Rebuilding Ukraine: Industrialised Construction & Energy Solutions | Martin Wood & Jaimie Johnston MBE

Join Bryden Wood's Jaimie Johnston MBE and Martin Wood for an important discussion on Ukraine's reconstruction. Inspired by a recent UCL report in which Martin contributed, this episode explores how industrialised construction, enhanced energy security, and advanced digital tools offer compelling ideas to drive efficient and sustainable rebuilding efforts. While acknowledging that no one company holds all the solutions, this conversation provides insight into the innovative approaches Bryden Wood has been discussing. 

Discover the challenges and opportunities, emphasising international collaboration and innovative approaches to urban planning and infrastructure development. 

Watch now on YouTube: https://youtu.be/rgOv3JI1BBI

To learn more about Bryden Wood's Design to Value philosophy, visit www.brydenwood.com. You can also follow Bryden Wood on LinkedIn.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Bryden Wood
• 0:27 Setting the Scene: Reconstruction in Ukraine
• 1:24 High-Level Overview of Reconstruction Costs
• 2:17 Energy Network Strategy
• 4:03 Rebuilding Ukraine's Power Infrastructure
• 9:41 Industrialised Construction and Standardisation
• 16:11 Digital Simulation and Future Planning
• 21:32 Call to Action and Conclusion

Transcript

Intro: 0:01

Welcome to the Bryden Wood Podcast. Bryden Wood is a global strategy and design consultancy. We are inventive thinkers, designers, engineers, and technical experts. We integrate creativity and deep experience to resolve complex challenges and realize a better world. Find us at Bryden Wood dot com.

Jaimie Johnston MBE: 0:27

So hello and welcome to the Bryden Wood Podcast. I'm Jaimie Johnston. I'm joined by Martin Wood, and we're gonna be talking about the reconstruction efforts in Ukraine. Um, so a bit bit of scene setting and obviously context. This is a phenomenally complicated issue. No individual group or, or set of companies have got all the answers. So we're only gonna talk about some, some very specific thoughts that we've had. Um, last week, the Institute for Global Prosperity, it's a group at UCL just down the road from us in the Knowledge quarter, uh, released a document about reconstructing Ukraine that covered a whole range of topics. So it was looking at agriculture, finance, economy. Uh, culture, all the different aspects, um, that, that need consideration. We were asked to contribute to that report. Uh, and we put some ideas together based on obviously our area's expertise and things that we've learned that might be applicable as the reconstruction effort starts to, starts to take place. So, so some, some very high level numbers. Um, World Bank estimates, the reconstruction effort will be somewhere between 500 billion and a trillion dollars. Um, that will have to happen at a time when obviously lots of people have left Ukraine. So there's a desperate need to carry out reconstruction at a vast scale, at a time when you have a diminished, um, labour pool. And so trying to solve a some of those challenges. Um, we thought we had some thoughts or some insights from, from previous work we've done. So the, the, the white paper we contributed to, we talked about a number of areas. One was sort of energy security and developing networks. One was around industrialized construction and how you might, uh, be able to deploy some of the thinking that's happened in that space. And there is a sort of linking it with, with digital tools. But, um, Martin, I know you wanna sort of, um. Start talking about energy network strategy, but I think you had some interesting thoughts around the, the, the current restructuring efforts versus the planned restructuring efforts and why they're different and what, what that might tell us.

