Director's Message: The Importance of Innovation in Construction
Creating Improved Solutions Today That Define How We Build Tomorrow
For component manufacturers, predicting the future of construction means building it together. Through innovation with design tools and methods, material usage, better manufacturing efficiencies and collaborative processes, we create improved solutions today that define how the construction industry builds tomorrow. In a world where nearly everyone outside of the construction industry believes it should be disrupted, continuous innovation is the antidote.
Industries, just like businesses, come and go and must work to remain relevant in order to stand the test of time. Changes in techniques, materials, and even consumer needs can adjust over time rendering a product or service useless. Similarly, environmental, societal, and even governmental norms and regulations have the ability to impact adjustments that the industry and business cannot keep up with. As a result, business and industry leaders have a responsibility to act as stewards of their industry to ensure they stay ahead of inevitable evolutions and potential disruptions.
Component manufacturers (CMs) have often been at the forefront of innovation in the construction industry, but after several decades, stand poised to be disrupted themselves if not focused on the needs of their customers and stakeholders. The need for CMs to remain relevant in the broader construction industry drives SBCA’s ongoing innovation activities, furthering the conversation that CMs can remain central to wherever the construction industry goes to meet the needs of those living and working in the buildings framed with the components our members produce.
"The best way to predict the future is to create it."
Peter Drucker
SBCA’s focus on innovation allows our members to understand and engage in the conversation on their own terms. Through membership, they are inherently active in a variety of trends and activities working to improve the construction industry. By attending our events such as BCMC and OQMs, they are exposed first-hand to goods and services that can be adopted on their schedule to improve or adapt their offerings to their customer. And with further engagement, SBCA members can learn about techniques used in other countries and continents that may trigger their own ideas, that may in fact trigger their own competitive advantage in the markets they serve.
For the past four years, SBCA has participated in the Innovative Housing Showcase (IHS) in Washington D.C. on the National Mall. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has led the effort to bring together incredibly different housing solutions to encourage adoption and improvements amongst one another in an effort to address housing across our great nation. While historically focused on low-income housing, HUD is now realizing that housing availability is an everyone problem that will require “all of the above” solutions to address. SBCA’s presence highlights the fact that traditional construction materials (with respect to others represented at IHS), paired with adapted, and dare I say improved, processes, can yield incredible results that scale across the United States. Look no further than our most recent IHS build that framed a 3,000 square-foot two-story duplex in roughly ten hours as an example of offsite components paired with onsite processes to deliver astounding results.
Attendees at BCMC and OQMs are regularly exposed to ongoing innovations with the ability to impact how they do business in a meaningful way. At SBCA’s most recent BCMC, attendees were able to see the results of our third annual Innovation Grant that allows those in and outside the industry to showcase their innovations and provide feedback. We’ve seen new start-up companies as well as industry incumbents participate in launching new products and ideas in an attempt to drive the industry forward. From its humble beginnings with a single Innovation Grant booth on the BCMC floor, SBCA’s investment in showcasing innovative offerings now has CMs who are better connected than ever to ideas that allow them to move their markets forward.
Beyond that, SBCA is offering its second European Industry Tour this spring for those looking to other countries for inspiration and methodologies for driving more value in their products and services. CMs have long held product superiority in roof and floor trusses over alternative framing solutions but have struggled to compete with the value of walls framed onsite. Through exposing SBCA members to how walls are factory built, offsite, in Europe, they can develop a better understanding of opportunities to drive value towards a superior wall framing solution in their manufacturing facilities. Codes, standards, and even expectations are trending towards a more favorable environment for value added wall solutions and CMs are well positioned to take advantage of changing expectations to offer a trifecta of component solutions: roof trusses, wall panels, and floor trusses.
Innovation, especially in construction, tends to be incremental. Staying on top of and aware of innovations impacting the component space within the construction industry is imperative if SBCA members want to stay relevant in their markets tomorrow as well as twenty years from now. Each one of us who considers ourself to be a leader in the component manufacturing industry is responsible for stewarding it into the next several decades where components aren’t just the preferred framing method, but the absolute Best Way to Frame. After all, the best way to predict the future is to create it!
Jess Lohse
Executive Director