Sensors and Sensibility: Examining the role of technological

features in servitizing construction towards greater sustainability

Abstract: The role played by the technological development of products in shaping more

sustainable ways of working in the built environment is examined through a case study of a systems

integrator of mechanical and electrical systems in the UK construction industry. The organisation is

exploring ways in which they can improve the through-life performance of their systems through

greater servitization. We sought to understand how and why emergent technological features,

stimulated by the integration of new sensors within their systems, were affording different user-

groups within the organisation’s value chain to act in more servitized ways. Our case analysis found

that new energy-metering sensors were integral to the development of greater transparency between

“ConstructCo” and their clients. Equally evident were the various ways in which equipment-

condition monitoring sensors were shaping a collective motive across “ConstructCo’s” supply chain

towards exploring the technical and financial justification for implementing predictive maintenance.

The critical role played by new sensor technology in shaping “ConstructCo’s” pursuit of servitization

highlights the need for research to pay greater attention towards material agency when explaining

how organisational practices accommodate the implementation and use of technological

developments in construction. Furthermore, by using servitization as our research context, we offer

fresh insights into the conditions and consequences of transitioning towards greater servitization in

construction.

Keywords: technological innovation, sustainability, servitization, technological features,

sensors

Introduction

“It follows that, whatever their particular interests, economists, as well as social scientists and policy makers more generally, are at some stage likely to have to reflect upon the nature of technology” (Faulkner andal., 2010)

As the building sector accounts for approximately 40% of the total energy consumption in the

EU (see European Commission, 2008), the development and use of more energy-efficient

solutions in construction has taken centre stage in recent times (Rohracher, 2010).

Traditionally, technological developments tended to be treated, in research, policy and

practical terms, as separate from social, cultural and organisational aspects (Shove 1998). The

prevailing techno-economic perspective employed by researchers tended to emphasise the

technical potential of new developments and then considered social, cultural and

organisational norms as significant barriers to technological progress (Guy 2006). More

recently, scholars have sought to break down these arbitrary distinctions between

technological developments and non-technical factors (Shove 2003). Gradually, technological

developments and social change are seen as mutually influencing in an ongoing process;

technological developments condition and are conditioned by changing social interactions.

This sociotechnical approach to documenting change has been applied variously in studies on

the co-ordination of knowledge-sharing practices using digital technologies (e.g. Whyte and

Lobo, 2010, and; Linderoth, 2010), and in transition studies of technological innovations in

construction (e.g. Harty, 2005). By drawing upon concepts from Actor Network Theory

(ANT) (Latour’s 2005) and the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) (Pinch and Bijker

1987), construction management researchers (Schweber and Harty, 2010) (Whyte & Lobo,

2010) have begun to establish a better understanding of the ways individuals and

organisations organise around technological developments. However, in framing

technological developments as socially constructed, the active role played by the (often-

emergent) features of technology is downplayed in the study of new ways of organising. This

neglect limits our understanding of the nature of technologically-induced change. To

understand the materiality of changing micro-level processes, research must drill down

deeper to specific technological features in order to understand the form and function of

technological artefacts on a component level. Therefore, we seek to reclaim the role played

by these technological features in enabling organisations and individuals to do things

differently and to do things that they previously could not do (Leonardi and Barley, 2008).

Consequently,we examine how and why emergent technological features shape new ways of

organising in the construction industry. The context of the research is a case study of an

organisation, ConstructCo,transitioning towards more sustainable ways of working in the

built environment and its pursuit of more servitized solutions in the construction industry.

Servitization is described as the business transformation that traditionally product-orientated

organisations make as they shift towards delivering solutions consisting of an integrated

combination of products and services. In ConstructCo’s case, they are a systems integrator of

mechanical and electrical systems who are exploring ways they could expand their business

operations by playing a more prominent role in the operation and maintenance of their assets.

Trends within other industries (Tukker and Tischner, 2006) suggest that when traditionally

product-orientated organisations shift their attention towards through-life performance of the

systems they design and deliver, there is the potential to develop new ways of increasing the

ongoing efficiency of their assets and collaborate with end-users to reduce energy

consumption patterns. ConstructCo were looking for ways in which they could better

leverage their own capabilities and the capabilities of the mechanical and electrical supply

chain towards optimising the ongoing performance of building systems. It was evident that

central to this process was the way that ConstructCo and their supply chain were mobilising

new resources in the form of sensor technology. Thus, we sought to examine the transition as

it unfolds within ConstructCo and across its supply chain by questioning how and why

emergent technological features, associated with ConstructCo embedding new sensors into

their systems, were shaping more servitized ways of working within the organisation.

Attention was placed particularly on those features that emerged out of two technological

developments which manifested themselves since the commencement of the case study in

January 2013. They were the integration of more energy-metering sensor points around their

systems (e.g Primary energy conversion systems) and the embedding of new sensors within

pieces of key mechanical and electrical plant (e.g pumps, boilers, chillers) to monitor key

performance parameters.

The paper draws theoretical inspiration from Leonardi’s ideas of imbrication (Leonardi,

2011) and affordances (Leonardi, 2013) to explain the various ways in which these

technological features were enabling ConstructCo to do new things and do things differently

in their pursuit of servitization. The findings indicate that there were instances where the

shared use of new sensors across different user-groups was conditioning opportunities to

explore the development of new metrics that underpin more servitized relations between

ConstructCo and their clients. Also evident was that embedding new sensors into existing

systems played an important role in stimulating new conversations and new interactions

within ConstructCo’s supply chain. Furthermore, the findings illustrate how the integration of

new sensors was being shaped by parallel technological developments elsewhere through, for

instance, systems standardization and the development of new software platforms. Thus, the

contribution of this paper is three-fold. Firstly, our case analysis offers fresh insights in to the

reciprocal relationship between changing social interactions and technological development

when understanding shifts towards more sustainable ways of working in the built

environment. Secondly, we build on the recent interest on servitization in construction

(Brady and., al 2005) (Leiringer and., al 2009) to explore the opportunities for greater

servitization within the sector and provide fresh insights into the intended and especially

unintended pathways inherent to transitions towards greater servitization. Finally, by

illustrating the potentially autonomous and unpredictable nature of technology, we suggest

that greater attention should be paid towards material agency of technological features when

understanding organisational transitions.