Martin Wood: 2:27

Well, I suppose the, the reconstruction that's happening on a daily basis in Ukraine, because obviously it's by necessity, um, repairing infrastructure. Um, fortunately the nature of the war is that, um. The critical infrastructure of the country's being attacked, which is a just a particular way of waging war upon a population, and so it's wiping out a lot of the power grid. And as well as obviously the attacks on the civilian population. So this is a very sort, everyone else, an appalling war. Um, and therefore everyday repairs are being made by necessity so people can carry on existing living, um, getting through. Um, but also, but the question here really is when, and, and let's all hope it's sooner rather than later when the time comes. Uh, what will be, um, uh, that's all, that's all. Um, by necessity, what will they do in terms of reconstruction by design? And, um, you know, and how is that designed to be conceived? Um, and, and the point of this podcast really is, is there any help, I mean, a lot of, well-meaning countries looking towards Ukraine and there'll be a lot of investment in Ukraine, but how will that investment be best talked? In other words, how will the best value be created? Uh, through the investment that's gonna be poured into Ukraine. So reconstruction by design, I guess, is what we're interested in and whether, obviously being in the business of construction design, um, we had some thoughts and as we said earlier, RAs, to contribute those thoughts into that paper. Um, I guess the first one of those thoughts was to do with the actual energy infrastructure, uh, of Ukraine because it's quite. It's one thing when, um, the existing, uh, towns and infrastructures have been damaged, but in certain instances have been completely, um, wiped out as we've seen from pictures, particularly obviously in the east of the country. And there's obviously a massive variation across Ukraine in terms of the damage, but in certain areas. Uh, it's a question, it's a, a really unusual question of would we have grown the network of, uh, industry and power distribution up like this if you started to freshen mm-hmm. Um, in, in certain instances, parts the country, they'll be saying, okay, where, what, where should we, we've got to replace the, uh, the. Power infrastructure. Do we do it in the way it was there before? Do we do it in a more diversified way? Are we going to introduce, um, uh, different power sources? Uh, are we gonna use a high percentage of renewables or of nuclear, or of whatever that, that, that is, those are all questions that are gonna have to be asked. Mm-hmm. Um. When that happens, obviously power is the source of all things that are going to be at the heart of the reconstruction because they're gonna be the things that's gonna drive the, the industry and commerce of the nation. So the choice of power, the choice of its distribution in the network, the replacement of the grid, where where it's necessary, uh, are all gonna potentially reconfigure. Um, some of the population centers in Ukraine, I mean. There are some amazing questions they've gotta face, which is like, do we redevelop the east of Ukraine? Mm-hmm. When it's still potentially threatened by the neighboring Russia. I mean, how long will that threat maintain? And therefore how much would one to one want to reconstruct in an area that still has a potential threat? So there's some much bigger questions than we can answer in this podcast. Yeah. The by design replacement of infrastructure has to consider the power source type. And as we wrote in our paper, Ukraine is an advanced country in terms of, um, nuclear power. So, um, it could replace its power infrastructure with an emphasis upon nuclear power, uh, having all the skills and competencies Well. For the people that remain the skills and competencies in the areas, having some of the skills and competencies within the nation state itself, and aid and abetted by countries in the outside, it could replace its, um, power infrastructure with nuclear more than the source system, in which case, obviously that becomes a source of decarbonized power. They have a source of decarbonized power, they get a lead in terms of globally, they'll get a lead in terms of, um, uh, the, the, the, the green economy going forward. So, well, this

Jaimie Johnston MBE: 6:46

could be happening at a time when, you know, we've talked about this on this podcast before. Lots of people are looking into small module actors, so it could be happening at a time when the market is burgeoning, the opportunity to sort of join that market, drive that market, or another use case for that market. The timing could be, could work out quite well. But I think you also talked then about if you had lots of clean power, there's other sustainability. Options that you have, there's other industries that might be propagated by by placing that network properly?

