IFD Buildings as Design and Delivery Innovation

The building construction industry in Europe is now experiencing new forms of procurement and production systems, reflecting a matured market client/user-dominated, where the demand of new building is both for high-quality and low costs. The current state-of-the-art in building procedures must be improved, according to the dynamism of economic, social and technological factors that greatly affect users' functional needs over time. The building industry in major European Countries is facing such a transition. It needs to be more customer-focussed, less fragmented in organising project delivery and increasing current levels of industrialisation. Therefore the existing tools need to be updated, most of all because of the long time and fragmentation of delivery system, of the low levels of industrialisation and because of the difficulties in implementing new shared technical and management process models. Innovative technological and process models have to be developed, addressing market dynamism and client demands in a more efficient and cost effective way.