Studying technical change in the construction industry

Distinctions are often made between the seemingly separable technical and social elements in

the delivery of more sustainable buildings (Schweber and Harty, 2010). The technical

challenge was frequently regarded as one for building science and the required technological

developments were widely seen as progressing of their own momentum, in relative isolation

from social actions (Guy and Shove, 2000). Demonstrating the potential economic benefits of

these new technological innovations was integral to the diffusion of new energy-efficient

technologies (Guy 2006). The subsequent adoption of these innovations was then framed

through a diffusion approach (see Rogers 1995) whereby the initially slow adoption of

technological innovations was a consequence of ignorance of the potential benefits or

resistance to change. Technological adoption tended to be seen through the lens of rational

decision-making by individuals who became more or less enlightened about the potential

benefits of the technological change (Shove 1998). Thus traditionally research could be seen

to focus on finding ways to bridge the existing gap between the emerging potential of new

technologies and existing practice.

More recently, researchers in construction have increasingly argued that we must draw upon

alternative perspectives of technological change if we were to better understand how more

energy-efficient technological innovations are developed and used in the built environment

(e.g. Rohracher 2001, and; Lovell and Smith, 2010). Social theories of technological change

have been used to move beyond the traditional techno-economic perspective (Guy 2006) to

offer a more nuanced perspective of how users and technological use can influence

developments in technology (Shove 2003). Others have sought to examine the role non-

monetary and institutional factors play in the emergence of technological developments

(Hakkinen, 2010). Studies into the nature and process of technological change are not just

restricted to the interest surrounding the developments of more energy-efficient technologies.

Researchers have also probed how changing social contexts can bring about greater

productivity through improvements to the coordination of information technologies (see

Harty, 2008; Harty and Whyte, 2010, and; Linderoth, 2010). Due to the inherently complex,

multi-disciplinary (Harty, 2005) multi-actor (Jacobsson and Linderoth, 2010) nature of

project work within construction, researchers are becoming increasingly aware of the need to

unpack the multiple social forces that influence technological developments.

By attending to the interconnectedness of technical innovations and social processes, scholars

are placing greater emphasis upon how the social world we live in shapes the development

and use of technological innovations in construction. The analysis of these studies focus on

the wider social processes within which decisions concerning technological developments are

enacted. Shove (2003), for instance, focused on processes of use and how these processes re-

shape socio-technical regimes. In her study, Shove (2003) deconstructed air conditioning

systems, power showers and freezers to demonstrate how “sustainable routines are

established and stabilized”. It was found that transformations in the way that appliances and

tools are used helped re-shape technological development and bring about more sustainable

ways of working. Harty (2005) employed a case study to understand the implementation of

3D CAD at Heathrow Terminal 5. The study unpacked how technological developments to

the software packages in use were shaped by the alignments or misalignments of competing

visions and interests of different project stakeholders. Building multiple technological

features which could be used simultaneously by different relevant social groups was integral

to the technologies’ development. Yet, what was also evident was that where misalignments

persisted, individual groups and individual actors would act alone, which would shape new

and unintended technological developments. Aligning stakeholder interests is another theme

which is evident in the literature. In a case study on the implementation of information and

communication technologies (ICT) in construction, Jacobsson and Linderoth (2010) found

that technological developments to ICT were more successful where users could easily make

sense of the immediate benefits of technological features. This was often the case where

emergent technological features were only relevant to a limited number of existing

organisational processes. By abandoning typical boundaries between what might be

perceived as the “technical” or “social”, these studies propose that emerging material forces

are shaped by the interests and visions of different social actors.

Consequently, there are a number of contemporary studies that examine why specific

technological features become embedded within social contexts at specific moments in time.

For example, Walker and al. (2014), in studying why the use of unsustainable technologies

like air-conditioning persisted in a healthcare setting, found that the National Health Service

(NHS) estates’ drive towards meeting key operational targets produced counter-intuitive

outcomes of promoting the use of air-conditioning. They examined how end-user

consumption practices (e.g. increased use of heat-emitting equipment like computers,

maintained cooling in critical theatres) rendered it extremely difficult to maintain required

building room temperatures without the use of air-conditioning.. By probing deeper within

end-user practices, they highlighted the need to understand ways in which end-user demand

for air conditioning in hospitals could be reduced by thinking about how heat-sensitive

materials in critical units could be designed differently to cope with milder conditions.

Schweber and Harty (2010) traced the adoption of the same IT technology called BSI link

across four different organisations. They examined how the same technology can acquire

different emergent technological features across different user- groups. The study illustrated

the profound impact that the organisational goals of different user-groups can have on the

development of a specific technology. Sackey and al. (2014) use a case study of the

implementation of BIM within a multidisciplinary construction firm to illustrate how BIM

implementation is optimized through the alignment of competing interests within the firm. By

illustrating why technologies acquire distinct forms and functions at a given moment in time,

these studies underlined the importance of understanding the contested nature of

technological developments. Furthermore, highlighting social processes as a key reason for

technological developments allows research in construction to clarify more clearly why

certain user-groups influence the development of technologies more than other user-groups

(Schweber and Harty, 2010).

The role played by social structures in shaping the development of certain technological

features has provided fresh insights into the emergence of innovations within construction.

