Procurers, Providers and Users (PPU): towards a meta-role model for conceptualising product-service in the built environment

Abstract

The product-service paradigm requires a shift in focus for many engineering disciplines, forcing them to change from providing products to providing products and associated services. Such a shift is likely to present several challenges to the built environment due to its inherent organisational fragmentations and through-life discontinuities. This paper presents a preliminary conceptualisation of the product-service paradigm as seen from a built environment perspective. The proposed PPU model represents the meta-roles and the information flows, considered as key to sustaining the product-service concept within the built environment.

Keywords: product-service, PPU, knowledge management, through-life management, built environment, incentive flow-down, requirements flowdown, learning from use.