I can’t travel back in time, but if I could…well if I could, I wouldn’t be doing this. Take me back fifty years, and I’d be hammering away at a typewriter, unjamming the keys monotonously, and coming away covered with Tippex. Take me back a hundred years, and I’d be writing this out with a pencil, hoping the copy clerk could decipher my handwriting (which, even today, is worse than your average GP…and that’s saying something).
But suppose we didn’t have Newswires a hundred years ago…suppose I was working to put up a new Hotel instead. Well, I’d probably be leaning on a shovel, watching with mild interest a new invention called The Mixer Truck backing onto a site knee-deep in mud, delivering one of the world’s first consignments of pre-mixed concrete. Hang around a few years more, and I’ll be able to watch the world’s first concrete pump in action (invented in 1927). And just about when I’m banging away on that manual typewriter, my building site self would be getting to grips with alkali-resistant glass fiber being added to the concrete.
So what…you might say, you can’t go back in time, and of course you can’t. But you can pretty much witness the 1924 version of a building site by popping along to any construction site today. You’ll still be able to watch more or less the same style mixer trucks struggling in the mud, the same style concrete pumps, and, with the aid of a good chisel, the same old glass fiber in the concrete. The fact is that traditional dinosaur construction hasn’t changed much since Calvin Coolidge was president of the United States (although at least you can buy a beer after work these days).
In contrast, Blogs and Newswires have changed beyond recognition in the last thirty years. I’m currently using electrons to prepare this text, and I’m plugged into the internet, courtesy of which you’re probably also reading. Most of us haven’t been alive as long as those technologies were available. If Calvin Coolidge could see what I’m doing now, he’d probably turn his horny-handed attention from prohibition to witchcraft. And, of course, it’s not just blogging and newswires that have changed: banking has evolved beyond all recognition as well (you can pay a bill from a bus these days), and so too have insurance, travel, shopping, voting, reading and going Zoom in a whole new way…the list goes on…and on.
So here’s the question (sorry it took so long): if emerging technologies have utterly changed everything else we live with, why is construction (literally) still stuck in the mud?
It’s not as though Mixer Trucks are the pinnacle of human ambition. Bringing concrete to the site may have been a stroke of genius in 1924, but these days, we can do without all those smoke-belching trucks working their way painfully, and ever more slowly, to inner city sites. Building components can be created just as easily, in fact far more easily, using Modular Construction technologies (that’s why Modular is up to 40% less expensive and twice as fast to install). And while adding glass fiber to concrete might make it more alkali resistant (which is why it’s there) when the building comes to the end of its useful life and the concrete comes to be crushed (in as little as twenty years these days), all those fibers escape into the air, causing skin, eye and respiratory tract disorders…that’s no laughing matter if you happen to be leaning on a shovel at the time. It’s certainly not good when it comes to protecting our previous environment.
So, isn’t it time we started building better and getting with the times?
Happily, somebody’s doing just that: Red Ribbon’s Phoenix Green Hotel Fund was established to harness the full potential of emerging technologies (including Modular construction, energy-saving devices, and “greener” concrete) to build, refurbish and redevelop hotel sites in a more environmentally friendly, sustainable way: with a key focus on ESG criteria at every stage in the process, and that radically reduces embodied emissions at development and operational phases…which can’t be a bad thing.
Who needs to go back in time when we can go forward together to a better future?
You can find out more about the Green Hotel Fund at www.redribbon.gi/phoenix-green-hotel
Invest in Red Ribbon Asset Management
Red Ribbon Asset Management (www.redribbon.co) aims to harness the full potential of fast evolving and emerging technologies to meet the needs of global communities as part of a circular economy, fully recognising the compelling demands of planet people and profit.
Leave a Reply