Building Research & Information

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Building as a process

D. A. Turin

To cite this article: D. A. Turin (2003) Building as a process, Building Research & Information,
31:2, 180-187, DOI: 10.1080/09613210302002
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BUILDING RESEARCH & INFORMATION (2003) 31(2), 180–187
Building as a process
D. A. Turin
The purpose of this paper is to put forward a broad classifica-
tion of the patterns of building processes, aimed at throwing a
better light on the changing relationships between the partici-
pants and on the roles they are likely to play in the future.
The complexity of the problems facing the building industry
today appears to be aggravated by the inadequacy of the terms
used for describing the changes occurring under our eyes and
for formulating hypotheses about the immediate future. This
is partly due to the fact that most of the expressions in current
use have evolved from past accepted practices and cannot
therefore be adapted easily to analyse new situations and new
relationships.
But semantic difficulties are often revealing of deeper conceptual
problems. In the case of the building industry it is noticeable that
much of the discussion going on in this country and in many
other industrialized countries of Europe and America turns
around three separate although related aspects of the problem:
 changes in the nature of the product
 changes in the functions of the professions
 changes in the contractual relationships between the
participants
The fragmentation of the industry is a leitmotiv of the com-
plaints about the present state of affairs. It is the more regret-
table, therefore, that such fragmentation should be
perpetuated in the efforts aimed at clarifying the problems
facing the industry. But this is perhaps inevitable as long as
the main actors are unable to overcome their prejudices or
unwilling to go beyond the sectoral view of their profession.
It is not that the participants are selfish or unduly concerned
by the defence of their position, but rather that they see dif-
ferent things, different purposes, different justifications in the
complex of activities with which building is concerned.
Take, for instance, the changes in the nature of the building
product. Under this convenient heading we group the lively
debate of the last few decades on the issue of prefabrication
and its numerous avatars: ‘industrialized building’, ‘building
industrialization’, ‘system building’, ‘open and closed systems’,
‘component development’, etc. Most of this argument has
centred around the nature and the physical and economic
Building Research & Information ISSN 0961-3218 print ⁄ISSN 1466-4321 online # 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd
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DOI: 10.1080 ⁄0961321031000086992
characteristics of the output of construction activity. The
debate has been understandably dominated by the architect
and his associated consultants or specialists, with occasional
contributions from the contractors and, more seldom, from
the manufacturers of building materials and components.
The interventions of the client, at least in the United
Kingdom, were mostly channelled through his professional
advisers, again almost all of them architects.
Hence, the overriding importance attributed to the question
of dimensions of buildings and their parts and its corollary,
dimensional co-ordination and standardization, the latter
being mostly interpreted in terms of limitation of the variety
of the dimensional characteristics of the finished product, be
it a material, a component, a complex assembly or the whole
building. Only occasional references are made in this argu-
ment to the structure of demand for buildings and, even more
significantly, to the nature of the manufacturing processes
underlying the production of materials and components and
to the standardization of their quality and finishes.
Closely interwoven with the discussion of changes in the pro-
duct of building activity, we find considerations of the func-
tions of the professions and of their interrelationship. In this
field, the main contributions come from the established pro-
fessional institutions (architects, quantity surveyors, and to a
lesser extent, engineers of all kinds and sometimes builders),
naturally concerned with the implications of changes in the
nature of the building product on their respective roles and
their relationship between themselves, with the client and user,
and of course with the producers and assemblers.
Typical problems considered under this heading were those of
communications between the members of the building indus-
try, specialization of professional practices, the provision of
more comprehensive services with a greater integration of the
design profession and, inevitably, the implications of these
changes on the educational pattern of the future.
‘Diversification’, ‘specialization’, ‘joint education’ are the
terms recurring more frequently and the subject of numerous
enquiries, studies and recommendations.
Very often the argument extended to the problem of contrac-
tual relationships. Hence the series of studies on tendering
and other methods of awarding contracts (mostly concerned
with the relationship between the client and the contractor,

but with far-reaching implications on the roles of the profes-
sions), the proposals for reforms of codes of professional
practice (in particular the closer association of the so far inde-
pendent profession with the contracting side of the industry)
and finally, although more indirectly, the problem of profes-
sional fees in a changing pattern of relationship between the
participants in the building process.