However, as these contemporary organisational and social studies (Latour 20005)

(Orlikowski 2007) (Leonardi 2011) illustrate, researchers should not neglect the role played

by technological artefacts in shaping and conditioning organisational change. Central to this

argument is a fundamental shift in the distribution of agency, whereby agency is understood

as relational, temporal and emergent (Latour 2005). Thus, agency is not inherent only to

humans but something that is realised through interactions between non-human and human

actors. Research in construction has gradually begun to draw upon these perspectives to

examine the material conditions that are shaping new ways of working within construction

(Bresnan and Harty, 2010). Whyte and Lobo (2010) analysed the role that digital objects play

in generating greater accountability, control and visibility across organisational boundaries on

a road infrastructure project. They found that the digital objects produced greater visibility

across all project stakeholders during design and construction through the development of a

central repository for data. The role of objects conditioning new relationships between

different stakeholders towards collective action across traditional firm boundaries is further

explored in the research into boundary objects (Bresnen 2010; Barrett and al., 2012, and;

Trygestad and al., 2010). Bresnen (2010) highlighted the symbolic role of boundary objects

when examining how material objects transform knowledge-sharing practices towards greater

partnering. These studies have shed more light upon the emergent relationship of

developments between human and non-human actors, thus questioning the passive role often

attributed towards non-human objects.

The integration of studies into materiality within construction management research marks a

significant step towards enhancing our understanding of the emergent nature of technological

change within construction work. The literature exploring technological innovations in the

built environment has begun to unpack the multiplicity of technologies and how humans

work with technology to realise their goals in greater detail by expanding the unit of analysis

away from technology design towards technology diffusion and use (Lovell 2005)

(Rohracher 2003). Research into boundary objects within construction has been used to probe

what social conditions exist when material objects begin to stimulate joint activity in project-

based operations (Dainty and Brooker 2009, and; Bresnen and Harty, 2010). However, when

exploring the process and implication of advances in technology within construction, research

still tends to focus more heavily on the role played by changing motivations or changing

relationships within social structures rather than how and why emergent technological

features have enabled social actors to act and think in new ways. Discussion around the

emergence of technological innovations tends to place greater emphasis upon how and why

social groups organise differently around technological developments, as a reaction against

earlier studies of technological determinism (Leonardi and Barley, 2008). But, Leonardi

(2013) warned that the shift towards social constructivism means that researchers can often

be deterred from speaking freely about the specific things that a technology can and cannot

do, how human actors are not always in control of how a technology functions (Orlikowski

and Scott, 2015) and how technology conditions changing routines of different social actors.

Thus, whilst studies increasingly recognise material agency, they still tend to revert back to a

structuralist approach whereby humans adopt head status (Leonardi 2011) and non-human

actants remain passive.

Therefore, we adhere to the cautionary notes by Leonardi (2011; 2013) and Orlikowski and

Scott (2015) as we examine the benefits, risks, promises and perils of advances in technology

in construction through the agency of technological artefacts. While we agree that

technology use has no meaning or purpose outside of its social context, our point of departure

is that technological and organisational change occur in a simultaneous, interactive process,

and that specific technological features play an instrumental part in enabling social actors to

realise new goals. Whilst existing research continues to provide a more dynamic and situated

view of technological developments by exploring how different people relate different

meanings to technology and how this can change over time, there is a relative neglect of the

materiality of everyday organising, and the conditions and the consequences of advances in

technology (Orlikowski, 2007). Latour (2005) argues that agency must be considered both

emergent and relational because it is only realized through associations of different non-

human and human actants (see also Putnam, 2015). We use Leonardi’s metaphor of

imbrication (Leonardi 2012), where human and material agency are interdependent and

recursively related yet empirically distinct from one another, to examine how technology and

technological features play a prominent role in ConstructCo’s organisational change story

towards greater servitisation. Unlike Orlikowski’s (2007) notion of entanglement, where

“there is no social that is not also material, and no material that is not social” (Orlikowski

2007), Leonardi (2011) offers useful, conceptual categories of affordances and constraints to

empirically unpack the role of material agency (or, to put simply, what a technology can and

cannot do) in generating new ways of organising and technological developments. The

relational nature of affordances and constraints (Hutchby, 2001) means that even though

material agency is considered a separate phenomenon, affordances and constraints are not. By

concentrating on certain features of a technology there is the opportunity to be much more

specific about the interactions that are taking place between a technology and different users

(Leonardi 2012). Thus examining in greater detail the role played by technological

developments with respect to new ways of organising in construction requires a greater

appreciation of how and why emergent technological features afford and constrain users to do

things differently from before or that they could not previously do.

Research Design

In the preceding theoretical review, we have illustrated the need to pay greater attention

towards the role played by emergent features of technological development in shaping new

ways of organising in construction. Here, we specifically examine the role played by

technological developments in shaping ConstructCo’s transition towards delivering more

energy-efficient solutions through greater servitization. Servitization (Vandermerve and Rada

1988) refers to the growing trend of product manufacturers re-positioning their organisations

towards offering supplementary through-life services with their products. Servitization

promises lucrative long-term revenues from their combined product-service offering as they

develop capabilities to address more effectively the needs of their customers (Wise and

Baumgartner 1999). These firms have made radical changes in the way that they create and

capture value (Kindstrom and al., 2010). No longer are they concerned with selling products

but they are selling the use (Baines and Lightfoot, 2013) or capability (Ng and al., 2009) of

their products. By developing these new value-propositions these firms are finding ways to

better create mutual value with their customers (Baines and al. 2007). Integral to this promise

is the assumption that by firms taking ownership of their assets through-life they can reduce

the whole-life costs associated with their assets and then share the benefits with their

customer (Tukker 2013).

In the case of ConstructCo, a key development in its journey towards greater servitisation

related to the integration and deployment of more sensors within mechanical and electrical

systems in buildings. Thus, we traced how these additional sensors changed what the systems

could do and how users could use them differently as new technological features emerged

and as new additional sensors became embedded. We describe the new features associated

with these additional sensors as “emergent” because we considered the relationship between

these technological developments and the everyday organising towards servitization as a

reciprocal process which is ongoing and emergent (Antonocopolou and Konstantinou, 2008).

