Module 03 / Prior Waves
Why every prior wave missed.
Four decades of attempted answers. Each one solved a real problem somewhere, none of them touched the point of work, and none of them moved the aggregate needle.
- 1980s
CAD
A design technology. The field stayed on paper. The benefits accrued to architects and engineers in the office, but the people building the building never saw the upside. - 2000 to 2010
BIM
Cut RFIs by 30 to 40% on the projects that adopted it well, but adoption stayed uneven and the value lived mostly in the model rather than in the trades that work from it. - 2010 to 2018
Cloud and SaaS
Procore, PlanGrid, Bluebeam connected the office to the field, but largely tracked work rather than doing it. The crew got a faster pencil. The work did not get easier. - 2018 to Now
Intelligence era
Analytics, drones, early robotics, computer vision on jobsites. The point-of-work productivity number still has not moved on an aggregate basis. - Capital-heavy
Modular and robots
Modular adds transport, extra structure, and connection costs that often cancel the factory savings. Katerra is the cautionary tale. A robot needs the repetition the field never provides.
Chart D · Repetition is what makes things cheap
CPI, index 1998 = 100 · BLS / FRED
Motor vehicle repairNew vehicles
New vehicles get cheaper in real terms because the factory does the same thing every minute. Repair tracks closer to construction: custom, on-site, one-off. Construction is repair, scaled up to an entire building. Modular tries to import the factory, and the transport and connection costs erase the factory savings.