernist when it comes to the use of IT and new technology.

However, these are still possibly the exception rather than the rule.Things weren’t helped by the fact that any exposure to hands-on computing until 1991 had involved DOS based software with it’s dull, cryptic interface, keystroke commands and monochrome screens in orange or green.

Real Men Don’t Use Computers
Until the late 1980’s I, like many, had equated technology solely with computing and in turn computing with science and maths – both of which I’d always managed to studiously avoid.

In housebuilding, unless you were an architect, quantity surveyor, accountant or an IT geek, you didn’t get involved hands-on with computers – you just pondered over the results they produced and made ‘he-man’ business decisions based on the output.

Seeing The Light
This was during my phase as development director at Balfour Beatty Specialist Homes where I was responsible for new developing joint venture business and project managing the pre-construction phases of custom urban mixed redevelopment projects and niche high value housing.

I enjoyed my time at Balfour Beatty and was not only involved in the P&L operational aspects of housebuilding but also charged with looking at how my subsidiary might develop in a strategic sense.

This was the era when Balfour Beatty was owned by BICC Plc – which at the time was a major global cable technology business.

BICC was very keen to investigate how the adoption of new technology might be usefully embedded within Balfour Beatty’s construction and spec development businesses.

As a result, I found myself being asked to look at how technological-focused thinking might be applied within the residential development lifecycle – and which ultimately included the use of modular design, factory based prefabrication, Just-In-Time delivery, building materials technologies, joined-up IT using networks to improve the efficiency of data and knowledge transfer and – the one that really caught my imagination – intelligent building systems for automating the quality and efficiency of a building’s internal environment in response to its real-time use and function.

This was also at a time when the Japanese construction giants were poised to develop a foothold in Europe and there was a definite sense that their technology-driven approach could pose a serious threat to the old-style, labour intensive, in-situ wet building methods and claims-driven mentality that so characterised the UK building industry in particular.

However, we all know what then happened – the Japanese economy took a nose-dive, the technology-driven threat disappeared, the UK went into recession and by the time the industry recovered in the mid-late 90’s the good-intentions of pre-recession strategy and change were forgotten and – even despite the attempts by the Latham Report – the industry largely went back to it’s traditional ways of thinking and doing things.

By this time, I had left direct employment within the housebuilding industry and was servicing it from a specialist consultancy viewpoint in relation to technology – partly providing ‘gatekeeping’ type knowledge to an enlightened few as well as project managing various early ICT related projects typically concerned with either data transfer or marketing.

As a result of internet and WWW I began specialising in digital media communication – initially from the perspective of construction sector project team communications but then broadened out to designing and delivering web based multimedia information, marketing and CPD e-learning systems.

Between 1995-1998 I spent 75% of my time engaged as a consultant on two large pan-European R&D projects concerned with identifying new construction sector related broadband products and services and working with a mix of major construction groups, national telecom operators and technology companies. This was a particularly interesting period and led to various related spin-offs including my involvement in construction sector related CPD education with a specific focus on ICT and multimedia.

However by 1999 I had broadened my operational activities to encompass a wider variety of industries including medicine and banking and working with doctors and bankers has provided a useful insight into how other sectors perceive and interact with IT (and technology in a broader sense).

And Finally…..
Looking back at the housebuilding sector with my technologist hard-hat on, the fact that it lags behind in its adoption and appreciation of IT is, I believe, the result of a number of factors including:

– An historical lack of internal R&D

– Old-style corporate culture which is perpetuated by handed-down philosophy and autocratic hierarchical management with only lip-service being paid to e.g. employee feedback and innovative ideas and suggestions.

– Lack of bottom-up / holistic strategic thinking

– An ‘After you Claude’ mentality but which is then direct conflict with the equal mentality of of ‘Not invented here’ syndrome.

– Supposedly customer-led but in reality hates having to adapt its product citing tight margins, overheads, building costs, keeping prices low as the key reasons for resisting change.

– Housing is largely provided by a national based industry mostly immune to non-native competition and the associated different ideas and approaches that might otherwise help to enforce change

– Real change is only often effected as a result of either legislation or market competition

– Technology is not seen as an intrinsic aspect of core operational business

– Rather than having strong degree of internal expertise and knowledge technology is often seen as a specialist function and left to external consultancies and agencies to provide

– Lack of sustained support and promotion of technology by associated professional bodies, trade press and CPD level education.