Hence, even though we were keen to explicitly explore the role these sensors were playing in

enabling more servitized ways of working, we always maintained that the development of

these features was reliant on the interplay between social and technical factors. With this in

mind the research question addressed is:

How and why do emergent technological features shape new ways of organising in

construction?

Case Background and Data Collection

Case study research has been a popular choice of method when explaining and evaluating the

concept of servitization in practice (see e.g. Hartman and al. 2014). This research draws

upon a collaborative three-and-a-half year research project with ConstructCo, a UK

construction contractor. Unlike most case study research in this area, which tended to be

retrospective in the nature of its inquiry, we had the opportunity to continuously interact with

ConstructCo as they develop their capabilities and business model approach towards greater

servitization. Our research focused predominantly upon one of their organisation’s

departments (MechCo) which focused specifically on the design, manufacture and delivery of

mechanical and electrical products. So rather than look back and reflect on the triumphs and

troubles of servitization, we were able to follow our actors in the organisation as they moved

forward and evolved in their quest towards greater servitization. This quest revolved around

the aspiration to deliver through-life solutions for their mechanical and electrical products.

Our case study was informed by an earlier exploratory phase of interviews n=22 which

provided us with current perspectives on the prospects and problems of servitization as they

are experienced by stakeholders right across the organisation’s value chain. Subsequently, we

developed a case study of an energy centre on a UK Healthcare project. This yielded to date

19 interviews with participants directly involved in the healthcare project. The 19 semi-

structured interviews conducted as part of the case study were identified by tracing out the

different actors that were enrolled (see, Latour 1986) by the energy centre technologies over

the projected life cycle of the project.

[**Insert Table 1 here]

The case study focuses on those mechanical and electrical systems that are located within the

confines of the hospital’s energy centre on a healthcare project in the United Kingdom. These

systems (refer to figure 1) are typically referred to as primary energy conversion systems and

refer to those systems and technologies that convert primary energy sources (gas, electricity

etc.) into useful energy streams (usable heat, usable cooling, usable power). Traditionally, the

emphasis was upon ConstructCo and its supply chain to design, manufacture and install the

equipment in the energy centre and then elements of the supply chain would provide

periodical preventative maintenance, spare parts and reactive maintenance during the

operation and maintenance of the building. On this particular healthcare project ConstructCo

were engaging with their supply chain to explore the viability of a new service model geared

towards the delivery of advanced services (see Baines and Lightfoot (2013) for an in-depth

description of advanced services). No longer would their operations be focused on the

delivery of products (e.g. boiler system) but now ConstructCo was exploring the viability of

selling the building client the functions that these products deliver to the building (e.g.

useable heat). This gradual shift in emphasis away from selling a product and towards selling

use provided an ideal context for the research to use rich case study data to probe in detail

how material aspects of the energy centre were influencing more servitized ways of working

on the project.

[**Insert figure 1 here]

The servitization literature has discussed ways in which embedding sensors can shape new

opportunities for manufacturers to servitize (Baines and Lightfoot 2013) (Grubic 2014)

( Wise and Baumgartner, 1999) (Ulaga and Reinartz, 2011) and we combined this with our

empirical case data to identify two main types of technological features, that revolved around

the integration of more sensors, which were shaping greater servitization within the

ConstructCo. They were:

Embedding more energy-metering sensors to offer new levels of visibility and

transparency associated with the performance of their systems.

Embedding sensors to assist with more efficient diagnosis of equipment health and

more efficient prognosis of equipment failures.

Consequently, we conducted 10 further interviews with individuals across ConstructCo’s

value chain to supplement our case analysis. The focus of these interviews was to explore in

greater detail the development of these features in the context of ConstructCo’s wider

business operations. As by this time our research had been focused around these emerging

technological features, we were more specific about who these interviewees were. We talked

to building end-users about the possibilities of increased transparency and visibility around

the performance of mechanical and electrical systems. We talked to key suppliers about the

challenges and opportunities for integrating new sensors into equipment which could enable

more opportunities to predict failures. Finally, we talked to individuals within ConstructCo

who were involved in identifying why specific sensors are more worthwhile than others in the

context of their pursuit of greater servitization. These interviewees are highlighted below:

[**Insert Table 2 here]

We were initially keen to understand from our interviewees how these features would (or

had) transformed the forms and functions of the systems they design and deliver. We also

investigated what made these features particularly unique in the context of their existing

everyday routines. We then gathered their views on the importance of these emergent features

and probed in what ways these emergent features were important. We specifically asked how

they used the features, why they used these features in the ways they did, how these particular

features were changing their everyday routines and enabling them to do new things. We were

also keen to identify, from our interviewee accounts, a more textured understanding of their

existing everyday routines so we could probe how emergent technological features of the

technological systems within the energy centre contributed to instances of more servitized

ways of working.

Interviews were also supplemented with case study documentation which included schematic

drawings, predicted equipment life-cycle costs, technical submissions, OandM manuals,

SFG20 sheets, a Failure Modes and Effects Analysis and design specifications to provide the

researchers with a clearer understanding of the structure, function, features and criticality of

the technological systems in the case study. This helped us understand how and why the

technological features were being developed within ConstructCo. For example, the Failure

Modes and Effects Analysis was examined to understand why specific sensors were now

deemed important and the technical submissions allowed us to seek out which sensors related

to which components in certain pieces of equipment so that we could develop a clear idea of

the material configurations of these technologies on a deeper component level.