Process is the operative word. However, it is surprising
that in the extensive bibliography of research projects, enqui-
ries, reports, conferences and other collective efforts devoted
to the construction industry, little, if any, reference is found to
building as an activity concerned with the best possible use of
inputs to produce a desired output. [This has, of course, been
rectified with recent work referred to elsewhere in this special
issue – Editor.] This we shall accept as a crude definition of
‘process’. We shall now explore the possibility of grouping some
of the problems encountered in the building industry under
four major headings, hoping that this summary classification
is a valid step towards clarifying the main issues involved and
contributes to revealing the relationship between the frag-
mented problems briefly referred to above.
Four graphs sum up, in an oversimplified way, the meaning
we assign to each of the four approaches. Each graph can
be read along two scales.
The horizontal scale presents the main stages of the building
process: it goes from ‘users’ requirements’, considered to be the
first step or input, to ‘consumption’ of the product of building
activity, which can be taken as the outcome or output of the
process. The intermediate stages, in so far as they are drawn
from accepted practice, should be self-explanatory. In some
cases, however, the meaning of an individual stage might have
to be stretched slightly beyond the one commonly accepted for
the sake of maintaining a consistent presentation.
The vertical scale relates to the five main parties involved in the
process, i.e. the user, the client (the distinction between the
two is important in certain cases), the professions, the building
or contracting organization, and the manufacturer of building
materials and components. For the sake of simplification,
many other participants are not represented in the schemes,
not because they are not important but rather because the
nature of their contribution is not critical for characterizing
the four proposed approaches. Hence, the omission of the
approving authorities (central government, local government,
etc.) and of the public undertakings responsible for the supply
of services (water, electricity, gas, sewage, etc.) which are com-
mon to all approaches, and that of the building merchants,
whose role is closely linked to that of the manufacturers and
contractors but is unlikely to affect the overall pattern of rela-
tionships between the main participants.
In a simplified model of the kind proposed here some conven-
tions have to be introduced, which are summarized as follows:
 the length of each block is purely conventional and not
related to the importance or duration of a particular
Building as a process
stage. The depth of the block, however, is meant to pro-
vide a rough indication of the relative intensity of activ-
ity, involvement or concern of a given participant in a
given stage
 throughout the process and for each stage, at least one
block is marked with a dot to identify the participant
who carries the sole or major responsibility for that par-
ticular stage, although other participants might be jointly
or simultaneously involved
 arrows are meant to represent communications and flow
of information between participants at each stage (verti-
cal) and between stages for the same or different partici-
pants (horizontal)
 arrows entering a dotted block may be taken to represent
‘reporting to’ or ‘obtaining the approval of’ the partici-
pant mainly responsible for that stage
 arrows leaving dotted blocks could be interpreted as
‘issuing instructions to’ or ‘authorising’ other partici-
pants and/or stages
It should be appreciated that these schematic representations
are not only oversimplified and probably rather crude, but
also that each of them represents only a typical case out of
a variety of other examples which could illustrate each of the
approaches singled out for our broad classification.
Figure 1 is an image of the so-called ‘one-off’ approach; what
Drucker (1963) calls the ‘unique-product’ production. This
can be assumed to represent the traditional set-up, character-
ized by the maximum fragmentation of responsibilities
between participants and by the sequential intervention of the
participants in the different stages. If the vertical scale had
been arranged so as to place the contractor below the manu-
facturer, a stepped pattern of dotted blocks would have
emerged, from the upper left corner to the bottom right cor-
ner, before climbing back to the ‘consumption’ block which,
by definition, belongs to the user. If this had been done, how-
ever, the close relationship between the contractor and the
professions would have been obscured. In fact it is justified
to place the contractor where it is, to stress the confluence
of inputs (financial and design skills from above, materials
and components from below) to which value is added by the
contractor to produce the final output, in an assembly opera-
tion which is the essence of building as we know it.
