As building and construction in China overtakes developed countries in volume, is it also overtaking it in technological capacity? And is it doing so by skipping some stages altogether? And could this be a very good thing?
leap•frog (lēp′frôg′)
noun
- a game in which each player in turn jumps, with legs spread wide, over the bent back of each of the other players
intransitive verb leapfrogged - •frogged′,
leapfrogging -•frog′•ging
1. to jump in or as if in leapfrog; skip (over)
2. to move or progress in jumps or stages
transitive verb
- to jump or skip over, as in leapfrog
It wasn’t much more than 10 years ago in China, and much of developing Asia that it was unusual for most citizens to have a telephone land line. Whereas in developed countries one or two residential land lines was the norm. Back then, owning a mobile phone anywhere was far from standard practice. Nowadays owning a mobile is common everywhere – but in developing countries many people did not do the middle step of moving from fixed line to mobile, they went straight to mobile. The ratio between mobile and fixed usage in Cambodia is 102:1.
This same technology leapfrogging is happening in the building industry. But not only that. Because the volume of building construction and requirement for maintenance is so great the technologies and processes being developed to cope with the glut are not just skipping stages but going beyond what is considered ‘advanced’ in western markets and is being taken back to them. Technology is globalising rapidly.
The most obvious area where leapfrogging is taking place is in the adoption of solar technologies powering buildings in areas where there is no distributed power. In both China and India these technologies provide an immediate solution to a power crisis. The other area where solutions need to be found rapidly is water conservation. Developers such as Vanke are looking for solutions whereby all water is retreated and recycled. The scale of developments is huge but greater challenges can be found when then managing this stock.
Maintaining new standards
One example can be found at Siveco, a maintenance service provider, that has hit upon a method for engaging and educating staff in an area that has proved challenging in the past. That is quality facilities management. Maintenance is an important but often underestimated component of facilities management. Like other areas of FM it is generally treated as a reactive science: when something breaks, fix it. In this way labour and spare parts costs are kept low. However, as Bruno Lhopiteau, General Manager, Siveco China points out these costs are just the tip of the iceberg.
This approach to business may be sustainable in the technical sense of the word, i.e. the business keeps running, but is about as wasteful as they come. Lhopiteau points out that poorly maintained equipment is highly energy efficient. It also needs to be replaced more frequently and there is nothing less green than buying disposable equipment. Efficient maintenance requires effective monitoring of systems and tracking of equipment health. This is where technology comes in.
Skipping several levels of development Lhopiteau has stumbled on a solution that has ensured high levels of maintenance and its corresponding business uptime and efficiency alongside motivating and empowering employees. He implemented a computerised maintenance management system (CMMS) and trained staff how to use it before organising any other paper based or other system.
They found:
- Implementing a preventive maintenance program “on paper” is difficult
- Opposite approach:
- Use a CMMS as a tool to
- Structure - the system comes with a structure
- Motivate/Train - staff love the gadgets
- Organize historical records for decision support
- Demonstrate quick concrete benefits
- Allow actual implementation of maintenance plans - Quick implementation (now)
- Improve later (use the tool to improve)
- “catalyst” for maintenance improvement
- China often an excellent base to launch regional projects
When earlier this year Chinese expertise was bought in to assist the US with its proposed high speed rail network, there was some disappointment by the Americans that they did not have the skills on home soil. In the same way with building management and building technology, the scale of Asia’s development and urbanisation mean that future experts in these areas will be innovating here and they almost certainly will skip several stages that more developed nations are still stuck in. Fortunately the pace of growth and need for energy and other resources is so great that going through those stages would be impossible. There is no choice but to be greener, however, will innovation keep pace with the extent of urbanisation?