Data Analysis through the concept of affordances

Each interview was fully transcribed, so that the transcripts could be analysed textually. This

included over 100 hours of audio recordings which translated into over 600,000 words of

transcriptions. Supplementing these interview transcripts with our plethora of case study

documentation, we used analytical categories from the literature on affordance and

constraints (Leonardi and Barley, 2008; Leonardi, 2011 and 2013) to code these different

forms of data. Leonardi (2011) utilises the metaphor of imbrication to explore the concept of

affordances and constraints. The imbrication metaphor represents human and material agency

being interdependent and deeply entwined, but ultimately two separate entities. Previous

imbrications of material and human agency are embedded in the routines and technology of

social actors (Leonardi 2011). Material agency represents the capacity of what a technology

can and cannot do, whilst human agency is the capacity of people to work within previous

imbrications to realise their own visions and goals (Leonardi andand Barley, 2008). In our

analysis we framed the coding of our data specifically around those new things a technology

can do through the integration of more sensors (those new technological features through the

integration of more sensors). In imbrication the affordances and constraints are what ties

human agency and material agency together because whilst a technological artefact has a set

of inherent finite features, it will afford different opportunities for action given its social

context (Gibson 1986). We chose the analytical construct of affordances as the basis for

coding our data because we wanted to explore how changes to technologies were shaping

new ways of working. We draw upon Leonardi (2013)’s categorizing of affordances to

explore how and why specific features of technological systems within the energy centre are

conditioning emergent opportunities within the organisation to exploit more servitized ways

of working:

[**Insert Table 3 here]

Findings

Shared Affordances – Energy metering sensors affording the development of new metrics

and relationships

[**Insert figure 2 here]

The research in this section focuses upon the integration of new sensor points and an energy-

management platform within the energy centre design. We then explore how these

developments afforded the organisation new ways of engineering greater transparency with

their customer (in this case the building client which was the Hospital’s estates). The building

client demanded that the energy centre be designed so that it could operate under four

specific energy targets. These targets revolved around the efficiency of the systems, carbon

targets, on-site generation and renewable technology tariffs. For a more in-depth insight into

energy regulations within the healthcare sector please refer to HTM 07-02. Because of these

4 targets, which were in some cases contradictory, it required a complex myriad of

mechanical and electrical equipment to serve the three functions of usable heat, cooling and

power. Managing the intricacies between these different interdependent systems meant they

had to be able to be constantly in tune with the demand for usable heat, cooling and power

from the building client, how the energy centre was responding to that demand and how the

energy centre technologies were performing. By increasing the energy sensor points

distributed around the energy centre it was enabling them to construct a virtual boundary

around the energy centre system, thus rendering it possible to monitor and manage the

performance of the energy centre systems ( in other words ultimately monitor and manage the

delivery of usable heat, cooling and power) as a silo. The energy platform they were

developing had the capacity to identify whether deviations from projected energy use were

caused by the sub-optimal operation of the energy centre or because of changes in usage

behaviour from the building occupants. These intelligent features which were embedded into

the energy centre would now provide ConstructCo with the information to clearly

demonstrate to the customer organisation that the energy centre was fulfilling its performance

requirements. As Participant L identifies below, this had previously been both a challenge

and an aspiration on previous projects:

“So we’ve never had enough data to actually to actually challenge that share, which would

be a nice position to be in” (Participant L)

Whilst the driver for developing these new intelligent features was predominantly due to

delivering a sustainable solution that fitted in with the building client’s demands, we

observed how these intelligent features acquired greater importance as our interviewees

began to probe the implications of these developments within the context of their own

aspirations to servitize. By using these intelligent features they were afforded the capability to

develop transparency, detectability and visibility around their capability to deliver usable

heat, cooling and power; such transparency and visibility had previously been a struggle to

establish.

As part of the research we began to deconstruct with our interviewees what factors dictate the

performance of the delivery of usable heat, cooling and power. Factors within MechCo

control were identified as equipment downtime, equipment efficiency and ensuring that the

blend of technologies used during a given period of operation reflect existing fuel prices. A

factor beyond their control was the accelerated wear of energy centre technologies because of

increased use of energy within the building, either because of variations in end-user

behaviour or decreased equipment performance within the mechanical and electrical systems

within the building, external to the energy centre. The interviewee below uses an onion to

illustrate how the performance of the building systems can be thought of as distinct layers

whereby the central layer represents the energy centre technologies. Each layer represents a

different interface.Moving forward the energy-metering platform will provide the capability

to manage these different interfaces.

If you always look at this as an onion. That’s our contractual responsibility –

numbers, energy numbers there. But, overlaying that is the FM. FM could cause that

to inflate by not maintaining it, but then the client could be blamed as well, because

the client could run the building as well and there are contracted areas for that.

Then we could make various mistakes, possibly. So that is what’s recorded on the

meter. But what we have to do is, we have to identify what this bit is, what that bit is

and what that bit is, so that we can get to that point. (Participant L)

Possessing the technological features to orchestrate a virtual boundary around the energy

centre afforded them the possibility to manage these factors accurately and critically; they

began to think about how they could build metrics around these factors. Baines and al. (2013)

suggest that developing clear metrics is critical to developing the necessary customer

relationship required to conceptualise new value-propositions that revolve around selling

capability or use. More specifically, the organisation began to consider how they could build

clear metrics around selling the capability to deliver usable heat, cooling and power at given

availability and efficiency to the building client. So it is not only ConstructCo/Mechco who

are using these intelligent features provided by the virtual energy platform surrounding the

energy centre, it is the building client as well who is using it to actively manage the boundary

and observe the performance of the energy centre as well as their own usage processes. Both

the client and ConstructCo are moving forward using the same myriad of heat sensors to

scrutinise the performance levels of the kit in the energy centre and the usage levels of the

end-users from the energy centre. Therefore, different user-groups are enacting the same

affordances from the same the same technological features of the sensors to engineer a level

of detectability, transparency and visibility which they had rarely achieved before.

Individual Affordances – Current sensor affording the identification of new failure modes

[**Insert figure 3 here]

As a systems integrator of mechanical and electrical systems MechCo were aware that their

aspiration to shift towards being a servitized solutions provider was dependent on their ability

to mobilise their own supply chain towards a more service-orientated way of thinking.