The main features of the one-off approach are revealed by the
graph:
 the client has a dominant role in interpreting and quanti-
fying users’ requirements; often the client and the user are
the same person or at least belong to the same organiza-
tion, but this is not true of most of the public sector
 the main responsibility for establishing the brief is still in
the hands of the client; very often, however, the client is
181
Turin
Figure 1 One o¡
either incapable or unwilling to perform this function
and the responsibility is therefore delegated to its profes-
sional advisers
 the preliminary design function is mostly in the hands
of the professions, either as independent consultants or
in the employment of the client. It will be noted, however,
that whereas the responsibility for the design of the
building is clearly in the hands of the professions, that
of the materials and components is diffused among the
professions and the manufacturing industry itself
 the professions dominate the production information
stage. At this point, however, the contractor is brought
in different capacities depending on the particular
method of inviting tenders or awarding the contract,
a subject which has been examined and debated
ad nauseam since and even before the war
 contractors and manufacturers participate jointly in the
next two stages, the latter dominating the production one
and the former prevailing in the assembly one. It goes
without saying that the relative depth of the block is
shown purely by way of example and that several combi-
nations can occur in practice: most of the production car-
ried out in a factory, the manufacturer supplying and
fixing, the contractor being responsible for all the assem-
bly, etc. It is surprising to notice the attention devoted to
these alternatives in the current debate about the con-
struction industry, considering that they represent a rela-
tively minor variation of emphasis within one part only
of the process
At this point, it might be worthwhile considering the meaning-
fulness of the expression ‘head of the building team’, which
recurs so frequently in the professional literature. If the graph
is at all representative of the reality of conventional building
activities, and if the symbols proposed by the author are
accepted for the sake of the argument, it is apparent that the
effective headship of the team moves along the ladder and passes
182
from the client to the professions, down to the manufacturer and
contractor, to revert back to the user who, in the case of repeti-
tive work, is both the last link in one cycle of the process and the
first link in the next cycle (users requirements, brief, etc.).
This is another way of putting the conclusions reached on
communications in the building industry. It is, indeed, unrea-
listic to assume the participants carrying the main responsibil-
ity for a given stage should be deprived, by implicit
convention or by explicit contractual obligations, of the role
of co-ordination and management necessary to exercise such
responsibility.
As pointed out elsewhere (Turin, 1966), the traditional build-
ing process is an exception to the general pattern of industrial
production in so far as the product is sold before it is pro-
duced. From this follows the complicated set of rules evolved
over at least a century to ensure that the producer respects the
conditions specified by the designer on behalf of the client
before the production is started and, in the case of competi-
tive tendering, before the producer is known.
One may wonder why we should devote so much attention to
the ‘one-off’ approach which many people within and with-
out the building industry consider as doomed. There are at
least two reasons for our indulging for so long in the analysis
of this approach.
The first is that, in spite of the appearances, one-off produc-
tion is still prevailing in the building activity of most
European countries at least in terms of overall volume of out-
put. As we defined it above, one-off production can apply to
the public client or the private client; it can be found in all
types of building, whether they are repetitive or unique; it
occurs whatever grouping of professional services is offered;
and finally, and up to a certain point, is independent of the
actual technologies used.
The second reason is that, however much the one-off
approach is decried by the more progressive members of the

professions, its underlying assumptions can still be traced in
many proposed departures from it which go under different
and equally inaccurate labels. The basic and unique charac-
teristic of this approach is neither the type of contract nor the
organizational set-up linking user, client and professional ser-
vices, but rather the fact that for each operation, big or small,
a new ‘team’ is set up on an ad hoc basis.
The essential discontinuity is not in building types (which can
be highly repetitive), or in building technology (which could
be practically anything you want, including the most conven-
tional one) but in the composition of each team. The reap-
pearance of the same combinations of participants is mostly
a matter of coincidence, and it is neither encouraged nor, in
certain cases, permitted by codes of professional conduct or
by restrictive practices rules. The system works as if every
production cycle was a new one and this is the underlying
assumption of the recent efforts by one of the leading profes-
sions to set up a recommended pattern of management for the
building process.
The second and third approaches, provisionally labelled the
‘component’ and the ‘model’ approach respectively, could
again be related to the second of the production systems pro-
pounded by Drucker (1963) under the name ‘mass produc-
tion new style’ and ‘mass production old style’ respectively.
His remarks on the current misconceptions about the mean-
ing of mass production are particularly revealing when
applied to the building industry.
The ‘component’ approach represented in Figure 2 is the one
most strongly favoured by government policy in this country
in the last few years. Its main features are:
 the manufacturer of components shares with the client
the responsibility for interpreting users’ requirements.