Martin Wood: 7:11

Well, yeah, I mean absolutely. The, the, the Ukraine has a number of advantages. I mean, um, just, just advantages, historic advantages. So, um, the other I. Uh, big elements of, um, the green economy for the future will be, for example, biofuels. And again, Ukraine has a, a great deal of, um, land suitable for production of biofuels. Um, they've, most people will know that, um, electrical. Grid power can solve a large part of the problem, but not all of the problem. Because we know some high density fuels for aviation going forward, for example, which may be obtained from biofuel, um, roots as opposed to power. So there's generally, uh, speaking, they, they, the, the reinvestment. Um, can shape their energy infrastructure and their industrial infrastructure in a way that no other country really starting from, starting from where it's starting, can do as quickly. So we hear a lot in the UK about how we're gonna become green technology leaders. Mm-hmm. Um, some evidence of that, maybe not as much as there is rhetoric, but there's some evidence of it. But, uh, Ukraine really could, could become a green, um, an energy, uh, a, a leader in green technologies has a great deal of digital technologies in Ukraine. I mean, this is a country that is, is sort of anything but helpless in terms of its mm-hmm. Um, in terms of its, um. Technological advancements before the war. In fact, we've seen the sort of unbelievable ingenuity, quite frankly, of the Ukrainian people, uh, using the abilities they already had So. Which is far from a case of a, of a nation that can't help itself. More of the question is what, what else can we contribute to that already strong technological ability of Ukraine to, to, to, to, to bring, to bear, which I, to which ends you sort of wish, I hope people are going to be very generous with not only money and investment, but intellectual property. So, you know, will, will nations grant, uh, pool effectively, so the intellectual property that drives some of these new technologies and allow Ukraine, or at least make Ukraine a great place to invest in, um, for those technologies. And I think, uh, right at the heart of it is anything, the energy infrastructure and remapping exactly how that's to be rebuilt in Ukraine. Although as of this date, we don't know exactly what the damage to the grid or the damage to the power systems or how much. Replacement and renewal will be conceived for the future. But it's, uh, it's, it's right at the heart of it.

Jaimie Johnston MBE: 9:40

But yeah, you, you talked about rebuilding the industry. We actually did a study a little while ago, um, with the part of the UK government saying one thing that you could do is import some of the, you know, modern methods of construction type systems into Ukraine. A better thing to do would be to help them rebuild that capability. So if you had lots of clean energy, rebuild the steel industry, re rebuild the construction industry. So use that as an opportunity to kind of, um. Redevelop your own materials, supply and upskill a bunch of people. So we, we, we were particularly talking about the sort of platforms, cross sector platforms.

Martin Wood: 10:13

Well, yeah.

Jaimie Johnston MBE: 10:14

Construction methodology and saying actually it's hasn't really taken off the uk. That would be the perfect sort of thing where you could upskill a bunch of people, develop a lot of components, common components, and start to, you know, create your own internal supply chain and. Remobilize your workforce, upskill. Make more productive your workforce, and yeah, start to build that capability yourselves, rather than it just being handed into you from, from, you know. Bordering states.

Martin Wood: 10:38

Well, it did. And, and, and the, the white, the other thing we wrote about in the white paper was, you know, what role standardization and manufacturing, uh, that you can derive from standardization, what role I'll have in the replacement of the actual, uh, built assets. So hospitals, schools, housing, et cetera. Um, some of it'll obviously be repair of existing housing stock and improvement of existing housing stock, but some of it will be built from scratch. Um, and. The question is, how will they go at doing that? Because if they do it by conventional methods with, um, the, the building productivity that comes along with conventional methods, which is low, then it'll take a long time to reconstruct. And that's gonna be very difficult for a population that's trying to get back on its feet. So really the question is, can they use a form of standardization? We've seen it before, um, af in fact. In fact, it's slightly, unfortunately, it's something that is, um, often. Uh, prevalent after a war. So, you know, in the UK we had homes for Heroes. Mm-hmm. And obviously Russia replaced a great deal of ta That wasn't all to do with the war, but, but it had a, a program of, um, uh, highly standardized replacement of, uh, housing. Which, you know, ended up getting a very bad name or a bad name because it was seen as being authoritarian blocks, uh, where, you know, the standardization was almost used to sort of repress the population. But of course, the thing that we've, um. We've looked into a great length in the UK is whether you can bring a higher level of standardized. In fact, you must be able to bring a high level of standardization into the construction of, uh, the built environment. Um, and, uh, but you don't have to do it necessarily the expense of, um, of, of any kind of flexibility and creativity. Um, you can do both at the same time, and it's all about choosing the right granularity of standardization, as we call it. In other words. Size of the standard elements are small enough such that they can be reconfigured into a, a massive variation of, uh, different configurations of all of these, uh, all of this building stock so that you get what you want, which is you get that urban environment. It's got the kind of. Flexibility and creativity that we all want to live in. So they're not, they're not necessarily, um, a contradiction in terms standardization and the creativity. But if they don't introduce, uh, the manufactured, uh. Speed and productivity, uh, of, um, of uh, sort of industrial house, uh, industrial building systems. Then, uh, it's gonna be a very long road to reconstruction. Now there's quite a lot of work and effort being done in the uk and I think can be brought, uh, again, talking of the open IP can be brought, um, to Ukraine and allow them to build up their own industries for the manufacturer of, um, standard construction components. And that can. Accelerate alongside, uh, the techniques of assembly, typically called, um, DFMA, designed for manufacturing assembly. Uh, that'll help and reconstruct the, the, uh, country with a lower workforce, smaller workforce and a faster rate. And I think that's, uh, something we wrote out in about the white paper. And, uh, it's the other. Element, one of the other, one of the other elements that can be, uh, gifted to Ukraine as a country.

