Construction Innovation Hub

CIH collaborated with LMC to secure a legacy boost for its innovation programme.
Multiple plaudits from industry VIPs
100 pieces of high-impact media coverage over six weeks
The Construction Innovation Hub (CIH) was founded by uniting world-class expertise from the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC), BRE and Centre of Digital Built Britain (CDBB) to collectively guide the transformation of the UK construction industry.

As part of the UK government’s Transforming Construction Challenge, the CIH collaborated with hundreds of industry bodies, policymakers, practitioners and academics to drive innovation throughout construction, focused on improving the sector’s performance and productivity.

Challenge

How do you take brilliant lessons from manufacturing, aerospace, automotive and other sectors and convince the construction industry that it’s worth adopting some of their best digital and quality assurance processes to achieve improved outcomes?

As its major innovation programme came to a close in 2022, the CIH turned to LMC to help secure a last-minute legacy boost.

LMC was appointed to promote CIH’s legacy from its assurance and digital workstreams, starting with the LEXiCON methodology which was already close to being published and at testing phase with early adopters.

LEXiCON is designed to provide the construction industry with a plain language dictionary to share product data consistently so it can be standardised for BIM and support creation of machine-readable product specifications.

Other initiatives we promoted included:
  • Construction Product Quality Planning (CPQP), which helps construction product and platform manufacturers to improve QA processes.
  • Verification and Validation, which ensures products meet their performance and quality requirements.
  • D-COM, which tests designs against regulation, and heralds the introduction of machine-readable Building Regulations.
  • Change Control, designed to provide an audit trail as products and manufacturing methods change and adapt.

Strategy

Our research confirmed that many construction leaders found the CIH projects and recommendations difficult to understand or translate into their own work.

We helped CIH simplify the messaging, and focused on media and influencer endorsements, and in-person and visual storytelling – communications activities that create a less technical, more easily relatable narrative. Our intensive project included:
  • Strategy workshops with all Assurance and Digital activity teams
  • Advice and outreach to influential stakeholders
  • Copywriting for guidance documents and methodology report
  • Multichannel content development
  • Speaker presentations for industry events including UK Construction Week and Digital Construction Week
  • Thought leadership articles and case studies
  • Building journalist awareness through media releases, reactive comment and briefing opportunities.

Results

Dame Judith Hackitt commented at the launch of CPQP:

“A very positive response to the new regulatory requirements for quality assurance… Learning good practice from manufacturing sectors is a smart way to accelerate the pace of change in construction.”
  • Multiple plaudits from industry stakeholders, including a helpful quote from Dame Judith Hackitt which we could use in our PR activities.
  • 100 pieces of high-impact media coverage reaching more than 1.5m industry professionals.
  • 1,700 additional engagements on social media amplifying online media coverage and building discussions around productivity and quality in construction.
  • Strong evidence reported of the benefits of using CIH concepts, plus increased collaboration and higher R&D spend in construction as a result.
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