Articles:

on transforming the delivery of rural housing via design optimisation and prototyping, in order to facilitate faster, scalable and digitally integrated production.

My journey in government began in 2010.I was involved in the nuclear sector when I was first approached to be an advisor in the UK Government Department of Energy and Climate Change.

I quickly transitioned to a forerunner of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority where I spent nine years in central government before taking on my current role as Programme Director for the Construction Innovation Hub, with the aim of delivering the Construction Sector Deal.I’ve worked through three different governments - Labour, Coalition and Conservative - but through them all there has been an increasing focus on the importance of infrastructure and transforming construction.. One thing I’ve noticed through this period is that we tend to think of ourselves in the engineering community as being innovators.We think we're quite good at working out what needs doing, but actually, the real skill, and one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned during my time in government, is that working out what to do can be quite easy.

It's working out how to get it done that becomes hard.. At present, our focus is on transforming construction into a more future-facing sector.We need to ask important questions about how to make it more inclusive and representative of the society it serves.. To begin, it’s essential to recognise that we can’t achieve our goals working in isolation.

Problems like carbon emissions, poor build quality, labour shortages and the housing crisis - they can all be improved if we collectively refocus our energies and unify our processes.

The creation of the Construction Innovation Hub is a response to this need.Lego® is an interesting ‘Platforms’ case study in itself and a great example of how standard components do not limit individuality of design.

There are also multiple manufacturers of the components.Since the last patent underlying the brick design expired in 1978 there are numerous legitimate systems such as Megaconstrux and Kre-O which are dimensionally identical to, and therefore compatible with, Lego bricks.. For the purposes of this article, however, I am even more interested in a company called Brick Link.

It was set up in 2000, initially called BrickBay, as a marketplace to allow fans of Lego to buy and sell vintage Lego sets and retired pieces.It has since grown into the world’s largest community of Lego fans, where people can also share ideas and designs.