The built environment as a system

Over the last ten years or so, professionals have gradually come to the same implicit conclusion. The construction sector is calling for new solutions, no doubt technical, but also organizational, in response to a number of contradictions that are penalizing the business.

Four main parameters emerge from industry trends:

• there is clearly a very strong demand for housing, but production has reached a plateau and is failing to meet the expectations of a large proportion of our fellow urbanites;

• the various calls for ideas launched by the public authorities to increase productivity in the sector have not resulted in any concrete, reproducible solutions;

• Environmental requirements seem to be unavoidable, but they come up against an additional cost that would be unavoidable and which, as a result, hampers their implementation;

• Everyone involved in the construction process recognizes that non-quality has a cost, and that its volume is significant. However, it is impossible to obtain a figure for this potential macroeconomic gain from a third-party organization.

Admittedly, productivity gains have been achieved, but these have been dissipated by the rise in land prices. However, beyond this perverse mechanism, the question remains: how can we revisit construction to restore a certain collective efficiency?

Industry, which faced a similar situation in the 1980s, is now adopting a systems approach. Can this approach be applied to construction? It is the ambition of this article to help launch this collective debate.

As a result, this booklet is organized in two parts. The first explores the building as a system, i.e. in terms of its dynamic functioning, which goes far beyond a simple descriptive approach. The second will broaden the approach by examining the interactions between the building and its environment. Each chapter is structured around a single concern:

• Initially, identify the components of this analysis in the form of a system;

• seek to define tools for later implementation.