3 Pillars
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- 3 Pillars
- 3 Pillars Residential
- 3 Pillars Offices
- 3 Pillars Universities
- 3 Pillars Schools
- 3 Pillars Healthcare
- 3 Pillars Urban Space
- 3 Pillars Innovation
- 3 Pillars Cross Cutting Themes
Project Objectives
This supply chain led project is designed to bring together (i) post occupancy continuous evaluation, (ii) evidence based design and (iii) briefing, through a number of working groups each addressing one building type. The practice of learning through careful study and recording how well a new building or major refurbishment meets the operational needs of the organisation, and supports its programme of internal organisational change, is notable for its absence. The practice of recording, understanding and cataloguing for use by others, design solutions which work particularly well, is largely unheard of and would be considered by many to be eccentric. The process of briefing is notable for the wide variation in its quality including, remarkably, its near absence.
Project Description
Working with our industry members, we hope to learn how to bring together, manage and deploy these three central pillars of good project design, in a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement and knowledge sharing. Working at this stage by product, our hypothesis is that we shall uncover an overriding cross-cutting skill set called "place-making". The skills required to design and produce a hospital where people get better more quickly, where staff recruitment and retention is improved, a school where attendance and learning outcomes are enhanced are, we believe, the result of the collective application of the generic skill of place-making, a skill set not yet recognised generally within the industry. This initiative should be a powerful and rewarding way to develop and exploit the concepts and opportunities of Be Valuable, copies of which can be purchased from our website.
The industry is not rewarded for the degree of utility and effectiveness of the end product or even its whole life value -a stark contrast to some other industries and a central challenge now for the UK construction industry and those who employ it. We wish to understand how to improve the certainty of success for all the stakeholders so that the value jointly created is maximised and the resulting rewards equitably distributed between all stakeholders.
We have now set up a number of small working groups to address the Be Valuable agenda in the context of particular building types. These are listed above. We will explore what benefits might follow from developing processes which enable, for each building type, these three sets of data on briefing, post occupancy continuous evaluation, and evidence based design, to be brought together and interconnected so that we create the basis of a virtuous spiral of continuous improvement in our products and services, based on action, evaluation and feedback.
The Constructing Excellence membership will be involved through facilitated workshops at key stages in working group progress, and to publish working group outputs. With our strategic partners, the Open University Business School, we shall be drawing on working group material throughout the programme to develop training and CPD material for members and the wider industry both in the UK and more widely.