IFD Buildings as design and delivery innovation

The building construction industry in Europe is now experiencing new forms of procurement and production systems, reflecting a matured market client/user-dominated, where the demand of new building is both for high-quality and low costs. The current state-of-the-art in building procedures must be improved, according to the dynamism of economic, social and technological factors that greatly affect users' functional needs over time. The building industry in major European Countries is facing such a transition. It needs to be more customer-focussed, less fragmented in organising project delivery and increasing current levels of industrialisation. Therefore the existing tools need to be updated, most of all because of the long time and fragmentation of delivery system, of the low levels of industrialisation and because of the difficulties in implementing new shared technical and management process models. Innovative technological and process models have to be developed, addressing market dynamism and client demands in a more efficient and cost effective way. This paper shows the final results of a UE research project focused on developing a process model to design and deliver Industrialised, Flexible and Demountable (IFD) Buildings. This program proposes a more effective and unified approach to building procedures, standing from the Client need for quality, shorter delivery time, flexibility in use and economy, the Community needs for sustainability, safety and healthy work environment and the Industry organisational requirements for partnerships and alliances. The IFD Buildings organisational and process model comprises four main clusters of activities viz. Market Research, Product Development, Production and Sales. Processes intra and inter cluster mutually support the realisation of the IFD process and end product, through specific ICT and collaborative engineering strategies and searching for longer-term feedback with clients and users. These developments challenge the traditional role of architects, contractors and builders and the building design and construction itself. Managing IFD buildings as consumer products, this model offers to the clients more freedom of choice, giving factory-made and interchangeable building components and more flexible layouts to better forecast the changing of user requirements. Foreseeable benefits accruing from IFD Buildings are economies from standardisation of designs and components, facilitating a range of client/user needs and choice, higher productivity and reduction of site labour and construction waste, and better management and control of building time and quality.