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Purpose – This paper aims to describe how the experience feedback (EF) from building projects contributes to product platform development in house-building companies. House-building companies seek improvements to decrease costs, improve flow and decrease variability. Industrialised concepts using predefinitions in product platforms have provided a way of storing and reusing knowledge in project-based house-building organisations. However, the innovation in platforms is mainly incremental and based on EF from implementations in projects. Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative data were gathered via interviews, archival studies and observations, and analysed to identify the underlying structures used to manage the incorporation of EF during platform development. Four different EF channels were studied at one Scandinavian house-builder. The data are explained using an analytical framework based on diffusion of innovation, product platforms and EF. Findings – EF is distributed over the value chain to improve the platform over time. By using multiple channels with differing contents, it is possible to balance client demands and variation with production efficiency. Platform development using feedback channels provides opportunities for double-loop learning. Operative work on projects and the strategic decisions made by developers continuously improve the platform through a combination of knowledge pull and push. Originality/value – A combination of different EF channels and strategies for developing knowledge pull are shown to be essential for the incremental development of product platforms in project-based house-building organisations. The development of product platforms requires a shift away from the construction industry’s dominant project focus towards a more product-oriented view of house-building. Integrating the design phase with the supply chain enables variety but also creates a need for continuous platform development.

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Industrialized house-builders are moving towards an enhanced production where management of information along the value chain is critical in order to deliver housing projects on time and with the desired quality. Today digital tools and systems are used in both design and production to produce, deliver and instruct actors throughout the phases of a project. However, the information usually exists in different islands and manual transfers are required to keep the flow of information between IT-systems and individuals continuous. A key to improving the ability for the members in different stages of a project to work with the same information is to facilitate different views. One of the building blocks for creating bridges between the islands of information is to introduce bills of materials which can be used to organize information for different purposes. Uniting the use of building information modeling (BIM) with bills of materials (BOM) is therefore our focus in this paper. This is done in the context of industrialized house-building and the facets which it brings to the subject. The aim of this paper is to present an early endeavor into a BOM based approach for structuring information from BIM models. A demonstration tool was developed, and together with application in a case project from an industrialized house-builder, the generation of BOMs from BIM data is illustrated and discussed. The findings illustrates that we can apply different structures to the information located in our BIM models and that we can produce a BOM perspective on our products. Also, it is highlighted that we still need further studies to better understand how application of BOMs in the context of industrialized house-building is realized.