The National Platform has developed from a number of earlier initiatives, namely CRISP. The Construction Research and Innovation Strategy Panel (CRISP) was established as a joint industry and government panel in July 1995. Its role was to identify and develop priorities for research funders, and help to set the agenda for construction research and innovation. Until early 2002, it operated as a panel of the Construction Industry Board.
In February 2002, Sir John Fairclough produced 'Rethinking Construction Innovation and Research', his review of government Research & Development policies and practices. This recommended the development of nCRISP under the aegis of the Strategic Forum. The work undertaken by CRISP and nCRISP can be accessed from this site.
A decade after CRISP was established, the National Platform for the Built Environment was launched. Its aim is to significantly increase the level of business-led research applicable to the built environment.
A number of the issues that CRISP and nCRISP sought to address remain pertinent to the work of the National Platform, as do those raised in Sir John Faircough’s report of 2002. The National Platform promotes strategic collaborative research because it believes this is vital to improve the long term competitiveness and performance of the industry. The industry continues to invest insufficiently in research and thus limits the benefits it gains from such activities. The short term development aspect of Research & Development is still emphasized, to the detriment of undertaking strategic research in order to generate longer term benefits.
As with our predecessors, the National Platform acknowledges that the market context for research is important – that, for example, the housing sector is likely to have different research requirements and research interpretations than the infrastructure sector. Similarly we do not seek to undertake research, but rather to facilitate it across the research community and industry. As nCRISP started doing, research is focused on priority issues and the Strategic Research Agenda, launched in June 2006 forms a blueprint for this process.
However, the National Platform also seeks to advance upon the work of nCRISP. Crucially, we believe that the National Platform has to be owned and led by industry while engaging the wider research community. By creating an industry led group, we believe that we can create a single powerful voice for the built environment that has the potential to influence the regulatory environment – an activity that the industry has hitherto failed to undertake effectively.
We are also operating in a different research environment to CRISP or nCRISP: the days of government research funding ring-fenced for industry sectors including construction are over. We have to compete for funding with technology-driven industries such as aerospace and pharmaceuticals. To be effective against such industries, we have to be more focused and work collaboratively. Equally, we know that different issues are emerging as critical to building the long term success of the industry: sustainability in its widest sense is rapidly and rightly becoming the pre-eminent issue our industry has to address in the short and long term.
Finally, the National Platform is concerned with the built environment industry rather than purely construction. In his influential report published by nCRISP in 2004, the late Dr Pearce discussed narrow and broad definitions of the industry. We believe that only by focusing on the broad industry definition or the built environment industry, can we deliver the long term potential of research to improve the built environment for all its stakeholders.