Jaimie Johnston MBE: 14:02

Yeah. Just to, to build on that. As you, as you say, we've, we've looked across all sorts of sectors, healthcare, education, residential. I think you made the point in the white paper there is a frustratingly near level of standardization, never quite hits it. And you go in those sectors where people design from scratch, they tend towards fairly many similar common solutions. The same. Yeah. So you could lean into that and actually what we build in the UK that, yeah.

Martin Wood: 14:25

And, uh, and of course the, the problem with many similar buildings were not the same is you're not really getting a great deal of variation and you're paying handsomely for the differences. Yes. Um, really something Ukraine could avoid in the reconstruction process, and it's something, um, uh, like I say the, um, the, the technology to do that's available. Um, but it was, it was

Jaimie Johnston MBE: 14:44

well documented. We did a lot of work on it. UK government, IPA wrote in their roadmaps 2030. That was a plan for delivering social infrastructure in the UK hasn't quite taken off, but there is a huge amount of thinking that's already done, which again, is completely available. That on your point about the ip, all of that could be transferred immediately and could be used as a real sort of starting point to drive some of these processes and say, if you did that by first intent.

Martin Wood: 15:09

Yeah.

Jaimie Johnston MBE: 15:09

And again, maybe you can't in the UK 'cause of the procurement and the frameworks and the. IP and the risk and all these things, you know, maybe it's, you can't embed it in an existing infrastructure or system, but if you're starting from scratch and you have the necessity and you have the needs and an answers there, that must be an opportunity to really start develop these things.

Martin Wood: 15:28

Well, all this feeds into, you know, there'll be a greater of investment into Ukraine. Uh, but the question of how much of that is the direct benefit of the Ukrainians and how much has it come to the benefit of others, and, and that's slightly unfortunate things in the reconstruction after. After conflict is that, um, the investment is not always, you know, every pound spent is not always necessarily delivering the best possible value to the, uh, to the nation. And I think, I think there's a few people that would think that Ukraine, well, certain elements of Russia, I guess, but don't think, um, Ukraine deserve all of the, all of the value that you can possibly extract from any investment that goes into the country. Um, I mean, one of the other things that Ukraine has on its side is that. We talked about in the, in the, in the, in the paper, um, was that, you know, it, it, quite frankly before the war was a leading digital force in digital technologies. And, um, that can only be good in terms of, firstly, we talked about by design as opposed to. By necessity, the best form of ByDesign is by being able to simulate what you might do and how and what, um, and what, uh, results it might achieve, and to optimize and maximize those results. So in other words, it allows you to think harder, uh, and get a better result rather than, um, just necessarily, um. Reacting almost too quickly. Um, can't be too quickly in many instances, but, but too quickly and, and not, uh, and the reconstruction again, not, uh, being lower value than it could be. So that digital simulation of both the power infrastructure, the industries, uh, and then also the construction and the construction processes will, uh, lead people to have sort of an unprecedented idea of how to, uh, bring investments into the country in the most controlled manner. Uh, something wasn't never been available in the reconstruction after conflict before. It's been much more, um, much more of guesswork and, uh, of course that guess work's led to, I go back to the UK example of Homes for Heroes. I think the people I. Uh, we'll cite many examples of a rather unfortunate housing and redevelopment, and after that happened, after the second World War and become a bit of a but of a joke. Mm. But, um, it was important and necessary at the time. It just could have been done with more foresight and, and, and, um, and better planning and, and, uh, the Ukrainians have in their hands the digital simulation capabilities to do that to a higher level than ever before. So

