Towards a Construction Industry Paradigm

This paper addresses the need to “know why” we build by looking first at the systemic nature, and complexity, that informs the construction industry’s current paradigm. An objective of this paper is to present how the construction industry’s reigning paradigm is driven by an entrenched and obfuscating manufacturingindustrial-engineering mindset. This obfuscation is not abnormal. According to Kuhn (1962), when a paradigm is entrenched for a relatively long period of time, while scientific advances provide an elixir of progress through first time and later technologies (Garcia Bacca 1989), the anomalies are masked until a period of crisis backlights the discontinuities (anomalies) allowing, often grudgingly, a different perspective. In other words, advances in components manufacturing and processes have masked the discontinuity between the concepts of construction as-it-is and manufacturing as-itis; between construction expectations and manufacturing expectations. Under the NAICS (North American Industry Classification System of the US Census Bureau), the construction industry is listed in the service sector of the economy under section 23 and is broken down into many categories, such as Buildings (236) and Heavy and Civil (237). Construction is considered a basic industry, like manufacturing, mining, fishing and farming. This industrial classification system implies a scientific-industrial-manufacturing-managing paradigm that is expected to overarch all industries. However, construction fails repeatedly to conform to an industrial paradigm. For example, Latham (1995) and Egan (1998, 2002) have, over the past ten years, challenged the industry to improve its efficiency as well as the quality of its output. Failure by the industry to achieve these efficiencies points to a lack of understanding of the systemic nature of the industry (Fernandez-Solis 2006). In order to gain a higher perspective on the anomalies, we enlist philosophical tools. Koskela and Kagioglou (2006), in “The Metaphysics of Production,” take philosophy in construction seriously and search for theoretical foundations and clarity of thought (Hegel 1975).