Both of them are advised by professionals, but the
latter act in different capacities and at different levels of
complexity
Figure 2 Component
Building as a process
 briefing for the building is similar to the procedure fol-
lowed in the one-off approach, but a parallel operation
occurs at manufacturer level to enable him to interpret
user requirements in terms of compatible products
 responsibility for design is now clearly separated between
the manufacturer (materials and components) and the
professional acting for the client (buildings). The two are
linked by a common conceptual framework, the ‘rules of
the game’ to which we shall refer later
 production information is to a large extent the responsi-
bility of the manufacturer, and much less so in the hands
of the professional
 the next two stages are similar to those described in
the one-off approach, although it is likely that the
component approach will lead to a reduction in the pro-
duction activities of the contractor and possibly an
expansion of the assembly activities of the manufacturer.
This has happened already in the client-sponsored sys-
tems with supply-and-fix contracts for parts or the whole
of the shell, although it is by no means inevitable.
The distinctive feature of the component approach is the
dominant role of the manufacturer throughout the process.
This requires the acceptance by all participants of a
general set of conventions (performance standards, dimen-
sional co-ordination, jointing systems, etc.) which are the
only permanent link between stages and participants.
The attraction exerted by the component approach on archi-
tects, especially but not exclusively in public service, is under-
standable. Here is a chance for the profession to play a vital
role at several stages and of preserving their freedom of
choice among a variety of possible combinations of compo-
nents while drawing the maximum benefits of mass produc-
tion. It is possible to see, however, the limitations imposed
on the potential advantages of the component approach by
the realities of present production techniques on the one side,
183
Turin
and by the minimum variety of results which the user or the
client is likely to expect, on the other.
Within the technological processes used in the manufacture of
the majority of building components (not of materials: the
distinction is important), the economic benefits of longer pro-
duction runs or of larger output or of a reduced number of
models or any combination thereof, are comparatively small.
This is due to several reasons, including the fact that materials
account for a large proportion of direct production costs (up
to 80% or more); that set-up time between batches is
relatively short; that inventory costs are high; and that even
co-ordinated demand of the kind offered by serial contract,
bulk purchases or multi-annual programmes still leads to
considerable fluctuations in deliveries.
On the other hand, even a severe restriction in the dimen-
sional and finishing characteristics of ‘standard’ sets of com-
ponents still leads to tens or hundreds of individual models,
even disregarding specials and what manufacturers euphemis-
tically call ‘standard variants’. The response of industry to
these hard realities is reasonable and unmistakable: only an
insignificant proportion of components is produced for stock,
whether they are standard or not.
This apparent vicious circle could be broken in two ways, both
of them representing a radical departure from present practice.
One would be a really drastic limitation of the variety of pro-
ducts, accompanied by a high degree of specialization by the
manufacturing side of the industry. If present technologies
prevail in the foreseeable future, the benefits of mass produc-
tion understood as the manufacture of uniform products in
large quantities could be obtained only if each plant produced
only very few types. This occurred in the 1950s in the
centrally planned economies of Eastern Europe, with disad-
vantages from the point of view of the user and the quality
of the environment that are only just beginning to be appre-
ciated and evaluated.
The potential benefit of this rather crude approach would be
that an incentive would be created for developing new pro-
duction technologies geared to an entirely new pattern of
demand. In a market economy it might be expected that a
proper balance could be found between the conflicting
requirements of variety and price and that the new produc-
tion would create its own market as indeed has happened
in the case of most industrially made materials and sections
traditionally utilized by the building industry.
The alternative would be in the direction of a more advanced
form of mass production, Drucker’s ‘new style’, and the
opposite of the often misquoted and probably apocryphal
Ford dictum. The essence of this new mass production is
that it can create a greater diversity of products than
any method designed by man. It does not rest on uni-
form products. It rests on uniform parts which can then
be mass assembled into a large variety of products . . ..
184
Let us be clear about this fundamental point: what is pros-
pected here is not the ad hoc assembly of mass-produced uni-
form products (which is what the component approach is all
about), but rather the opposite, i.e. the transfer of variety to
the production line by subdividing the production process
into sub-processes and thus enabling the plant to turn out
an almost infinite variety of products by assembling a very
limited variety of sub-products. It will be apparent by now
that if this were possible in the building industry, as it became
possible in other industries, then the need for strict conven-
tions universally accepted would disappear. As one leading
French prefabricator once stated, the aim is to push industria-
lization to the point where it can turn out in a continuous line
an infinite variety of products.