Jaimie Johnston MBE: 17:58

that's, I think that digital, I mean the digital. Capability would run the, as you say, the whole way, way through that. There was always this sort of, uh, certainly industrialized construction. People talk an awful lot about digital twins and the fact that you, you know, digital configuration, all of those sorts of tools, the, you know, procurement, all those sorts of things. Again, it's quite hard to apply that to existing infrastructure and. Whole lot of in infrastructure where most of it exists and it's you're trying to document existing things. But again, if you simulated it upfront, done the planning upfront, use that to develop the components and the configurations, you've got a much better chance of linking all those things together. And as you say, there incredibly well, you know, have all the right sort of capabilities. So actually properly join up what's been an aspirational thing in other countries. So again, big opportunity potentially to. Link all of these things in a, in a much more joined up way.

Martin Wood: 18:48

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and development and configurate to so that you can assess, uh, the impact of cost, the program, the speed, you know, um. Of, uh, reconstruction, it can be started now. Um, I mean, we're, nobody knows when the war's gonna end, but, um, but everyone wants Will, is willing it to be soon. Um, but the question is, what's kind of flying start? Can we have, does there have to be a period of, um, uh, does there have to be a period of reflection before this can occur? Or can some of these, um, some of these things be put in place and some of the, some of the thinking and simulation could be done. Um, even before the, the, the, the, the, either a long term ceasefire or complete. Cessation of any kind of, um, aggression occurs. Um, and I, and I think, um, I, I think that, I think we, we all agree that would be the right way to do it, so that things could be, uh, actioned, physically actioned as soon as possible.

Jaimie Johnston MBE: 19:46

Yeah. Going back to your, any point you, you think people will start trying to contribute what they can or make available what they can? They must, you know, I think that's the Institute, Institute for Global Prosperity. That's one of the things they'd like to start convening is these things saying anyone who can contribute. Should start to how do we start to coalesce around these ideas and how do we start to make as much available as soon as possible as, as we can?

Martin Wood: 20:07

Well, you know, it's a, it's, it, it's like all these things. It's um, where's the, where's the point of focus? Where's, how, who's collecting it? Who's, who's becoming the fulcrum around which all, all of this, like I say, all of us, um, um, but I'm sure all of his goodwill towards Ukraine can be focused so that when they. Uh, get to, um, into position to utilize it. They know where it all is. It's all documented in a single place. Um, all the contacts and all the, um, the, the offers of, uh, IP and thinking and support, uh, can all be conduit with, uh, conduiting through a simple. Um, point of contact one organization or several organizations, but not just, um, uh, a vast array of, uh, individual well-meaning parties who don't coalesce to provide a, a practical answer. Um, so the Institute for Global Prosperity in the UK seem to be acting as that. Um, they seem to be acting as that, uh. Focal point, um, where I, I imagine the same is being done somewhere, has being done in other nations. And I think the next step would be people to combine it together and actually create a sort of pan, certainly a pan-European version, if not a global version of that. So that, um, um, so that we're all ready.

Jaimie Johnston MBE: 21:32

Yeah, so we'll leave it there. I think that was a, that was hopefully useful, uh, conversation. We will continue to try and contribute where we can. And, um, yeah, hopefully, we'll, we'll post a link to the, um, industry for global prosperity, uh, white paper. Anyone who's got an interest in this would be encouraged to read it and hopefully we can, uh, we can all add something to the, the debate. Thank you. Thanks for listening.