BIM Requires IPD.

BIM requires some form of Integrated Project Delivery… Period.   Why you say?

Simple.  BIM is the life-cycle management of the built environment supported by digital technology.  BIM therefore, requires the integration of multiple knowledge domains, stakeholders and supporting technologies… from strategic and capital planning, through design, construction, operations, utilization, repair, renovation, adaptation, maintenance, and deconstruction.

Efficient project delivery methods such as IPD and Job Order Contracting (JOC) are integral components of efficiently managing the built environment over time.  The help define the specialized framework needed to enable Owners, AEs, Contractors, Oversight Groups, and other Stakeholders share information and collaborate to enable the appropriate distribution of resources needed to optimize the physical and function conditions of the built environments.

BIG DATA = BIM

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BIM Evolution

In the long history of humankind, those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.
– Charles Darwin

BIM, the life-cycle management of the built environment supported by digital technology, requires a fundamental change in how the construction (Architects, Contractors, Engineers) and facility management (Owners, Service Providers, Building Product Manufactures, Oversight Groups, Building Users) sectors operate on a day-to-day basis.  

BIM, combined and  Cloud Computing are game changers.  They are disruptive technologies with integral business processes/practices that demand collaboration, transparency, and accurate/current information displayed via common terminology.

The traditional ad-hoc and adversarial business practices commonly associated with Construction and Facility Management are changing as we speak.    Design-bid-build and even Design-Build will rapidly go by the wayside in favor of the far more efficient processes of Integrated Project Delivery – IPD, and Job Order Contracting – JOC, and similar collaborative programs.  (JOC is a form of integrated project delivery specifically targeting facility renovation, repair, sustainability, and minor new construction).

There is no escaping the change.   Standardized data architectures (Ominclass, COBie, Uniformat, Masterformat) and cost databases (i.e. RSMeans), accesses an localized via cloud computing are even now beginning to be available.   While historically, the construction and facility management sectors have lagged their counterparts (automotive, aerospace, medical, …)  relative to technology and LEAN business practices, environmental and economic market drivers and government mandates are closing the gap.

The construction and life-cycle management of the built environment requires the integration off several knowledge domains, business “best-practices”, and technologies as portrayed below.   The efficient use of this BIG DATA is enabled by the BIM, Cloud Computing, and Integrated Project Delivery methods.

The greatest challenges to these positive changes are  the CULTURE of the Construction and the Facility Management Sectors.  Also, an embedded first-cost vs. life-cycle or total cost of ownership perspective.  An the unfortunate marketing spotlight upon the technology of 3D visualization vs. BIM.   Emphasis MUST be place upon the methods of how we work on a daily basis…locally and globally  − strategic planning, capitial reinvestment planning, designing collaborating, procuring, constructing, managing and operating.  All of these business processes have different impacts upon the “facility” infrastructure and  construction supply chain, building Owners, Stakeholders, etc., yet communication terms, definitions, must be transparent and consistently applied in order to gain  greater efficiencies.

Some facility life-cycle management are already in place for the federal government facility portfolio and its only a matter of time before these are expanded and extended into all other sectors.

BIM, not 3D visualization, but true BIM or Big BIM,  and Cloud Computing will connect information from every discipline together.  It will not necessarily be a single combined model.  In fact the latter has significant drawbacks.    Each knowledge domain has independent areas of expertise and requisite process that would be diluted and marginalized if managed within one model.   That said, appropriate “roll-up” information will be available to a higher level model.   (The issue of capability and productivity marginalization can be proven by looking a ERP and IWMS systems.  Integration of best-in-class technology and business practices is always support to systems that attempt to do everything, yet do not single thing well.)

Fundamental Changes to Project Delivery for Repair, Renovation, Sustainability, and New Construction Projects MUST include:

• Qualifications Based or Best Value Selection
• Some form of pricing transparency and standardization
• Early and ongoing information-sharing among project stakeholders
• Appropriate distribution of risk
• Some form of financial incentive to drive performance / performance-based relationships

Where will BIM / Efficient Life-cycle Management Supported by Digital Technology Be in Five Years

A workshop with members from the BIM Academy, NBS, and various other was recently held to postulate on this topic.

As one might expect topics encompassed;  design, procurement, policy and standards, technology, education and culture, success to date, areas for innovation, challenges, and barriers to adoption.

As facilities costs are second only to personal/labor costs for most organizations, the need for breadth, consistency and transparency of BUILDING INFORMATION to understand, articulate, prioritize, and act upon requirements is readily apparent.    Information must be timely, accurate, transparent, actionable,  traceable, and shared collaboratively.

Change management is a requirement, and those adapt will excel, those that do not will fall behind.

A core, yet perhaps obvious observation was that ” There is a growing realization of the importance of data structure, quality and transferability, rather than geometry alone. We need to stop talking less about “the model” and more about “the data”.
“One participant noted a recent US comparative diagram mapping CAD adoption in the 1980s and recent BIM adoption. The trajectory has been much more rapid for BIM, however from recent discussions with US practitioners it appears the US is advanced in geometric, spatial and visual BIM uses but progress in the productive use of structured data, particularly into the operational phase, seems to be falling behind the UK.”

