The Challenge to Innovate

It is simply not possible to reinvent the future of construction by modeling the past. There has to be a better way.

By Allen J. Dusault
Founder and Owner, Dusault Engineering

We need to reimagine the construction industry’s future if we are going to radically reduce its carbon footprint.

That is — largely — not what is now happening. Most of the innovations proposed, funded, and implemented today are based on construction models at least 50, 75, or 100 years old, and are primarily refinements, often with a tech overlay. That is not to say we shouldn’t enhance and improve old methods. But we also need radically new approaches to create powerful, unimagined innovations in building design and construction. Historical context informs this argument.

Let’s start with the residential sector and its old standby, manufactured housing. It has a long history, with the potential for both lowering cost and accelerating construction. And it can achieve a modest carbon reduction benefit. (Rather than reproduce that century of history here, here is a 2022 article briefly summarizing it.)

There is also a long history of “kit of parts” homes, with a similar promise. That history didn’t begin with 1920s Sears Kit homes; it reaches back to the 1800s.  After hundred-plus years of kit and factory-built homes, we are building less of both than we did fifty years ago. It is worth pursuing, but it isn’t radical or new.  A trajectory for even getting back to where we were in the 1970s will be challenging.

Another “old innovation,” borrowing heavily from the forgotten past is 3-D printed buildings. They have been touted as the future of sustainable construction, with potential for lowering cost, and for a smaller environmental footprint. For many reasons, they often are not (but I will skip those arguments here). What is important to point out is how old that technology is (first commercialized in the 1930s). It should be described for what it is – extruding concrete walls in layers, without the use of forms typical in concrete construction (not to discount other methods of 3-D fabrication using different materials and methods). Here is a video showing one of the first examples of “3-D” constructed buildings from the 1930s.

Mass timber, another favored low-carbon redeemer for the construction industry, also reaches back into history for most of its forms (CLT, NLT, glulam, etc.). CLT was invented more than 100 years ago. The first patent dates to the 1920s, and was issued to two Tacoma, Washington inventors. The Europeans improved on the CLT technology in the 1990s and expanded its use (when we in the U.S. then rediscovered it). Glulam is even older, first being used in Europe in the 1890s. It was introduced into the U.S. in Wisconsin (for a school gymnasium) in 1934. It’s also “old innovation”.

Note that mass timber and other wood-based construction systems are not always the sustainable, low-carbon path to the future of construction that they have been characterized to be. The sustainability of wood construction depends, in part, on management practices in the forest from which the wood has been extracted, along with other supply chain factors.  But there is also the magnifying impact of climate change on our forests, with much hotter and more intense fires than in the past, and a tripling of the number of acres burned in just the last ten years. It’s risky to increase reliance on our forests as an ever-larger source of construction materials.

Looking to the commercial sector, and an even greater potential for having an impact, decarbonizing concrete is perhaps the most enamoring (8% of worldwide carbon emissions of the >15% attributed to the global construction industry). However, efforts to lower the carbon impact of concrete have a long history. Fly ash has been used for that purpose since at least the 1980s (its first use began on a large scale with the construction of Hoover Dam in the 1930s). Other innovative approaches include storing CO2 in concrete, with research beginning 50 or so years ago in the 1970s.

As an early pioneer in decarbonizing concrete, going back several decades, I am thrilled that so much progress is finally being made. However, if we could magically erase concrete’s carbon footprint tomorrow (something unlikely for decades or longer), we would nonetheless exacerbate the many other negative environmental, engineering, and social impacts of concrete. Using carbon footprint as the primary or only metric seems short-sighted, ( concerns also extend to the steel rebar typically used in most concrete construction). We should emphasize the full life cycle impacts of any material or method in our efforts to make construction more sustainable.  Recognize also that using a concrete framework means buildings with lots of mass. We should consider shifting the paradigm, beginning with the question: “How much does your building weigh (can you think of why that is a relevant question)?”

Understanding that background highlights the opportunity cost of what we are nicht doing. Innovative approaches, technologies, or systems aimed at mitigating the carbon footprint of construction, while also diminishing time, cost, and environmental impact, are exceedingly uncommon.

In einem (n earlier CLF blog (May 2022), I wrote about my own radical construction innovation, based on a “crazy” idea of inverting gravitational loads to reduce material/resources consumed. Virtually all the R&D was self-funded from my shallow pockets. It was developed in partnership with Chicago area universities, including the Illinois Institute of Technology. It is based on a novel concept that hadn’t before existed and that no one was looking for (one reason it gets disqualified from potential funding sources – VCs, government, and foundations).

There are likely many innovators like myself, with contributions to make to the construction industry. We can devise something entirely novel, demonstrate it with prototypes, and even get patents and prestigious engineering awards (I have two), but fail to secure the funding necessary to develop them beyond prototypes. Unlike the tech sector, with billions of dollars going into R&D, the construction industry (despite its $11 trillion global size) spends little on R&D (that is not related to tech or materials science). VC investors mostly ignore construction and don’t have 5 to 10 years or longer to wait for commercialization. Foundations aren’t much better. It also doesn’t fit their typical innovation models. They rarely fund risky radical technologies from for-profit start-ups. And no government solicitations are looking for them.

We know construction has one of the largest carbon footprints of any industry, and consumes the lion’s share of the world’s natural resources. Yet many organizations are trying to address those impacts by funding nearly all the same or similar things (such as decarbonized concrete). Few organizations ask, “What transformative innovations aren’t getting funded”?   And, “How and where do we find them?”

It’s time to shift our approach from primarily incremental improvements and “follow the leader solutions”, to radical innovation. Our planet deserves it.