This new workstation, besides being a 64 bit operating system, has a workstation motherboard with a quad core i7 processor. It currently has 12 Gb of RAM (upgradeable to 96 Gb), two video cards (up to 6 monitor ports), a solid state drive, and a SCSI drive. The solid state drive has no moving parts. The drive proved to be too fast for the SCSI controller, so it had to be moved to its own bay and plugged directly into the motherboard. There seems to be no issues with Windows 7, in contrast to the numerous problems we all experienced with Windows Vista. The four monitors can be overwhelming at first, but they soon became very useful and time saving. Layout space used to be huge drafting desks where one could place large drawings to review and mark-up. This process is now being replaced by viewing areas of monitors.

“On the best teams, different individuals provide occasional leadership, taking charge in areas where they have particular strengths. No one is the permanent leader… The structure of the team is a network, not a hierarchy.”

Steep hierarchical structures tend to trap knowledge and authority in the hands of the select few. Agile teams have relatively flat hierarchies compared with their traditional counterparts. What does this mean for each of the traditional roles?

The principles of agile design pull architects from their quiet cathedrals and invite them into the bazaar of developers. Architects find themselves in the trenches, literally shoulder-to-shoulder with designers, continually facilitating evolutionary design while maintaining conceptual integrity within a BIM (Building Information Model).

Agile managers find themselves with more responsibilities than their traditional counterparts. They are responsible for effectively communicating with machines and humans. They are responsible for living up to their own estimates. Most unnervingly, they are responsible for collaborating with their teammates to continually improve the design of the project.

Managers of agile teams can find themselves caught between the values of agility and the values of the larger organization. While they remain under pressure to deliver better design faster and cheaper, they can no longer dictate fixed-scope, fixed-time schedules upon their teams. Instead, managers are informed daily of their teams’ progress, giving managers increasingly accurate estimates for delivery.

Agile teams’ relationships with clients have fundamentally changed from competitive to collaborative. Clients now find themselves attending live internet session meetings, continually refining (and redefining) BIM designs, and viewing early BIM design schemes. Clients are a single voice speaking from within the eye of the hurricane that is this agile team. Their ongoing requests drive the entire development design and production.

Building information modeling (BIM) is here. That’s a given. Ironically, stories keep circulating about how BIM is either NOT being taught in our architectural schools, or it is treated very much as a subject of secondary importance…as in electives. I think BIM definitely SHOULD be taught in our architectural schools, AND emphasized…as in being a required part of the curriculum. Ok, then how about integrated project delivery (IPD)? I’ve never been involved with a project, using IPD, so all I know about it is what I have heard, and what I have heard would give me great pause to recommend that it be included in a typical architectural or engineering school curriculum, given all the other subjects that must be squeezed into the short time students have to be students.

This past October at the Continuing Education Seminars for the Annual Convention of the Texas Society of Architects, two representatives from National AIA Headquarters gave a presentation on IPD. Given a perfect world, where everyone in business would think and share like a classroom full of kindergarteners, IPD seems to make a lot of sense. Unfortunately, adults tend to behave on a much lower level. They tend NOT to think and NOT to share.

Someone should tell me if I am wrong. My impression is that a typical IPD project gets organized under the banner of an LLC (although I JUST heard that the AIA has dropped having an LLC as part of an IPD-hmm-I wonder why?-read on), where the architect, the general contractor and the owner are all equal share holders. Right away I see some issues with that. Financially, the owner has by far the largest financial stake in a typical project. Next by a whole order of magnitude less is the general contractor, and after that on a whole order of magnitude less than the general contractor come the architect, the engineering consultants and whoever else might be involved in the design and creation of construction documents for the project. It looks like a badly listing ship to me to require that these three parties all be equal share holders.

Look at an IPD from an accounting and legal standpoint, and realizing that some firms might have dozens if not hundreds of project numbers every year, the logistics of setting up and managing separately defined LLC’s for even a small fraction of those projects would seem to me to be a logistics, accounting and legal nightmare. Every LLC if I am correct in my understanding of how this would work would require separate charters, separately issued stock, separate accounting, etc. Surely this is not the case. I would be interested in responses from this group.

Next to consider is the intellectual property and copy writes of the construction documents to be used by the IPD. As I understand the situation the architect and engineers, participating in an IPD, are required to subordinate the use of their construction documents by the general contractor for further refinement and revision, the objects of which are to determine means and methods of construction and to conduct clash detection and conflict resolution.

I guess there might be some suggestion that the architect and engineers for the project via the IPD process are either directly or indirectly pulled into management of the general contractor’s means and methods of construction. I think that prototypical professional liability insurance policies prohibit architects and engineers from becoming involved in any means and methods.

During the question and answer period, following the presentation by these two National AIA reps, two interesting questions were asked. “How many projects have used the AIA IPD Standard Forms of Agreement since these documents first began being published a couple of years ago?” Answer, “Not many.” And, “What is the attitude of professional liability insurance companies about IPD?” Answer, “They are taking a wait-and-see attitude.”

If my observations on this matter are correct, I think until IPD better proves itself out in actual professional practice that students probably might do better to spend more of their limited time in school, concentrating on other subjects.

If you have been around construction very long, you will have certainly noticed that our industry has been marked by an explosion of technology of products, materials and the means by which they are incorporated into a building.  This giant leap in technology is also introducing new tools for architects at a time, when architects need them the most. One of the great technological leaps has been the recent transition possibilities from computer aided drawing (CAD) to building information modeling (BIM). Perhaps architects will, to coin a phrase, “BIM to the future”.

