Department of the Environment,
Transport and the Regions
Rethinking Construction
CHAPTER 3
Improving the Project Process
Focus on the End Product
- The Task Force believes that construction can learn
from other sectors of the economy in tackling these
problems by focusing the construction process on
delivering the needs of the end-user or consumer through
the end product. Most clients for construction are
interested only in the finished product, its cost,
whether it is delivered on time, its quality and
functionality.Concentrating on the needs of the consumer
leads to a view of construction as a much more integrated
process.
- Our experience is that the overall process can be
subdivided into four complementary and interlocked
elements:
- product development
- project implementation
- partnering the supply chain
- production of components
- The key premise behind the integrated project process
is that teams of designers, constructors and suppliers
work together through a series of projects, continuously
developing the product and the supply chain, eliminating
waste in the delivery process, innovating and learning
from experience. Many major and experienced clients are
already doing this through their partnering arrangements
and are achieving the levels of performance improvement
that we have targeted earlier in this report. The
challenge for the construction industry is to develop
their own integrated teams to deliver the same benefits
to occasional and inexperienced clients. The Task Force
believes that this is not only desirable but wholly
possible.
Product Development
- Product development is the means of continuously
developing a generic construction product - for example,
a house, a road, an office or a repair and maintenance
service - to meet and inform the needs of clients and
consumers. It requires a detailed knowledge of clients
and their aspirations, and effective processes for
innovating and for learning through objective measurement
of completed projects. The Task Force see this activity
as parallelling the sort of research into the needs of
customers undertaken by most other industries.
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Product Development
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- Listening to the voice of the consumer and
understanding their needs and aspirations.
- Developing products that will exceed client
expectations.
- Defining the attributes of a construction
product and understanding how they are
influenced through specific engineering systems
and components.
- Defining projects that deliver the product
in specific circumstances and setting clear
targets for the project of delivery teams.
- Assessing completed projects and customer
satisfaction systematically and objectively, and
feeding the knowledge gained back into the
product development process.
- Innovating with suppliers to improve the
product without loss of reliability.
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- Product development requires continuity from a
dedicated product team: one with product design skills,
with close links to the supply chain through which the
skills of suppliers and their innovations can be
assessed, and with access to relevant market research.
Many major and experienced clients already have
organisations dedicated to developing their own
construction products and the construction industry is
beginning to develop similar teams in response to the
opportunities presented by the Private Finance
Initiative. Again, there is a need to devise means of
making these arrangements available to all clients.
Published 16 July 1998
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