Challenges and Opportunities for Innovation in the Public Works ...

limits of existing technologies and those limits can be changes only by developing a new
technology. Conceivably, that is possible if there is a reservoir of basic research that can
be tapped to develop that new technology and thus alter the original concept, within the
time period when the concept is translated into actual design documents. Clearly, the most
effective concept improvements and the greatest cost savings are reaped from technical
advances when those advances, as indicated by route A in Fig. 1, are made an integral part
of the initial design concept. The judgement of the effectiveness of those advances should
not be made solely in terms of their impact on the initial concept but in terms of their
impact on the totality of the civil engineering process which should include not only design
and construction considerations but also operation, maintenance and repair considerations.
Further the evaluation should not be made simply in terms of budgetary considerations but
also in terms of the degree to which the societal need has been satisfied and the technology
of society advanced.
From Fig. 1 it is apparent that while introductioo, of a gatekeeper operation between
the design and construction phases may be able to hold down costs is also effectively
prohibits technology development, if as illustrated by route B, that technology development
requires certain actions during construction that no bidder on the project is qualified to
perform. Further the same can be said for other gatekeeper operations introduced between
the construction, operation, etc., phases of the project if certain technology development
practices, as illustrated by route C, are essential to the success of that operation. The
extreme fragmentation of processes in the construction industry, as currently exists in the
U.S.A., in general lowers initial costs and develops firms with great depths of knowledge in
a given specialty. However, society is also paying an additional long term price for those
short term gains. The process stifles technological advances which society must pay for
separately if it is to maintain a technologically competitive construction industry. The long
term price to society is least if the industrial participants have operations vertically
integrated throughout the whole cycle of Fig. 1 since that participant can then reap the
greatest benefits from any investments made in basic research and technology development.
THE IMPACT OF SOCIETAL ENVIRONMENT ON TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
The problems of today are often the result of yesterday's solutions. One obvious
example is the need to develop new technologies to clean up the hazardous wastes created
by the development of the nation's nuclear arsenal. Unless society attempts continuously
to improve its economic well-being through the creation of new wealth it can do little to
correct the problems caused by yesterday's solutions.
Shown in Table 1 is a simplistic listing of determinants of a nation's economic wellbeing(l).
In the old system, land mass and its associated natural resources, population size,
military prowess, and availabi • capital were considered the determinants. By contrast, for
the current global economy the determinants seem to have become the society's level of
technology, the skills of its population, the capital investment choices it has made and is
willing to make, the stability of its political environment and the societal infrastructure. The
latter is best described as the way society gets its business done socially and physically.
Obviously the civil works inafrastructure of the nation is a major determinant of economic
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