PSIBouw is a national research programme aimed at process and system innovation in the construction industry. The programme implies another way of looking at how building products are to be accomplished in the near future. Lifecycle costs, sustainability, supplementary value for consumers individually and society as a whole are elements upon which decisions will or should be taken. Full service suppliers of different origins, whether property development, finance, construction, design or even material suppliers, will offer integrated solutions for fastidious demands.

PSIBouw's activities should result in visible changes in the construction sector. Monitoring those changes is a subject of research by EIB. In the next four years EIB will examine the extent to which renewal will take place. To this end EIB developed a method for classifying companies according to their scores on the two principal characteristics of renewal that the programme stands for: process integration and innovative entrepreneurship. Both aspects of modernization are visualized in the graph below. The left side of the axis marks the of degree of innovative entrepreneurship (DIE), the lower axis marks the degree of process integration (DPI). As to innovative entrepreneurship, enterprises are classified in two groups: one of a low degree and one of a high degree of innovative entrepreneurship. In the same way on the lower side of the graph enterprises are classified regarding their degree of process integration. The classification results in four possible qualifications of entrepreneurship: enterprises with low scores on both DIE and DPT (traditional firms), enterprises with high scores on integration but low on innovation (fully integrated firms), companies with high scores on (innovators) and, finally, enterprises that combine high levels of innovative entrepreneurship with high levels of process integration (modern firms).

The scores on both aspects of modernization are measured from a great number of characteristics varying from exertions of research and development, accepting risks, proactive marketing, planning skills, practising different trades, and so on. Data are not only gathered from construction forms but also from designers and engineers, from producers of building materials and from prefabricated elements and traders of building materials and facilities

The graph shows as an example of the results of the construction and technical installation industry in 2005. The majority of enterprises can still be classified as traditional. The group mainly consists of small and specialized firms working as subcontractors. The opposite of this group, the modern ones, represents only 10 percent of all companies. Above all we find here large companies in the field of technical installation and civil engineering. In the coming years, changes in the distribution of companies over the different quadrants should indicate to what extent the construction industry is being transformed from an old-fashioned one to a modern, innovative, highly productive, efficient and demand orientated branch. Normally, progress is slow but steady. Public attention as well as a growing awareness of the industry itself may bring about an acceleration in progress. The near future will tell us whether ambitions will come true.