A good definition of superstition was coined with a catchy tune: if you believe in things you don’t understand, then you suffer… With that in mind, let us consider a few promising candidates, plucked from the mouths of grown men and industry lieutenants, I assure you:

• Steel framing makes for a more expensive building.
• The more people on site, the more injuries you get.
• Formworker prices are cyclical, volatile and can make or break the bottom line.

The appalling elegance of superstition is that it sounds so right, despite the smoking hole where the supporting evidence should be. It may well be that the facts, when examined, demonstrate some truth in the maxim, however, wisdom dictates that part truths are the most dangerous facts of all.  This begs the question:  how does the average Joe or Jess spot a superstition from a fact?

A two-year investigation into steel framing by The Warren Centre for Advanced Engineering found that superstitions get an unhealthy amount of airtime in construction circles. It blamed misinformation about structural steel for its minority role in Australian commercial building construction, in stark contrast to its healthy market shares in the UK, USA and New Zealand. According to the study, prejudice against steel framing at the planning table is often founded on analysis that is less than objective or fact-based.

It’s a disturbing exercise, then, to imagine the effects of many of these superstitions, woven into the fabric of our built landscape and its $160 billion p.a. economy. As a further complication, construction players are universally cagey about sharing operational intelligence, making the timely debunking of superstition an almost impossible act.

Almost. Industry leaders are waking up to the necessity for sharing information, taking note of the development this strategy has wrought in most of the heavy industries (mining, petrochemical, pharmaceutical and automotive, to name a few).  In construction, a handful of companies have taken the early initiative by opening up their books to Beam Research under non-disclosure, enabling a warts’n’all look at their cost, time, safety and sustainability performance. Kudos… and clever, too. They get to measure exactly how well they’re doing relative to unidentified others, as do the other contributors to the database. It’s no surprise that the UK and USA have been doing this for decades. We hope the idea catches on here.