Literature on servitization certainly highlights the pivotal role played in transforming supplier

relationships when making the transition towards servitization (Martinez andal 2010, and;

Christopher andand Ryals, 2014). Because of the size of the technologies within the energy

centre and the interdependencies between the different technologies they were perceived to

be relatively critical. As they were developing an increased interest in taking account for the

through-life performance of these systems they were motivated to scrutinise in greater depth

ways in which their own supply chain was developing new ways of cost-effectively

enhancing equipment reliability though the use of predictive maintenance. They were

increasingly aware that their suppliers were better positioned to understand how failures

manifested themselves within specific pieces of equipment inside the energy centre. The

development of mechanical and electrical technologies over the past 20 years meant they now

are embedded with increased electronics which provide intelligent features. These features

provide users with a constant flow of information concerning the current performance

parameters of these technologies. ConstructCo were actively looking for ways in which their

suppliers could use trends from the incoming data of equipment’s performance parameters to

identify potential impending failures. However, only with a thorough understanding of the

mechanics of these technologies on a component level could users begin to utilise this

constant flow of information to identify ways in which impending equipment failures could

be predicted; hence, why ConstructCo deemed it logical that the equipment suppliers (the

equipment experts) would be better positioned to understand ways in which information of

performance parameters can be translated into meaningful ways of predicting equipment

failures. Below we illustrate an example of where a pump supplier was harnessing their

deeper knowledge of their product to interpret information from current sensors to pre-empt

the deteriorating condition of a pump bearing.

“we know that if we see this current trend then we are having potential problems

on the bearing on the suction side” Participant N

Because of the integration of the current sensor, users can now have an intelligent feature

which enables them to examine current trends across the pump. However, only with

sufficient knowledge of the bearing failure mode, does this intelligent feature afford the user

the opportunity to predict the existing condition of the pump bearing. The capacity to provide

information on current trends is inherent to the pump but the benefits derived through that

feature, in terms of bearing failure prediction, are seemingly unique to certain actors within

pump supplier organisation.

Collective affordances – Sensors interacting with other technological developments to stimulate collective motives towards understanding the technical and financial justification for implementing predictive maintenance.

[**Insert figure 4 here]

We found that the enactment of individual affordances was often reliant on groups of

technological features being used collectively towards one common goal of predicting and

reducing the total cost of ownership. Our findings suggested that as individuals explored the

affordances of new equipment sensors and electronics it instigated new interactions and

conversations across ConstructCo’s supply chain. From these conversations ConstructCo

began to develop a better idea of how they could work with their supply chain to integrate the

use of these sensors with other emerging technological features to justify new ways of pre-

empting equipment failures. In this section, we focus more specifically on how, when

ConstructCo discussed with their supplier about using technological features relating to

sensors and electronics to predict equipment failures, they began to ascertain how they could

use emerging technological features relating to controls and software to better articulate how

the affordances of their suppliers could be strategically integrated into novel aftermarket

value propositions.

Traditionally, within construction a collective approach across supply chains towards

maximising the ongoing reliability of mechanical and electrical systems was underdeveloped;

there was an understandable reluctance from individual actors to pool their affordances and

thereby jeopardise their position of exclusive expertise. The sentiments of an aftermarket

manager within a key supplier below was indicative of the current situation:

“But controllability, will be limited I think with a chiller, I don’t think chiller

manufacturers will be open to the idea of allowing controls companies access to their

systems that much, it would take their ability to provide highly skilled trained control

engineers to site because they are just parting that revenue then onto the BMS

company, so I think that’s where the conflict of interest comes in, its first and third

party controls and who gets access to what. I certainly think remote monitoring of

alarms, yes if it’s in alarms you can get that remote monitoring wise but anything

more in any more depth than that I think those are the issues that will be faced”

Participant O

We observe that, traditionally, in the operation and maintenance phase of buildings there is a

conflict between controls companies and equipment suppliers. Controls companies use

software platforms, often in the form of a Building Management System (BMS), to manage

and interpret data in order to control and maintain the health and performance of mechanical

and electrical systems. This centralized platform communicates with the sensors and

electronics embedded in specific pieces of mechanical and electrical equipment, in this case a

chiller to pick up faults through alarms. However, these existing practices often mean

maintenance practices are predominantly reactive. As can be seen above, when we probed the

chiller supplier about ways in which they could work with control companies to provide a

more nuanced understanding of how the information that the Building Management System

(BMS) receives from embedded sensors and electronics could be used to predict equipment

failures, they were sceptical. Due to a lack of a relationship with controls companies, the

chiller supplier perceived no benefit in contributing towards the collective knowledge. That

understanding of the deeper mechanics of failure on a component level often resides with the

specific suppliers. However, the present reality of their current business operations, their

existing relationships with systems integrators and their revenue models suggest little

immediate benefit in their enacting or developing individual affordances around using

sensors to predict impending failures through changes in the performance parameters.

However, what we found during our ongoing research with ConstructCo was that they were

gradually beginning to break down these barriers with their supply chain as they pursued

more servitized ways of working. Firstly, they were creating more collaborative spaces where

their suppliers felt more willing to share the benefits associated with their individual

affordances of embedded equipment electronics and sensors through supply chain

partnerships. If we refer to the example where the pump manufacturer was developing new

ways of predicting bearing failures:

“we know that if we see this current trend then we are having potential problems

on the bearing on the suction side” Participant N

It was only when suppliers started sharing these experiences that ConstructCo could then

develop tangible starting points from which they could begin to problematize and

conceptualise the value of pooling knowledge around collectively predicting failures. By

acquiring examples like this across supply chains on projects like this one, ConstructCo

began to think more specifically about how constellations of technological features, both

existing and emerging, might constrain or enable them to leverage the individual affordances

of their suppliers on future projects. Through their off-site manufacturing centre they were

using emergent software features to transform information collected from equipment sensors

and electronics into alarms that indicate the detection of key failure modes. Their position as

a systems integrator in the mechanical and electrical supply chain meant they were better

positioned to integrate these technological features during the design stage as opposed to

traditional control companies who would suffer from disconnects with the supply chain as

they tried to integrate greater intelligence during the operation and maintenance stage.