Educashun
Having to again address the perception that ‘Housebuilders are backward when it comes to IT’ is rather disappointing in the sense that after all these years nothing has seemingly changed very much and that the sector has somehow managed to remain unaffected by all that has happened in relation to technology since the early ‘90’s.

However, it is also encouraging in its implied suggestion that there is still an opportunity to educate and help effect change.

 

Surveyors and New Technology – An Oxymoron? Discuss…

(*This is a re-post from an earlier blog written in January 2010.)

I have actually been prompted to scribble something here as a result of picking this month’s edition of ‘RICS Business’ and finding that much of it is devoted to encouraging RICS members (AKA chartered surveyors…) to get going with online social networking. This is to be applauded and it is commendable that the RICS has seen fit to devote a great amount of space to flagging the issue at the start of the year when thinking is supposedly fresh and people open to new ideas.       

As one who battled away in the mid 90′s evangelising about ‘the web’ and digital media to bemused and largely sceptical audiences of chartered surveyors, I do hope that 2010 does indeed turn out to be the year when the digital penny finally drops.

It is nevertheless disappointing to see yet again in hard print that, despite all that has come to pass in relation to the digital world in the last decade, the  perception apparently remains that the UK surveying profession is ’…lagging behind other sectors…’ in it’s embrace of new technology.

Indeed, if we were to momentarily leave aside the more generic elements of digital media marketing and social networking, how many surveyors would know what the terms BMS or KNX mean and their role in energy management and sustainability? – or instantly make a connection between SMART phone GPS awareness, ‘tag’ reader technology and their implications in relation to a potential myriad of property sector related applications?   

Admittedly as an RICS member I know I am rather uncharacteristic of my breed and was an exceptionally early adopter of emerging new technology back in 1992 after I left my role as development director of Balfour Beatty’s Specialist Homes division to focus on property and construction related ICT.

I suppose that I was fortunate in having a bit of head-start as a result of my exposure to some fledgling new technologies that emerged during my time at BB – ’SMART’ building concepts in particular – but which were then very much in their infancy and required a basement full of kit to fulfill the simplest of functions. But at least the possibilities were evident and given that this was a time when early PCs were poised to become ‘ubiquitous’ thanks to Windows 3.0 and the future seemed quite bright – if not entirely orange at that stage.

The advent of the internet, CompuServe and HTML 1.0 had certainly signalled the start of the online revolution by the mid 90′s and their was at least a hum beginning to develop about what it all might mean (despite BT’s best attempts to have you believe that the Information Superhighway was just around the next bend and perfectly cruiseable via 64k ISDN.) 

As a result of my early efforts to generate sector interest in the new online world via my establishment of an industry-focused property and construction network –  ’PROCONET’ (possibly the first sector-specific attempt at what would later become known as a ‘portal’) I was invited  to become involved in two EC funded R&D projects concerned with the potential for broadband applications within the property and construction sectors.  (Highly interesting stuff which I will allude to in a separate blog.) 

The knock-on effect of this, was that I was also asked to produce three CPD videos for the Television Education Network aimed especially at helping educate chartered surveyors in relation to the new digital world.

This also led to invitations to deliver CPD seminars and lectures – especially for Westminster University and The Wilson Centre in Cambridge – and which for the first time brought me face-to-face with the great, the good and the highly sceptical.

It cannot however be said that there was a lack of interest. The lectures at Westminster were packed. But all that anyone really wanted to know was if email would be the ’KILLER’ application. As for the relevance of the WWW to real estate agents this was almost immediately dismissed – mainly on the grounds that by posting property details online this would obviously prove to be an enormous invitation to burglars. But still, it was eventually built, the world came to visit and the crime rate stayed much as it had.

Having disappeared in the late 90′s to work with other sectors and professions on digital media projects, it’s actually really interesting looking back on all of this now. The technology that supports the web and the applications that run on it have matured beyond all recognition and online communication has become a seamless and transparent part of everyday life – and yet the surveying related sectors are still perceived to be lagging behind.

I don’t see this with doctors or bankers. They are typically pushing me to introduce new ideas and technology elements. Much of this highly functional stuff is relatively cheap and easy to implement so it can’t be about cost or availability. So is it about attitude of mind, not-invented-here syndrome, technophobic luddite-ness…? Why is it that the industry seemingly still has to be deliberatley prodded to wake up to this stuff rather than embracing it, trying it out , seeing what it can do, breaking it and in the process let ideas and suggestions for useful and pertinent applications be generated.

The UK surveying profession has led the world in many aspects of real estate and the built-environment. Here’s hoping that 2010 sees this extending to the  increased adoption and development of new technology.