The final and perhaps most important limitation of the
component approach as currently postulated turns around
the problem of joints. It is difficult to conceive at this stage
a set of conventions that would reconcile limitation of variety
and interchangeability without pre-judging and perhaps even
curtailing the development of technology. It is by no means
evident that the only desirable development is in the direction
of dry assembly techniques; as a matter of fact, some of the
most successful methods of construction provide an intelli-
gent combination of dry, preformed elements and wet or
amorphous connections, infillers or otherwise. We shall come
back to this point when discussing the fourth type of
approach.
Figure 3 purports to describe what some people call the
‘model’ approach. It presupposes a certain degree of repeti-
tiveness, without which the notion of model would not be
applicable. It also implies that the characteristics and price
of the finished product (this time the entire building and not
only its component parts) are known and determined before
the client or user are identified. In other words, it comes close
to the current pattern of industrial production in which, as
pointed out above, the product is made first and sold after-
wards. Examples of this approach can be found in conven-
tional speculative housebuilding or in the provision of
standard factory or agricultural buildings.
The essence of the model approach is the existence of a cata-
logue of the complete product and, in some cases, of proto-
types available for inspection by the prospective client. Its
main features as revealed by the graph are:
 because the client is not known individually until the
later stages of the process, the main responsibility for
assessing users’ requirements, establishing the brief, pre-
paring preliminary design of components and building
down to producing detailed production information,
rests with the industry. The graph illustrates the case in
which the initiative and, therefore, the responsibility
emanate from the contractor, i.e. the conventional specu-
lative builder. In some cases the dotted blocks might be
placed in the manufacturer area; in others manufacturers
and contractors might be combined in a single organisa-
tion providing most if not all of the building

Figure 3 Model
 the professional services are attached to the industry and
not to the client as in the previous two cases. They can be
conceived as independent consultants; but more often
they are incorporated in the contractor’s or manufac-
turer’s organization
 production and assembly are not dissimilar from the pat-
tern observed in the one-off and in the component
approach, although again the actual subdivision of activ-
ity between manufacturers and contractors can vary
within a very wide range
 the client is brought in late in the process: the graph illus-
trates a case when this happens after production is com-
pleted, although this might be true for only part of
the operation. It is customary, for instance, for speculative
housebuilders to undertake a development and conceive it
as a single, on-going operation, but phasing actual produc-
tion and assembly to proceed only slightly ahead of actual
sales. As in all other cases, the client might be one and the
same as the user, although the graph shows an example
where they are separate entities, such as for instance a
local authority or new town corporation buying privately
built factories and leasing them to private firms.
The essential characteristic of the model approach is that the
final product, i.e. the building itself, is standardized whereas
in the component approach standardization applies to the
parts. A point too often overlooked is that a uniform model,
if produced in sufficient quantities, does not require standard
interchangeable parts. This is a paradox of mass production
‘old style’ which can create its own internal ‘standards’ in
so far as its components do not have to be interchange-
able with those utilized by other manufacturers. In a sense the
model approach, if applied consistently and on a large
enough scale, defeats the purpose of the standardization of
parts: if a client or a manufacturer is in a position to impose
its own models, she will be understandably reluctant to accept
the constraint of universal components for the sake of a kind
of interchangeability which he does not require anyway.
Building as a process
The advantages and disadvantages of the model approach are
obvious. On the positive side, the concentration of responsi-
bilities within one of the participants enables him to conceive
the operation as a coherent whole and to integrate the differ-
ent phases within a single overall policy. The results should
be, and are often claimed to be, a better value for money, and
especially the certainty from the client’s point of view of
obtaining a given product for a given price, both of them
being known in advance.
The disadvantages are built in the system itself and turn
around the limitation of the clients’ choice. A good catalogue
should not comprise too many models at the risk of losing the
benefits of reduction of variety (repetitive work, lower inven-
tories, amortisation of development, etc.). This is what
‘industrialized builders’ would like to offer, if only the clients
were prepared to buy it.
The difficulties of this approach are revealed by the fact that
industrialized building catalogues, after stating clearly the
advantages of the ready-made models offered to the public,
go out of their way to reassure the potential client of the great
flexibility of the system and state emphatically that they are
prepared to consider special requirements.
The trouble is that nobody really knows what is a ‘standard’
and what is a ‘special’ and that few manufacturers are pre-
pared to state clearly the economic rules of the game by pri-
cing realistically both standards and specials. It is often
claimed by manufacturers that the villain in the play is the
architect acting in his capacity of the clients’ adviser, who is
reluctant to accept without change the models offered in the
catalogues. But this is a vicious circle, since it is by no means
clear what the advantages would be of buying off the peg
anything but the simplest of buildings.
