Appert’s Can

Appert’s can

In 1809, Parisian confectioner Nicolas Appert won Napoleon’s 12,000-franc prize for solving a civilisation-shifting problem: how to stop food rotting. War disrupted supply lines, troops starved, and the empire’s reach was throttled by distance. Appert’s insight was empirical: seal cooked food in glass bottles and heat them in boiling water. It worked. Food stayed edible for months, sometimes years.

When tinplate replaced glass, the can was born: the world’s first durable, portable food system. It changed exploration, military logistics, and trade. Armies could march farther; cities could stockpile. For the first time in history, you could separate production from consumption in time and place. The world had invented shelf-life.

But there was one small oversight: no one had invented a way to open the cans.
For half a century, people hacked at them with bayonets, chisels, and rocks. Sailors smashed tins with whatever metal came to hand, often gashing themselves in the process. The can was miraculous in concept, awkward in practice. The efficiency was trapped inside the packaging.

It wasn’t until 1855 that Robert Yeates, a London cutler, patented the first dedicated can opener: a brutal lever-and-hook device. Then in 1870, American inventor William Lyman Warner created the rotating wheel opener, the design still recognisable today. Only then did Appert’s innovation become an ecosystem. Food preservation and food access were finally linked.

The invention had an interface.

Housing’s digital cans

In the UK housing sector, digitisation has delivered a series of technically sound innovation: each powerful within its own domain, yet largely disconnected from the others. While each initiative contributes value, their collective impact is stifled by the absence of integration. For example;

• Digital planning, driven by MHCLG’s planning reform programme, is making planning data machine-readable and enabling local digital pilots across authorities. Over 50 councils now publish planning data through the Planning Data Platform – a sixfold increase in 18 months – yet those approvals still sit apart from the systems that translate permission into production. Planning data doesn’t automatically feed Building Control; designs aren’t pre-populated. What begins as a digital-first process ends in a static PDF handoff.
• Design: The Building Safety Act requires developed designs and specifications at RIBA 4+ for Gateway 2 – a clear digital requirement. This should be a catalyst for transformation, encouraging BIM workflows, structured data, and the Golden Thread from the outset. Instead, the regulator receives PDFs. Digital rigour meets analogue infrastructure.
• Product data: OPSS is reviewing how construction product data can be digitised and made traceable in response to the Morrell Review’s call for better transparency and accountability. It has commissioned research to map current digital capabilities and barriers across the sector, laying groundwork for potential digital product passports and structured data standards. But these tools risk becoming yet another standalone solution, outside of BIM models and BSR portals where they are most needed.
• Digital Kit of Parts (DKoP): Completed almost 18 months ago, this framework demonstrated how repeatable, standardised components can improve productivity and quality, through open-access data templates for MMC Categories 2 and 5. Crucially, it advocated for integration with planning and regulatory systems, enabling more coordinated decision-making. But this potential remains unrealised. The framework exists, but has yet to be plugged into the very systems it was designed to inform.

Each initiative is technically logical. But they remain bespoke digital cans: excellent in isolation, disconnected in operation. And this is no coincidence. The fragmentation we see in digital tools reflects the fragmentation of the organisations and departments developing them. Without alignment, the Golden Thread becomes an empty promise.

As Mark Reynolds sensibly noted at the BSR Inquiry: “The place to start is digitising the planning system, because that is the front entry to everything.”

But starting is not enough. Without systemic coordination, even the best initiatives risk becoming stranded assets. If we are to realise the potential of digital transformation in housing, integration must be a design principle, not an afterthought.

The opportunity for connection

Take the Small Sites Aggregator pilots in Bristol, Sheffield and Lewisham, launched earlier this year. They’re testing new ways to identify, assemble and finance small parcels of land to increase the supply of affordable homes.

Imagine those identified parcels being tested by a design configurator, informed by a Digital Kit of Parts that ensures viability is buildable.  Planning applications are automatically populated from that shared design data, meeting local Design Code requirements because both systems speak the same data language. Once approved, the output seeds the Golden Thread, embedding traceability from procurement through operation. From site identification to building handover – one continuous, machine-readable chain.

This isn’t theoretical. The Small Sites Aggregator is demonstrating new delivery and investment models. Digital Planning pilots are operational and expanding. The Digital Kit of Parts is aligned with what manufacturers actually produce. The Golden Thread is a statutory requirement under the Building Safety Act. They’re just not fully connected, end to end.

When they are, the benefits compound: site viability improves through predictable procurement; planning accelerates through embedded compliance; SME developers access better finance through quantifiable risk; insurers are able to offer rates that reflect enhanced certainty; manufacturers invest with knowing future demand. The supply chain becomes legible, transparent, improvable.

Right now, despite intentions toward openness, we risk creating a patchwork of digital tins, each excellent in isolation, each with its own data formats, forcing manual translation at every handoff. We must not confuse digitisation with integration, nor mistake parallel investment for coherent infrastructure.

The interface layer we need

Appert created preservation; the can opener created access.

Housing now needs its equivalent: an interface layer that links digital planning, the Digital Kit of Parts, and the Golden Thread through shared data standards and open protocols.

The building blocks already exist.

New digital housing initiatives designed for interoperability from day one, with published data standards and open APIs. Existing initiatives retrofitted to connect through common protocols. Procurement frameworks that favour integration over isolation. Demonstration projects like the Small Sites Aggregator that prove end-to-end data flow works in practice.

This is the opportunity: to take the initiatives already underway and ensure they work together. The PropTech Innovation Challenge signals this thinking. The Small Sites Aggregator creates a test case. D-KoP provides the open-data foundation. Digital planning controls the gateway. The Golden Thread creates the demand signal. Someone needs to convene them.

When connected through common data standards, we create an ecosystem where a housing provider in Lewisham and an SME manufacturer in Sheffield work from the same digital specifications without translation. Where operational performance feeds back into design. Where AI applied to structured datasets accelerates decisions and predicts issues before they arise.

We won’t meet the 1.5 million homes target by doing more of the same. The prize isn’t digitisation, it’s integration: turning separate innovations into solutions that scale.

Not more sealed cans, but joined-up thinking to open them.