What industry has more than 70,000 companies in its supply chain but, of these, just six per cent employ more than six people? And 99 per cent employ fewer than 50 people? These statistics perhaps help to illustrate why the stubbornly traditional construction industry is not synonymous with innovation, despite grappling with all the momentous challenges facing other sectors, such as digitalisation, decarbonisation and workforce shortages.
A few years ago, however, serious efforts were made to stimulate R&D in the ‘sticks and bricks’ sector and overcome the inherent barriers to innovation that it faces. Yet this wasn’t driven by the industry itself, but rather by the Government, keen to speed up the sector’s modernisation and efficiency.
In December 2022, Enterprise Ireland established the Construct Innovate technology centre with initial funding of €5 million over five years to accelerate research, innovation, and productivity in the Irish construction sector. It involves multiple industry partners, as well as an academic consortium comprised of UCD, TCD, UCC, the Irish Green Building Council, and the host institution, University of Galway.
Projects under way address real-world building challenges and issues including the adoption of modern methods of construction (MMC), 3D printing, sustainable concrete, and the use of timber, among many others.
RM Block
Centre manager Colm McHugh says it already has a number of success stories, showing that innovation is possible when there is a proper platform for research and development.
Modernisation and efficiency in the construction sector are imperative, he says. “The Government has set and signed up to a lot of very ambitious targets and plans that the industry won’t be able to deliver on with the current state of business if we maintain the status quo.” These include the Climate Action Plan, the Housing for All Strategy and the National Development Plan. “At the current size and scale and method of delivery, we’re just not going to do it. This is the key driver, the need for innovation.”
The centre’s main engagement strategy has been to get research projects and innovation projects up and running with industry front and centre, McHugh says. Workshops bringing industry executives and academics together allow them to hash out potential research ideas – these have been very successful and are held regularly.
“The real benefit of these workshops is [that] we tease out where the research opportunity is. The industry knows what the problems are, but they don’t know how to go about strategically and systematically breaking it down and then building it back up so the academics offer that rigour and evidence base behind the solutions that are developed.”
The centre has got 42 different projects off the ground through its seed funding call which offers €50,000 per project. “These are, generally speaking, pathfinder projects, which are initial starting ideas or concepts to get the industry engaged in a research project that they’ve never even thought about before,” McHugh says. “And we are seeing that with a portion of them there’s opportunity for growth.”
In one of these projects, researchers at UCD and Harcourt Technologies (HTL) are investigating adding tiny polypropylene fibres to a 3D-printed concrete mix to act as reinforcement. It was found that this significantly improves how the concrete behaves both during and after printing. Another project from HTL, Aqua3D, uses automated data and real-time monitoring to improve quality control during the 3D printing process. “This helps us build more consistently, faster, and with less waste,” says Justin Kinsella, chief executive of HTL.
The results of these projects are already being scaled up for international deployment, he adds. “Together, these initiatives have strengthened Ireland and the UK’s competitiveness and are supporting our expansion into international markets. Construct Innovate’s backing has helped us turn research into real-world solutions and exportable expertise.”
Sarah-Jane Pisciotti is innovation and design director at Sisk and is also a member of the Construct Innovate steering committee. Sisk is now focused on “system-wide improvement”, from supply chains to optimised design, digital delivery and the integration of new technologies such as AI. “We have strong in-house expertise in sustainable design, carbon management and circularity, but collaboration remains essential if we are to meet national climate and circularity goals,” she says.
Sustainable concrete is a clear example and Pisciotti says Ireland lacks standards that support low-carbon mixes, despite the scale of opportunity. “Progress requires testing alternatives and validating them on live projects,” she says. “Construct Innovate makes this possible by opening access to research facilities, academic partners and funding routes that help accelerate real-world adoption.”
Another key collaboration is the cross laminated timber (CLT) demonstrator project using Irish-grown C16 timber (strong, load-bearing timber commonly used in construction for floor joists, roof battens, and stud walls) in mass-timber panels assembled on site, which Pisciotti says could open the door to wider use of domestic timber in multistorey construction and support future manufacturing capability. “Challenges such as certification, technical guidance and limited demand still exist, but Construct Innovate provides a framework to tackle these collectively.”
McHugh is keen to stress that SMEs – even sole traders – are set to benefit from the innovative methods and materials being developed as part of the centre’s research. Simply avoiding innovation just won’t cut it any more, he says.
“It’s important that this sort of mindset is embedded the whole way through the supply chain. And then the smaller players will need to develop that aspect of their offerings and their businesses if they want to win work with the bigger players.”