It’s software. Because our approach since the beginning was to have a central

controller and have a networked communication to all the plants, fans, boilers. So

you could argue that if you – with a more traditional approach, you know, you would

still have a controller somewhere but it would be in a stick bit plant room, all the

components would be connected to the BMS system of the building. So you could

argue that it would not be easy for the BMS engineer on site to build all these – write

all these algorithms. But if you have a package product you can do this at the

factory; you have your software team. You are doing it once, and then if the product

is always the same, maybe it’s not always the same. It’s a standardised product with

options; you know, like a car. But of course, the software is always the same”

Participant 1

What is also important here was the fact that they were standardising the product. They were

aware that every pump, every boiler and every chiller has its own specific weak points. By

moving towards a more standardized product there was greater scope in their ability to detect

failure modes using newly embedded sensors which could be applied repeatedly.

What was also evident was that by thinking about the affordances of the embedded sensors

and electronic equipment, they began to probe what data would be required to establish if

there is value in working with this supplier to find more ways of predicting equipment

failures. Furthermore, they began to question what database would be used to collect and

analyse this data. Data is becoming an increasingly important factor when competing in

product aftermarkets but there can be a tendency to be vague about what data is actually

required. However, we observed by thinking about the affordances of equipment-embedded

sensors and electronics they could be more specific about the data they needed. Referring

back to the bearing example cited above, they needed a better understanding of bearing

failure rates, pump criticality and lead times on bearings, bearing costs and the butterfly

effect of bearing failures on a pump. By contemplating what database could be used to

construct a clearer idea of the frequency and costs of bearing failures they were exploring

more tangible ways of determining the potential operational savings. The interviewee below

outlines the need to determine how these potential operational savings compare to the added

capital expense of collaborating with suppliers, developing more sophisticated software and

embedding more sensors and electronics.

“So it’s almost all you’re doing really is moving money around from an OPEX

budget, i.e. a comprehensive OPEX budget is actually going to move into a predictive

CAPEX budget. But you would like to think though that your predicted maintenance

budget would be lower than your OPEX comprehensive budget.” Participant 1

So what we observed was that the aspiration to shift away from selling mechanical and

electrical systems towards selling the use of mechanical and electrical systems was

motivating them to work with their suppliers to focus more explicitly on the possibilities of

using equipment sensors and electronics to predict failures. However, it appeared that in

order for them to use these technological features to afford new ways of reducing total cost of

ownership through predictive maintenance, they had to think about how these sensors worked

in the context of a constellation of emergent and existing technological features.

Discussion

The findings illustrate the importance of acknowledging the role played by technological

developments in shaping the emergence of more energy-efficient ways of working within the

built environment. The ongoing case study analysis explored how and why specific emergent

technological features relating to additional sensors and more sophisticated equipment

controls were affording the mechanical and electrical supply chain with greater possibilities

to pursue a whole-life approach within their future and existing business operations. By

mobilising the imbrication metaphor (Leonardi 2011) and the concept of affordances

(Leonardi 2012) the analysis identified the prominent role played by technological

developments in shaping new ways of organising within our case organisation and their

supply chain.

Analysing technological developments and organisational change within construction

We contribute to a growing body of work that investigates the relationship between

technological developments and transitions towards more sustainable ways of working within

the built environment (Guy 2006). There is a tendency to privilege the role played by

changing social interactions in shaping technological developments rather than examining

how technological developments shape new social interactions (Lovell 2005). In our case

analysis we sought to address this gap and extend the analysis to see how technological

features not only shape new social interactions, but also play an instrumental role in

developing new technological advancements. By attending to how technological

developments shape new ways of organising, the case study highlights critical individual,

shared and collective affordances of specific technological features found in the integration of

new sensors. In so doing, the analysis illustrated the active role that developments to

technological artefacts can play in re-shaping organisational processes towards the delivery

of more energy-efficient solutions and greater levels of through-life predictability in

buildings. It is here that we build on and extend Schweber and Leiringer (2012)’s

recommendation for research in the built environment to pay greater attention towards how

organisational processes are re-configured around the delivery of more energy-efficient

solutions. Thus, the case study offered key insights into this relatively unexplored area of

research by shifting the emphasis away from the role of the end-user (Rohracher 2010, and;

Shove 2003) towards the material agency of technological components. Consequently, the

analysis uses the affordances of these new sensors to offer fresh insights into how

organisational processes of solutions providers relating to procurement, customer relationship

and supply chain relationships begin to change as they transition to more sustainable ways of

working.

The study is also unique in its approach. Studies into technologically-induced change have

tended to analyse events retrospectively. This case study, followed our actors (and actants)

(Latour, 2005) and interrogated the role they played in driving change in ConstructCo and

across its supply chains as it unfolded. This provided real-time insights into how the

integration of new sensors and the strategic change towards servitisation in ConstructCo were

simultaneously and recursively influencing one another. Thus, rather than taking change as a

static given, we approached the transition as it was becoming (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002; Chia,

2002). This allowed us to find associations that would otherwise be missed; rather than take

technological systems as a given, we drill down to explore interactions of humans with

technology on a component level. These associations brought to life the role technological

components such as sensors play in orchestrating ongoing sensemaking (Weick and al. 2005)

of change in ConstructCo’s everyday work. Their interaction with these emergent

technological features shaped how they began to relate to new opportunities and visions of

more sustainable ways of working.

Understanding servitization in construction

The findings from this paper offer fresh perspectives towards the transitioning that

organisations undergo as they pursue the delivery of new service models in construction.