BIM management is misunderstood by some clients who regard it as purely a technological challenge which can be simply be solved by a software purchase and training, others are intimidated by a perceived complex restructuring of management processes. The truth lies somewhere between and follow the principles of Latham – get the process right before you think of the technology.

The role of IPD (Integrated Project Design) and JOC (Job Order Contracting) will become even more important.  It was also noted that collaborative working doesn’t necessarily demand multidisciplinary organizations. There is a balance to be struck between the efficiency gained from freshness and innovation often achieved from different organizations coming to together on a project basis and working collaboratively, however traditional  disjointed methods of procurement common in industry, such as design-bid-build or even design-build or CMAR do not fully encourage this.  IPD and JOC, the later a form of IPD for facility renovation, repair, and construction are proven methods of developing long term,  win-win multi-party relationships. “It’s crucial to get the right people involved early enough and understanding what outcomes they need from the start.”, and both IPD and JOC enforce this behavior.

Perhaps most importantly the topic of education rose front and center:

“It was agreed that this community also needs to escape from its silos. Some universities are starting to adopt a multidisciplinary curriculum supported by BIM, but this needs to become the standard not the exception. “Why not have a combined construction degree with final years dedicated to a specific discipline and practical work experience in between?”"

BIM Strategy and Change Management II

BIM (Building Information Modeling) is the life-cycle management of the built environment supported by digital technologies.  As such it is a process of collaboration, continuous improvement, transparency, and integration.   3D distractions aside,  achieving optimal return-on-investment (ROI) on BIM requires focus upon change management, first and foremost.  Ad-hoc business practices, traditional construction delivery methods, and legacy software must be cast aside.

BIM is managing information to improve understanding. BIM is not CAD. BIM is not 3D. BIM is not application oriented. BIM maximizes the creation of value. Up, down, and across the built environment value network. In the traditional process, you lose information as you move from phase to phase. You make decisions when information becomes available, not necessarily at the optimal time.  BIM is not a single building model or a single database. Vendors may tell you that everything has to be in a single model to be BIM. It is not true. They would be more accurate describing BIM as a series of interconnected models and databases. These models can take many forms while maintaining relationships and allowing information to be extracted and shared. The single model or single database description is one of the major confusions about BIM.(http://4sitesystems.com/iofthestorm/books/makers-of-the-environment/book-3/curriculum-built-world/categories/introductionbim-integration/)

The principles of BIM:

• Life-cycle management: Process-centric , longer term planning  and technologies that consider total cost of ownership, support decision making with current, accurate information,  and link disparate knowledge domains and technologies.
• Collaborative Delivery Processes:  Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) procurement and construction delivery processes that consider and combine the knowledge and capabilities of all stake holders – Owners, AEs, Contractors, Business Product Manufacturers, Oversight Groups, Service Providers, and the Community.  (i.e.  IPD, Job Order Contracting/JOC)
• Standards and Guidelines:  Common glossary of terms, metrics, and benchmarks that enable efficient, accurate communication on an “apples to applies” basis.
• Collaborative, Open Technologies and Tools:   Cloud-based systems architectures that enable rapid, scalable development, unlimited scalability on demand, security, real-time collaboration, and an full audit trail.

(Johnson et al. 2002) – There is an interrelationship between business goals, work processes, and the adoption of information technology. That is, changes in business goals generally require revising work processes which can be enhanced further by the introduction of information technology. But we also recognized that innovations in information technology creates possibilities for new work processes that can, in turn, alter business goals  In order to understand how information technology influences architectural practice it is important to understand all three of these interrelated elements.
Business Goals…   Work processes  ….   Information  technology
require/create               require/create                    require/create

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Sustainability -  “to create and maintain conditions, under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony, that permit fulfilling the social, economic, and other requirements of present and future generations.”  – US Executive Order 13423

Ceasel – Patents Pending

BIM Framework

BIM Just Isn’t Happenning

Read the below.  Several arguments can be made as to why BIM is not gaining any real traction -
- Lack of confidence that BIM as an ongoing  program will succeed.
- Costs are considered too high
- Too technical
- Anticipated loss of control
- Limited understanding of all BIM-related knowledge domains and associted technologies
- No preceived personal benefit
– Human resource problems

For BIM take hold… “big BIM” that is ( efficient facility life-cycle management supported by digital technology), will require a virtual CULTURAL REVOLUTION across the Architecture, Engineering, Owners, Operations (AECOO) sector (s).   Collaboration, transparency, productivity, accuracy, and associated robust business process will become common place.  The catalyst for this chagne is already upon us, and the below article provides some excellent insight on the topic.

Want to build a business? You need an IT ecosystem. (Source GIGAOM.COM)

By Mark Thiele

Just thirty years ago, innovation in almost any category was measured in years, but today it’s measured in weeks or months. If you were to focus on information technology specifically you could even argue that change can occur in days — and that cycle will continue to accelerate.

