Knowledge creation and transfer in integrated urban design: the - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Understanding Projects: CRMP Seminar Series Wednesday 8th December 2010

Knowledge creation and transfer in integrated urban design: the case of Arup’s ecocity business Andrew Davies

co-authors Lars Frederiksen & William Wu Innovation & Entrepreneurship Group

Overview

• Empirical context
• Theory and methods
• Findings and analysis: renew, reuse and reinforce

Challenge: Climate change and Chinese cities

• “China is searching for novel ways to expand urban areas while conserving natural resources”,

Science, 2008

• “China’s current development is ecologically unsustainable, and the damage will not be

reversible once higher GDP has been achieved”, Zhenhua Xie, Minister of State Environmental Protection Agency

Rapid Chinese urbanisation

China’s urban population is expected to reach 1.12bn people by 2050 600m people are expected move from rural to urban areas by 2050

Response to these challenges: ecocity experiments

• Ecocity - radically new form of urban design
• New build and new build/retrofit projects
• Promote sustainable living and low carbon society
• Less use of non-renewable resources
• Adapt to climate change
• Pioneering projects
• Dongtan in China
• Masdar in Abu Dhabi
• Subsequent projects
• Thames Gateway and ecotowns in the UK

Masdar – Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Designed by Fosters & Partners

Dongtan – near Shanghai, China Designed by Arup

Dongtan – a vision of the urban low carbon future

"Dongtan was a rare chance to demonstrate that growth could happen a different way.” Lead planner Alejandro Gutierrez, Arup, Wired 2007 “This city will become a showpiece for the rest of the world. With London set to grow so much, the methods we use in Dongtan will become extremely relevant to London.” Peter Head, Dongtan Project Director, Arup 2007

Connected to Shanghai by bridge, tunnel & subway system

Dongtan ecocity – key objectives and features

• Project stakeholders
• Client: Shanghai Industrial

Investment Corporation (SIIC)

• Consultant masterplanner: Arup

(UK design consultancy)

• Project goals:
• Sustainable ‘demonstrator city’ – cutting

carbon emissions shapes urban design

• 45 min travel time to central Shanghai
• Population 500,000 in 2050
• Site: 84 square km
• 3 distinct villages amid parkland and

canals

• Population density similar to London

A strategic project for China and the UK

• November 2005 – Arup sign

MoU with President Hu Jin Tao & PM Tony Blair

• April 2007 – Deputy PM John

Prescott visits Dongtan site

• September 2007 – Arup, HSBC

present to PM Gordon Brown and China Task Force

• SIIC, Arup, HSBC, Tongji

University sign MoU – PM Gordon Brown & Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng

Key milestones in design project phase

• January-August – Arup team

prepare clear & detailed scope of work for Dongtan design

• August – SIIC appoints Arup to

develop the Dongtan Masterplan

• October – Arup presents

Dongtan design and client requests 100% local renewable energy sources from start

• November - Arup signs contract

with SIIC work on 3 other ecocity projects in China

• December – Arup issues 1st

‘Design Report for the Start-Up Area’. Sustainability strategies & urban vision for start-up area

• August – SIIC approves Arup’s

masterplan (project delivered in 13 months)

• September – Arup issues

‘Control Plan for Start-Up Area’. Final masterplan & main planning application document

• December – Arup issues

‘Sustainability Guidelines’ –

• bjectives, indicators and

requirements for buildings, infrastructure & public space

• January – Arup deliver final

documents delivered to SIIC. Project ready to move to ‘construction’ phase

• April – Arup’s co-located project

in SIIC premises is closed and team members move back to Arup Shanghai office

2005 2006 2007

Dontang masterplan deliveries

• Masterplan documents delivered in January 2007
• 1. Implementation plan
• 2. Design & sustainability guidelines
• Documents address
• Procurement, delivery and financing model
• Performance specification for design, construction and operation
• f ecocity over 30 years
• Design phase completed and the project is ready for

construction phase

Outcome of Arup’s design project

• Project delivered 3 months early
• Design meets request for “close” to 100% zero carbon solution
• Large wind farm generates green electricity
• Power utility burning rice husks (locally produced food)
• Solar power
• Walking biking city with zero emission vehicles – hydrogen & electric
• Buildings 4-8 stories tall to improve density and minimise sprawl
• Only 10% waste ends up in landfill
• Uses proven technology to reduce risks
• Innovation lies in the integration of technology and environment, cultural and

social components

• ‘Dongtan is not a rigid blueprint for a city for the future’…other

projects must be guided by unique local environment (Peter Head, Arup)

Dongtan site – October 2007 – still a wetland

Overview

• Empirical context
• Theory and methods
• Findings and analysis: renew, reuse and reinforce

Research motivation: managing innovation in projects

• New performance requirements for

cities: zero-carbon and sustainability

• bjectives - experiments
• Initiated by ‘vanguard projects’ (Brady

& Davies, 2004, Organization Studies)

• How is knowledge created and

combined in a vanguard project in a new market?

• How is knowledge transferred from a

vanguard project to the next project?

