altering the centre point of ceiling tiles to limit offcuts to a single side of the room, rather than both sides..
When lecturing my students, I discuss the dis-economy of scale.How large processes need large peak demands of inputs, how many design factors are not linear so doubling the size of a process can mean 4x or 8x the energy, the time, or the effort.
For some processes, a colony of ants would be much more efficient than a brontosaurus..The point is that scale is a complex but critical issue if you are concerned with multiple factors – profitability, economic agility, sustainability, system reliability.We cannot just keep doing what we have always done or following over-simplistic thinking.
The technological advances of the last 50 years have allowed us to be able to model scenarios from millisecond by millisecond to decade by decade.This allows us to control processes at both ends of the scale – from an oil refinery to a micro robot.
This is a time when we need to learn from nature and think hard about scale..
Going back to the rise of mammals or Homo sapiens, a change in scale is an adaptation to a transforming environment.Defining the Need.
report, published in 2020.Transforming Performance and Productivity in the Construction Industry.
, from the Maufacturing Technology Centre in 2019. the UK Government's.The Construction Playbook: Government guidance on sourcing and contracting public works projects and programmes.