Existing research has focused predominantly upon Public-Private Partnerships and Private

Finance Initiative (Brady and al. 2005; Leiringer and al., 2009; Roehrich and Caldwell, 2012,

and; Johnstone and al., 2009) as both drivers and project context for servitization. Whilst we

acknowledge how the structure of Public-Private Partnerships’ and Private finance initiatives

resonates quite clearly with the concept of servitization, our 30 months interacting with

ConstructCo led us to examine ways in which newly embedded digital technologies (sensors)

were shaping new opportunities for the mechanical and electrical supply chain to play a more

prominent role in the operation and maintenance of the products they design and

manufacture.. Recognising the role played by technological developments in shaping

servitized ways of working creates new possibilities to understand how individuals or

individual groups re-configure their own everyday practices towards new organisational

processes aligned to more servitized ways of working. By unpacking the interaction between

the emergent technological features of new sensors and different users the case study reveals

the intended and unintended nature of innovations inherent to the journey undertaken by

organisations looking to servitize. This departs from the planned and sequential transitions

frequently depicted within elements of the servitization literature (Antonocopolou and

Konstantinou, 2008). We found that the integration of new energy-metering sensors around

the boundary of the energy centre was being primarily driven by the need to demonstrate the

medium-term energy performance of the building’s main mechanical and electrical systems.

It was only once ConstructCo started to operationalize these new features during the

healthcare project that they began to probe the possibilities that this increased transparency

and visibility might bear in terms of building new metrics around a relationship with the

client that extended into the operation and maintenance phases of the project. Project-based

work is sometimes considered a barrier against greater servitization in the literature but in this

case we observed how the diverse nature of construction work might open up unintended

instances where pockets of more servitized practice can be nurtured and developed.

Conversely, the integration of new sensors to predict failures within pieces of mechanical and

electrical equipment was part of a seemingly more deliberate shift within the company to

integrate the expertise of various actors within the company and across their supply chain

towards optimising equipment maintenance costs by probing possibilities for predictive

maintenance. In fact we found that despite their intent to integrate new sensors to find new

ways to predict failures, the realisation of this was dependent on the constraining forces of a

constellation of ongoing technological developments. Of these, most prominent was the

pursuit of delivering more standardized systems. This echoes the sentiments of Davies et al.

(2006) who recommended that more standardized solutions would offer a repeatable platform

from which to launch more servitized offerings within complex engineering contexts.

Therefore, by scrutinizing the role of technological developments in the context of greater

servitization, we highlight the unintended pathways firms might take towards servitization

through the affordances of emergent technological features. Equally apparent was the fact

that planned innovations often became emergent and ad-hoc due to the constraining effects of

multiple and parallel technological developments.

Contribution to Materiality studies

Finally, by exploring the individual, shared and collective affordances of sensor technology

during ConstructCo’s pursuit of more servitized operation, we illustrate the importance of

examining the role of material agency when understanding organisational change. Within

social and organisational studies a human agency approach has become increasingly popular.

This approach suggests technology acquires a passive status whereby its function and

potential to initiate change is heavily reliant on the actions of humans (Leonardi 2013). What

our case study illustrates is that this neglects the material agency of technology. A key theme

within ConstructCo’s pursuit of more servitized operations was the ways in which they were

constantly trying to work around, react to and understand the unpredictability of their

equipment and that of their supply chains. In particular, the unpredictability of equipment

failures was sometimes beyond the control of either them or the end-user as illustrated below:

“Yes, things catch us out as they always do. There’s always something catches us

out, a pump will just go for no reason because they’re unpredictable” (Participant D)

The use of new sensors was in part triggered by their constant battle to assume greater control

over the way their systems function once operational. Ironically, by embedding new sensors

they became more reliant on the autonomous nature of these technologies and more reactive

to the features of these technologies (often their ability to transfer one form of information

into another). Our findings echo the sentiments of Leonardi (2011) and Orlikowski (2010) by

indicating that as features of digital technologies continue to play ever more prominent roles

in processes of organisation change, greater attention must be paid towards the material

agency of these technologies. Unlike these studies though we have chosen not to focus on a

digital system or a digital platform (e.g CrashLab simultation (Leonardi 2011), 3D virtual

workplaces (Orlikowski 2010), instead we have homed in on specific technological features

associated with digital artefacts. The point being that we need to understand configurations

and functions of technological artefacts in further detail if material and human agency are to

be understood as the building blocks of everyday organising. Leonardi’s metaphor of

imbrication lends itself neatly towards illuminating the various ways in which material

agency shapes new ways of working on this deeper component level.

Conclusions

Our aim has been to examine the role played by technological developments in shaping new

ways of organising in construction. Since the late 1990s scholars in construction have

highlighted the limitations of making radical distinctions between the technical and non-

technical when exploring technologically-induced organisational change. They have

demonstrated that technological developments cannot be treated as a separate exogenous

force by exploring ways in which changing social interactions shape the development and use

of technologies. However, in doing so they have now downplayed how the material agency of

technological developments can re-shape the way people interact and shape what people do.

Our case analysis examined the role played by technological developments in shaping an

organisation’s pursuit of designing and delivering more sustainable solutions, through greater

servitization. Thus, we centred our attention on the emergence of two technological features,

relating to the integration of more sensors within their systems design, and explored the

various ways in which these sensors were integral to changes in customer relationships,

supply chain relationships and procurement within the organisation. By focusing on the

affordances of these emergent technological features, the research highlights the need for

construction research to drill down to the component level of technological developments

when examining the role played by the materiality of technological developments in shaping

more sustainable ways of working. Furthermore, the role played by these sensors in shaping

more servitized ways of working resonates closely with the role played by sensors in shaping

more servitized operations in other industries (Baines et al., 2013). With cross-industry

innovation (Enkel and Gassmann, 2010) set to play a more prominent role in shaping more

effective and efficient ways of organising across different industries, including construction,

perhaps it would be refreshing to not only explore why similar technologies have different

effects in different social conditions but also understand instances in which similar

technologies (e.g sensors and similar embedded devices) in different industries shape similar

ways of working.

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