Market base new new Technology base New projects New projects

• Business as usual
• Traditional project

capabilities existing existing Davies & Hobday, The Business of Projects, Cambridge University Press, (2005)

Capability development through innovative projects

• A capability is the appropriate knowledge, skills and experience to

perform a set of specialized industrial activities

• “…the discovery and estimation of future wants, to research,

development and design, to the execution and co-ordination of processes of physical transformation, the marketing of goods and so on. (Richardson 1972)”

• These activities create a competitive advantage
• Capabilities are developed through knowledge integration and

transfer (Grant 1996)

• Yet, we know relatively little about the process through with this is

done in terms of:

• The role of key individuals in vanguard and future projects
• The wider role of managing external institutions and stakeholders to

support the new projects

Research design and methods

• Inductive research based on a case study
• World’s first ecocity design – rare case (Siggelkow, 2007)
• Process study – January 2007 to June 2010
• > 60 interviews (snowballed sample: cross functional, cross-hierarchy but mainly

managerial level involved in Dongtan: Arup, SIIC, Chongming Island local authorities, SDCL (Sustainable Capital investor), HSBC bank)

• 3 visits to Dongtan site
• Experienced the Shanghai project office and client office
• Primary source documents (internal presentations, reports, diagrams and material for

project bid and external public documents)

• 2 workshops for validation and further specification of findings – in China and UK
• Non-participant observation in Arup office - London and Shanghai; Dongtan Project
• ffice in Shanghai
• Data analysis
• Open coding (manually) then axial and selective coding in Nvivo

Capabilities: renewal, reuse, replication

Renew

Incremental/radical

Reuse

Tacit/Explicit

Reinforce

Internal/external

Overview

• Empirical context
• Theory and methods
• Findings and analysis: renew, reuse and reinforce

Renewal: Dongtan as a vanguard project

‘Dongtan is the next Sidney Opera house for Arup in terms of importance’

• B. Morera, Urban

designer, Arup, 2008 ‘Normally we would never do a project like Dongtan – it is too risky and too big. However, this was a rare opportunity for us to show leadership and learn…. Taking on large projects is the way we learn in this business of projects’ John Miles, Arup Board, 2009

Renewal: innovation in urban design projects

• ‘Renewal’ – build competitive advantage by developing project

capabilities in new categories of projects (Brady & Davies, 2004; Shamsie et al, 2009)

• Challenge: create innovative approach to deliver Dongtan project
• Learning from Arup’s previous projects (e.g. BedZed low carbon

development)

• New concept of multi-functional project team called ‘total serial

innovation’ (Peter Head, Arup)

• ‘Integrated Urbanism’ project team led by architects
• 30 specialists each with a team of 3-4 members in matrix structure
• New position: Cultural Planner
• Developed new tools on the project to support integrated urban design

Renewal: creating the Dongtan project team

• Dongtan project – Arup’s ‘skunkwork’ project
• Team selection: two people knew each other from LSE connection
• Encouraged to experiment with new approach to meet strong client

needs

• Core team of 5 builds (six months) up to 150 specialists in less than one

year (mainly in-house)

• New approach supported by Peter Head, Director Planning and

Integrated Urbanism

• Arup lead the project and work with local design institutes and

consultancies to deliver workpackages

• The project was risky for Arup
• Foreign architects can lose control of their Chinese projects when clients

seek to cut costs and redesign using cheaper options

• Was the client really committed?
• Arup carried out internal audit of the project

Arup’s challenge: how to integrate multiple components to achieve sustainable performance?

• Human and

Environmental Health

• Economic Vitality and

Individual Prosperity

• Energy
• Housing
• Nutrition and Urban-

Rural Linkages

• Mobility and Access
• Communications
• Education and Culture
• Governance and Civic

Engagement

• Water

Systemically interconnected components Change one and

• ne or more other

components must change

Solution to integration challenge: matrix project structure

• ‘There is key temporal dimension to the work as well as

interdisciplinary complexity. Sometimes the work in any cell of the matrix was led by the cross-cutting team and sometimes by the physical component team’

• Peter Head, 2007 Hugh Ford Lecture
• Matrix structure for integrating multiple technology and
• rganisational components of the design
• Teams develop their own model (e.g. trasport, waste,

environmental impact)

• Project members assigned to 12 offices within Arup
• Design and integration led by architects
• Focus meeting performance objectives – guidelines of

sustainability

Traditional approach to masterplanning

Traditional linear process

Client BC REC MP ENG

Business Consultant Real Estate Consultant Master Planner Engineer

‘We couldn’t do it in a simple linear way. It would take four years to achieve an outcome. We had to develop a new approach’ (Guiterrez, Interview, 2008)

Arup created a new process: non-linear design

‘We did what normally takes four years in one year’ (Guiterrez, Interview, 2008)

BC

Business Consultant Real Estate Consultant Master Planner Engineer Arup

ENG MP REC

Tools for integrated urban design

Reuse: organisational change & routines

• ‘Reuse’ – knowledge (tacit and explicit) transferred to future projects
• From outset Arup aims to transfer knowledge and develop replicable

capabilities on subsequent (ecocity) projects

• Partnership with SIIC on 4 ecocity projects in China – client wants to take
• ne systems integrator role
• Partnership with HSBC
• New unit in Arup: Integrated Urbanism (Spring 2009 75 employees)
• Group ‘born out of Dongtan’ (Guiterrez, 2008, interview)
• Transfer of core Dongtan project members
• Mentoring on new projects
• Refinement of project tools – IRM and SPEAR
• Create new tool: Integrated Methodology – sequence of design processes

Arup’s new approach: ‘Integrated Urbanism’

Source: ‘Making Places in the Ecological Age’, Arup Urban Design

Reinforcement: market position & internal positioning

• The concept of ‘reinforcement’ to describe the wider role of senior

Arup staff in promoting the project internally and externally

• Creating and shaping a new market
• Role of charismatic project members: Peter Head, Alejandro Guiterrez

and Malcolm Smith

• Advance the concept of ecocity at international conferences: e.g. Clinton

C40

• Articles in major world publications: e.g. Wired, Newsweek, Financial

Times

• Collaboration with universities – e.g. EPSRC - Ecocit networks

www.ecocit.org

• Creation of Institutes for Sustainability – China and UK
• Develop internal support for the Dongtan project and the strategic

potential in sustainable integrated urban development

Conclusions: from practice to theory to practice

Thank you for listening Questions and comments are welcome