Episode 65 - Four Innovation Barriers - Set in Concrete with Clare Tubolets

Clare Tubolets joins me this month of the podcast, discussing innovation in the world of concrete and construction. I have gotten to know Clare through the Cooperative Research Centre National Innovation Policy Forum and was keen to explore some of the opportunities and challenges in building and construction.

We start, as we generally do, with Clare sharing some of her journey to her current role as CEO of the Smart Crete CRC. She shared some of her early innovation experiences arising from the Sense T project, from her time in Tasmania. Through her journey from that project, and the Food Agility CRC, Clare found a passion for innovation and impact.

Clare shared the challenges that reducing carbon emissions presents to the cement and concrete industries. In Australia, 29 million cubic metres of concrete is used, which is 2/3rds of all building materials we use – second only to water. Australia has unique construction challenges that need attention, driving the need for innovation through a complex supply chain.

Clare shares her 4 Barriers Framework, where technical, market, regulatory and policy, and skills and capabilities, present as challenges in bringing technology and innovations to market. We touch on how sustainability can be a purpose for change, but ultimately adoption tends to fall back to time, cost and performance metrics.

We spend some time exploring how the regulatory environment presents some additional challenges to adoption. While naturally regulators are conservative in this regard, given the possible consequences of failure, there are some interesting challenges around local needs and global precedents. We speculated on a single change and the cost of no change over the 15 years it took to get regulatory approval for a change already adopted in other jurisdictions.

We then talked about 3D concrete and the opportunities that this presents to local industry, and a pathway to addressing a number of social, environmental and labour challenges through a near 'off the shelf' technology. We again find regulatory challenges, in this case, being how does policy and regulation keep up with the speed of innovation and change – a problem not unique to the construction industry! On reflection, we recognise that at their core, these are not inherently technological or market, but challenges arising from current cultural norms and risk appetites of the people involved.

In looking to change behaviour and norms, Clare shared some of her organisation's efforts to build skills and capabilities in industry, with the aspiration of making sustainable products the default choice of the system. While there are great stories on sustainable infrastructure, concrete is used in a lot of mundane, unsexy applications that are price sensitive, not necessarily sustainability orientated.

We close reflecting on emerging opportunities for Australian construction, current examples of where innovation is taking place such as Quay Quarter Tower and North-East Link, and the opportunities emerging in asset management with sensor systems.

I particularly liked the framework that Clare shared, and hope this offers some new foundations for thinking about innovation adoption. (Yes, pun intended!)