Creative destruction: building toward sustainability

Abstract

The engineering community at large, and the civil engineering community in particular, has the opportunity and arguably the obligation to promote a development agenda that considers not only the economics of development, but also the health of the environment and society at large. In this paper, we contemplate the challenge of sustainable development and its effect on project scale and scope. We discuss the inherent opportunity to drive the "creative destruction" of the development industry, using innovation to exploit inefficiencies in the planning and management of engineering systems to create a range of "future" products and services that challenge existing practice. We review the impact of procurement policy, contract pricing, prescriptive codes, and public policy on innovation. Several examples of innovative design and sustainable development introduced into the planning and management of Canadian civil engineering projects are provided. We assert that the most effective means of promoting the sustainability of built environment and civil infrastructure systems will be through inter- and intra-industry collaboration with the support of public policy-makers.Key words: sustainable development, civil, engineering, infrastructure, innovation, creative destruction, environment, collaboration.