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

of California (PMAC), and varying degrees of in-kind contributions. The project is managed
by an Executive Committee consisting of two professors and a consultant. There is advisory
input from a Research Panel and an Industry Panel. However, the funding does not permit
face to face meetings of those panels. The cash contribution of the precast concrete
manufacturers to the project in the U.S.A., relative to the government contribution, is about
the same as that in Japan. However, in the U.S. plan there is no active contribution by
engineering contractors except in an advisory panel and the structural consultant work is
primarily the contribution of one firm. There is no assurance that the results will be
acceptable to the American Concrete Institute (ACI), the Structural Engineers Association
(SEA), or the International Conference of Building Officials (ICBO), committees that must
endorse those findings before they can be accepted into model building codes. Further,
even if those results were acceptable there has been little input by which to judge if
contractors would find designs in accordance with those results cost-effective to build.
Certainly contractors are less likely to take the risk of being the first to use such systems
than in Japan, and owners are less likely to want to have their facility constructed from such
"unproven" systems.
Participatory cooperation of all sectors of the construction community is necessary
for effective research and for its transfer into practice. Participatory cooperation means
allocation of funding, personnel and time to the research and its implementation.
Participatory cooperation creates a sense of community. It confers on its members an
identity, a sense of belonging, a measure of security, and is the ground-level generator of
value systems and new skills. Cooperative work on a significant new task strengthens the
sense of community, builds commitment, and gives meaning to an individual's life.
Participatory cooperation of all sectors of the construction community in research is needed
for effective public policies for construction technology advancement.
CONCLUSIONS
If this nation is to develop a dynamic construction technology advancement program
greater cooperation is needed between three major construction industry constituencies:
government, contractors, and academia.
Greater leadership is needed from all levels of government, federal, state and local, in
support of R&D activities for construction. Greater leadership requires the formulation and
articulation of constructed facility visions consistent with government's societal goals;
identification of the technologies whose development is needed to achieve those visions;
development of incentives to reward R&D investments by the private sector in those
technologies; fostering of participatory, rather than adversarial, relations between
government, academia, and industry; and a willingness to use construction projects for proof
of concept demonstrations of new technologies.
Much greater contractor participation is needed in the selection and conduct of R&D
activities and in partnering the transfer of outcomes into practice. Such participation
requires communication as well as commitment by all constituencies; hardware and human
resource involvements as well as a willingness to permit flexibility in their use; a
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