Our books on platforms for design and construction (P-DfMA)

At the moment, we just don’t do that well enough.

This is resulting in money, the fuel of the world economy, being slowly but steadily diverted from the old economy to a new one.We are starting to invest in a changing world.

Leaders and regimes will come and go, but this matrix of positive intent and action is what will truly drive the next 50 years..The third reason for hope came to me in maybe the most unexpected place: a two-hour stand in the toilet on a train with five others, due to huge overcrowding.Of course, there was griping, anger, and frustration about the situation.

There was also a humble reflection that our plight was nothing like those stuck in conflict and humanitarian disasters.What struck me most, though, was the very human and humane way people came together - caring about those wishing to catch their flight to New York, caring about one of the passengers who started to feel ill, finding space where there seemed to be none; and the humour, sharing stories, and keeping each other’s spirits up.. My sense is that we can always see the future as dark and full of threat.

It can feel like walking into a cave, where, given the darkness, our imagination takes over to ready us for all the potential threats.

We listen for the fall of rocks, we see flashes of images that may or may not be there, we feel the air around us, and we search for odours which could point to pending doom.If we take another look at what the UK government is doing through the Construction Innovation Hub, we can see that they are looking to aggregate construction demand across different departments.

By harmonising the standards and requirements, and developing standardised components, they are creating a huge, central body of knowledge.This library of common solutions will, in turn, mean that on each project, none of the construction design work necessarily needs to be done from scratch.

Combining standardisation with the digital design tools that create better-coordinated models and data-rich designs, along with program cost and supply chain data embedded in the model, is powerful.Add in the Hub’s work on introducing APQP, and we will get a level of consistency into components, which will deliver a real benefit.