Close
Principal Investigator of the Transforming Construction Network Plus, Jacqui Glass, takes a moment to look forward as the project concludes.
“Innovation is not a luxury”, said Andy Mitchell, CEO of Tideway and Chair of Construction Industry Council, at our final N+ ‘Constructing Conversations’ online event on 23 June, when I was joined by Andy, panellists Karen Elson and Jennifer Schooling, and Diana Montgomery to help me get to grips with the perennial challenge of how academia and industry can work together, better.
Andy is quite right of course – so why does the construction sector still find it so hard to innovate and transform?
In closing the Transforming Construction Network Plus, I can see that we’ve made good progress in trying to help make innovation more of an everyday sport in our industry.
We have regularly brought academic and industry voices together, explored the reality of creating new business models, and catalysed numerous new areas of research. And it was no coincidence that the final activities from the N+ sought to reinforce the need for us all to innovate together. Yes, Karen Elson’s powerful call for all major projects to ‘commit a share of your budget to research’ was a delight to hear because it changes innovation from nice-to-have into a must-do activity, but for me the mike drop was the panellists’ closing narrative of the future that they wanted to see: ‘a radical, flourishing ecosystem’.
Think about that – a radical, flourishing ecosystem. It’s a deeply compelling idea that transcends collaborative research, because surely that describes the future construction sector that we all want to see, doesn’t it? That’s what Transforming Construction is all about – and it’s been a pleasure and a privilege to be part of this movement for change.
The N+ closes at the end of July, and I would like to thank the 3,000 or so people who have joined us along the way. My personal thanks to the outstanding N+ team and our wonderful supporters in UKRI and industry. We hope that the N+ has inspired you, challenged you, and encouraged you to travel on your own journey towards a new construction ecosystem.
