This post explores the history and current status of BuildUSA.
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Steve’s Build Blog (and its affiliated LinkedIn pages), Syntecgroup and BuildUSA, are laser focused on Building’s current challenges and future opportunities. Most building companies by necessity, stay focused on their specific trade, and have little time and resources to invest in big picture initiatives. They operate on a project basis and regardless of how building continues to innovate or just changes, almost all the companies are individually focused on keeping their employees, finishing their work and getting paid.
Little wonder that innovation continues to be incremental and segregated into small silos. Each of us working in the building industry, continue to create islands of unique Standards, Templates and Workflows (STWs), custom made for our unique companies. This is certainly an improvement over what we inherited at the beginning of the 1980’s, when many of us started our professional careers and digital tools were first introduced. But, it is certainly nowhere near enough to accomplish the goal of being able to consistently create high quality, higher performing buildings with lower costs and shorter construction periods.
New innovation is currently led by individuals and companies that overwhelmingly have focused on one small transactional area of the building process. Typically, a younger, motivated member of a building team is required to lead and track, communications, or file sharing, or bids, or schedules, or BIM viewers, or clash detection… the list is endless, and they realize how ineffective the current company’s methodology is. Being young and technologically adept, they then develop a technology (typically database driven app) solution and then work hard at commercializing the new app they developed and are less focused on understanding the building process. Today there are a vast number of individual apps, but how they work together to create a better building process, is still a work in process.
There is a critical need for clear visions of what the future building process, building relationships and building products should look like. What is “Building” as an industry trying to accomplish? What is its Mission? What are its goals?
These simple questions, if clearly defined and widely accepted, will provide clarity to the industry’s innovation process, creating.
- New building processes, workflows, products and financial efficiencies.
- Improvements in the quality and performance of building products.
- Higher satisfaction experiences for building industry staff, and customers with both the building process they experience on daily basis, and the building products they use every day.
For the past couple of years, Steve’s Build Blog (SBB) has been building a foundation of content to tell this story. Concurrently, BuildUSA and the Syntec Group have collaborated on developing, assembling, building and testing the collaborative environment, digital tools and STWs that will support this effort.
To be truly successful, digital systems often require people to behave in a manner contrary to their nature. This inherent conflict creates a classic dilemma where a vision sells the public a future filled with opportunity and wonder. But instead, the reality falls woefully short of expectations and delivers disappointment.
To counterbalance this, BuildUSA has focused om:
- The Importance of developing Data Structures. They are the key that allow digital systems to work efficiently, and for people to understand and interact more comfortably with the digital content.
- The Importance of implementing Digital Collaborative Environments that supports people’s nature and personal growth.
- The Importance of having a shared achievable vision describing building’s future, that can act as an organizing anchor for building innovation tools and strategies.
- The Importance of building innovation being capable of both listening to and driving market growth.
There are many, many components that comprise the world of Building. We are optimistic that 2025 and 2026 will be the years that this work will begin to hit the marketplace. The mission of BuildUSA is to develop a comprehensive vision, and then build a digital collaborative environment that supports the vision and people that create, operate and utilize the built environment. BuildUSA’s work has evolved over time, but at its heart are two drivers,
- Standards, Templates & Workflows (STWs)
- How best to create a successful system that will support, and be supported by, the people that run and execute building projects
To date all content hosted by the Build Blog has been produced in a free flow manner, and there has been no explanatory index, or summary, that would allow an interested reader to understand the big picture that was being painted. This blog post is the first of a series of blogs that will endeavor to create clarity to,
- How BuildUSA defines the current challenges in building
- BuildUSA’s vision of how the future building marketplace will operate.
- BuildUSA’s innovations in the areas of technology, business and building production.
- The resources required to support and operate the new BuildUSA environment.
Change is coming and will continue to accelerate. Those in our industry who embrace change in a smart way will thrive. Building a better industry with better products and customer experiences, and creating a more satisfying day to day experience for ourselves, the millions of people at all levels and trades, responsible for executing building projects.