AGREED PERFORMANCE CRITERIA FACILITATES MORE EFFICIENT HOUSING SOLUTIONS

Introduction A number of cases have been executed and analysed. Lessons learned from the International Energy Agency six-year project “Co-operative Procurement”, which has just ended, and a number of innovation projects in Sweden financed by the Swedish Council for Building Research and the Swedish National Energy Administration are presented. An analysis lately about a technology procurement project for more cost-efficient production of multi-family houses is compared with the other cases. Purpose The overall objectives of all the different projects, which are both in the energy and building area, were to inspire the innovation of more efficient solutions. The immediate goal was to reduce the use of energy, the environmental impact (use of water, noise), the time used for the installation work or to reduce the total cost for both production/construction and operation. Approach Within all the analysed cases the procedure used was technology procurement including the creation of a group of clients/buyers in which the requirements for the work were formulated as performance criteria. These criteria were to be fulfilled by the contractors and/or suppliers in submitted proposals, prototypes and full-scale pilot projects. Different mechanisms for rewards have been used such as guaranteed deliveries of first series, large information and labelling efforts in collaboration with the influential customers and receipt of highly esteemed awards like the “International Energy Agency Award of Excellence” for very advanced energy efficient solutions. Results In general, theoretical research about innovation instruments on the demand side, better communication, building up of networks in fragmented areas and the creation of powerful buyer groups have been stressed as important and essential components for successful technology procurement projects. It is however very time-consuming to build up new buyer groups in areas with a large degree of fragmentation as in the building sector. In many of the cases presented in this paper, it has been found that formulation of the requirements as performance criteria can inspire innovation, especially if important clients/buyers are involved and the efforts are combined with different recognition mechanisms such as Awards with high prestige. These efforts seem to have a large influence on the contractors’ and suppliers’ decisions to concentrate development efforts in the actual area. Concrete results in the cases are components with 50% energy reduction, industrial motors with 2040% reduction of losses and ventilation systems with better performance, more satisfied users/occupants and lower operational costs. In some cases, the total costs have been reduced almost by half. The involved project managers and experts have identified a large number of lessons learned which will be presented in the paper. CIB World Building Congress, April 2001, Wellington, New Zealand Page 2 of 11 Paper: CLI 06