 As technological advancement is bringing sustainable products to the market, it is also bringing tools that were first used successfully in engineering and manufacturing.  It was not long ago that the first aircraft to be fully designed and manufactured, using computer aided design and manufacturing, rolled off an assembly line.  The Boeing 777 gave birth to CADM, and that same technology is now being introduced to the building construction industry. A report, prepared by Autodesk and McGraw-Hill Construction (MHC), claims that 49 percent of respondents in the design/construction industry are using Building Information Management (BIM) ^[1] .  However, it appears that architects are not leading the industry. Instead, it appears that contractors are taking the new tool and running with it.  Since its inception, CAD has promised architects to be a tool that would return to them the time to plan, design, and be creative. However, each year that the technology advanced saw architects raise concerns that the new technology was not transportable or interoperable, that one designer’s work could not be easily shared with engineers and other design professional easily so that the entire design-construction team could benefit from the new technology.  Architects would implement programs that their engineers could not or would not use. So, all design members would use technology to produce essentially the same 2D drawings they had in the past produced manually, using pen/pencil and other manual drafting tools.  There were economies of time on the design-production side, but this was offset by administrative time that was needed to make the systems and designers talk to each other.  Graphisoft, producer of the Archicad program, has worked since its inception in 1987 with architects and engineers, wrestling with these concepts. However, Archicad’s limited market share has resulted in limited impact on the building industry. Recent developments by Autodesk with their Revit program, has brought to the table much larger numbers of the product manufacturing industry, general contractors, subcontractors, suppliers, manufacturers and a wide assortment of design professionals. Thus, we are now experiencing that giant leap that could “BIM architects to the future”.  It was pre Renaissance when architects were still considered master builders, when their design and construction savvy was at its pea, a playground where it was the architect who had the capabilities and tools to direct the entire creative process.  Then, the 19^th century emerged, and the industrial revolution left the master builder behind. It was no longer possible for one man to run the creative process from start to finish. Others had to be recruited and trained to help put together a growing industry.  Leap forward to our 21^st century, where computers and the programs they run have created BIM. BIM is a process of generating and managing building data, which ranges throughout a building’s entire life cycle.^[2] Typically BIM uses three-dimensional, real-time, dynamic building modeling software to increase productivity in building design and construction.^[3]  The process produces a building information model (BIM), which encompasses building geometry, spatial relationships, geographic information, and quantities and properties of building components.  BIM is the playground of architects and engineers, and all other members of the building industry. BIM opens opportunities for all architects and other building industry members to join in and to create.

 It remains to be seen who on the building team will rise to the top as the leader. For the time being, according to the MHC report, contractors and building owners seem to see the bottom line as the impetus to requiring the new technology for their buildings. MHC sees architects and engineers as still lagging behind.

References

1. McGraw-Hill Companies, SmartMarket Report, page 36, 2009.
2. Lee, G., Sacks, R., and Eastman, C. M. (2006). Specifying parametric building object behavior (BOB) for a building information modeling system. Automation in Construction, 15(6), 758-776.
3. Holness, Gordon V.R. “Building Information Modeling Gaining Momentum.” ASHRAE Journal. Pp 28-40. June 2008.

I have just attended the Seminar BIM to the bottom line where McGraw Hill’s Smart Market Report “The business value of BIM” http://www.bim.construction.com/research/  was presented. It is eye opening and should be a required read for  anyone in the building industry. There are so many contractors out there looking for help to create their BIM models and wondering how they can start utilizing BIM technologies. Archline is uniquely positioned to provide BIM modeling services and help to contractors.

The last few years have been go go go now we all have experienced a break/slow down/cut backs actually a really tough time. Now is the time we can take a moment to look around to see what has happened in the last few years while we were soooo busy. What are the new technologies? Where are new efficiencies? What services can we offer that will differentiate us from the competition?

Now is the time to expand use of, or even try for the first time, BIM modeling. What does this BIM mean to me and my clients? There are a lot of questions, often it seems that the answer to questions is money and who has that now?! That is were Archline can help. We can provide you with BIM capabilities without you having to invest in new software or hardware. We can provide extra help without you having to invest in new employees.  We can help you learn how 3-D modeling can help your business and processes. We can help you realize large ROI. We can help you market new skills to new clients. We can help you meet client BIM requirements. We can help you reduce construction cost. We can help you reduce project duration.

Give us a call, email us, see what we can do for you!

After conducting our own internal collision studies comparing our modeled electrical and telecommunication systems with the other systems in the building, we then minimized the number of conflicts by revising our model, and then turned over the BIM to the coordinating engineer. This recording shows us in live session with the engineers, and the fire sprinkler contractor. The remaining conflicts numbered less than 100, and our session as a result was less than one hour long.

This is a very quick demonstration of how simple it is to export an IFC file from Revit and open the file up into Adobe Acrobat Professional, and then save as a 3D PDF file. This can then be easily opened by Adobe Acrobat Reader (which is free to download), or Adobe Acrobat Professional by most computer users.

This architect out of Louisiana could not understand what I was trying to describe to him on the phone, a design issue with the window head and the roof eave trim. So, I brought him into live session with me, to visually show him the conflict. In just a matter of minutes, he was able to see the problem. These kinds of graphic sessions are a huge time saver. This particular session was with Autocad, but really any type of graphics programs can be displayed.

This is a very short demonstration of how quickly one can study certain parts of a project in 3D, and how powerful a tool this program can be to automatically coordinate the sheets together.