In trying to understand this complex situation, we have come
to the conclusion that the best of ‘industrialized builders’ are
not really offering a model, as they unsuccessfully pretend to,
but rather a concept, a way of thinking, a modus operandi,
185
Turin
a combination of skills, in other words a process. Hence the
emergence of the last approach, represented schematically in
Figure 4. Its main features are:
 the users’ requirements stage can be similar to that of the
one-off approach, one variant of which is shown in the
graph
 at the briefing stage, the main responsibility is carried by
the design profession but the contractor is brought into
the process as early as possible
 preliminary design is in the hands of the industry (con-
tractors and manufacturers) with whatever assistance
may be required from the independent professions. The
same applies to production information, with the main
responsibility resting in the contractor/manufacturer area
 the last two stages before consumption can take a variety
of forms in common with all other approaches
Unfortunately, the graph does not show with sufficient clarity
that the early designation and involvement of the contractor/
manufacturer in the process leads to the establishment of a
more coherent team from the very beginning of the operation.
The distinguishing feature of this approach is precisely the
permanence or stability of the team. Different ways of asso-
ciating the professions, the contractor and the manufacturers
have been suggested and have operated successfully under
different labels. The most popular one, although not neces-
sarily the most typical, is the so-called ‘package deal’. The
‘professional builder’ approach could be considered as a var-
iant of the general pattern described above, and so is prob-
ably the case of many industrialized building systems,
whatever their alleged degree of openness or closeness.
It is important to note, however, that the process approach
can be conceived quite independently from any particular
building method or technique and could in fact operate effi-
ciently both within the traditional sector of the industry and
Figure 4 Process
186
in the more industrialized sector. In a sense the process
approach could describe more adequately the nature of the
services offered by some of the successful developers. It differs
from the one-off approach because the team is established
before actual design starts; it differs from the component
approach for the same reason and also because it does not
require the establishment and acceptance of a generalized set
of conventions; it differs more significantly from the model
approach because it offers a permanent team but not a stan-
dard product.
If the preceding analysis is valid, at least at a very general
level of simplification, it should cut across some of the cate-
gories ascribed to different contractual procedures or differ-
ent professional grouping intervening in the building
process. It should also throw fresh light on the functional
relationship between participants at different stages of the
building process which underlie rather than follow specific
forms of contracts. People are becoming increasingly aware
of the inadequacies of the current terminology used to
describe the true nature of tendering procedures and methods
of awarding contracts. In a research project undertaken at
University College London, we have attempted to break away
from accepted labels and to develop a more general classifica-
tion of the sequence of intervention of the main participants.
The underlying assumption to our work was that the roles of
the participants (in this context we selected the planning
authority, the client, the architect and other specialist
designers, the quantity surveyor or estimator and the contrac-
tor) and the scope and contents of the information flowing
between them was closely related to the order in which they
were brought into the process in the stages preceding actual
construction on site. Basing our analysis on some 50 detailed
case-histories, we developed a small number of ‘models’ of
the sequences of interventions of participants which are now
used as a primary entry for the study of the duration of stages
in the building process, what we call ‘the building timetable’.
These models are presented and explained in Figure 5. The
important thing about these models is that they account much

Figure 5 Critical relationships
better than conventional ‘tendering’ or ‘contract’ type labels
for the scope and nature of the work of each participant at
pre-construction stage. They reveal, among others, the basis
of information reaching a participant at a given stage and
therefore delineate the constraints under which he operates
at that particular point. Because of their generality, these
models can apply to all the four approaches described above
and could be utilized as a sub-classification of each approach.
There are no data on the frequency of occurrence of any
of the approaches or models described above, therefore spe-
culation on future trends would be very risky. This should
be the subject of fruitful research in the structure of the build-
ing industry and its related profession. The conclusions of
Building as a process
such research would have far-reaching consequences on new
forms of awarding contracts, changes in the pattern of infor-
mation flow throughout the building process, new roles
for the professions and therefore different structures of
professional fees and different codes of practice, and, finally,
new targets for education.
References
Drucker, P.F. (1963) The Practice of Management, Heinemann,
London.
Turin, D.A. (1966) What do we mean by building? Inaugural
Lecture delivered at University College, London, 14
February 1966.
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