But adapting and innovating in IT requires that you have a platform strategy that allows for heterogeneous adoption of technology at each layer of infrastructure. You also need simplified, cost-effective, real-time access to a wide range of partners and solution providers, otherwise known as your technology ecosystem. This group of providers will be a veritable marketplace of vendors that are proprietary and open source, but whom together create a combination of technologies and services that allow the buyer to mix and match for any solution requirement.

The technology ecosystem has always been important. Even in the days when a minority of companies had a single mainframe, you still needed parts, skills, power, data centers, tools, and ideas, etc. But that ecosystem was smaller and moved more slowly. The technology ecosystems of the 60s through the 90s tended to change over months or years, and our systems from then were more likely to be from a small handful of vendors. This simplified provider environment reduced dependence on an ecosystem of otherwise unrelated partners and vendors, but guaranteed your dependence on the one.

That was then, this is now.

The difference today, and going forward, is that technology is rapidly moving to a much more agile adoption, development, operating and use model. Buyers today can identify and use cloud-based infrastructure or obtain a few licenses of a Software-as-a-Service delivered application in a matter of hours. Aside from cloud-based services, there are virtual platforms, appliances, internally developed applications and myriad customer devices that all need to interact, but can change almost overnight.

Some would argue that the sheer complexity of the ecosystem today screams for CIOs to try to create homogenous infrastructure environments. However, the very fact that we’re making IT solutions more portable and readily adaptable means that we must plan for the ability to support multi-vendor solutions at any layer of the technical infrastructure, from the CPU, through to platform as a service.

The rapid delivery of new solutions means that companies will no longer wait patiently for “their” provider to catch up to major innovation leaps. The only way to stay in front of your competition is to grease the technical infrastructure skids with strong management platforms and clear adoption, ownership, and orchestration strategies.

Many software, cloud, and hardware providers in today’s market would argue that they offer a strong ecosystem of partners, but I think the future ecosystem will be as open as possible and also offer the customer access to a wide variety of cloud, network and other services within the confines of a single data center.

Think of your IT ecosystem as the local shops near your downtown flat, easy to access and well understood. However, if you’re downtown ecosystem was like the technology ecosystem you would have five coffee shops, three butchers, six shoe stores and so on from which to select goods and services. .

The open ecosystem

An open ecosystem allows for you to select the technology or service provider you like when the opportunity presents itself. It’s an environment where the customer has broad access to vendors and services related to any portion of the infrastructure stack, including wide area networking services and the data center capacity.

Under the old way of building IT, managers built it once, built it to last, and then got fired when it didn’t last. The new IT calls for managers to build it fast, possibly fail fast, and then build it again.

An open ecosystem means that in most cases you shouldn’t be spending years putting in a new technology architecture or solution. If it’s that complex or limited in its ability to adapt new technology you should be using a partner’s infrastructure such as an IaaS or PaaS provider solution.

There are also many options for building private cloud infrastructure, especially for larger businesses, but the focus should be on making it as open as possible. If you can’t taste test an application or new platform environment in a matter of days or weeks, you’re doing something wrong. Openness also helps if you need to move your work, because you want to have as many destinations to choose from as you can.

Many providers under one roof.

But even among open ecosystems there are important differences to be aware of. Ideally you will find an open ecosystem with a large number of different network, cloud, software and hardware providers under one umbrella. This allows the customer to make decisions around adoption of new technology quickly and efficiently. So instead of providing access to one or two bandwidth providers, the ideal ecosystem provides access to big and small players, and can play them against each other to get the best price and services for customers. In reality bringing together the combined customer and supplier community creates greater opportunities for both sides, in effect, a win-win.

It shouldn’t stop with bandwidth, either. An ecosystem should have not only the option of different hardware, and support services, but also different cloud service providers. If a customer wants to get cloud computing from a vendor, the ecosystem provider should invite that provider in. And if someone wants to build their own cloud, the ecosystem provider and data center provider should have an array of choices available for a customer to choose from.

The ideal delivery platform for this ecosystem is a data center provider who can create an environment that supports the needs of enterprise computing, while also lowering the costs and barriers to entry for ecosystem partners. This is an environment that removes all your risks associated with disaster avoidance, regulatory concerns, capacity and security. That location should have access to national freeways and airports as well as local government support that will help facilitate worker relocation and education, while also providing considerations for your hardware taxation risks.

It’s tough to find one place where all the above are available to the customer, but they are out there. Having these resources readily available is like having a Home Depot and a Lowes move in next to your house the day before you start a big home project. No matter what tool or resource you need, it’s all right there, immediately available, with competition, quantity and variety.

In this environment building a business that requires IT – or rethinking your existing IT doesn’t seem so daunting: With all these resources available, you virtually eliminate the risk of being forced into a “pragmatic” (read: bad but necessary) decision. You are free to experiment once, twice, three times, and then put it into production, without most of the historical baggage like “high network costs”, “no skilled staff” or a data center that is “out of capacity,” which have traditionally driven IT decisions.

So the increasing complexity and speed at which IT is moving doesn’t have to be something to worry about, instead look at it as an opportunity to roll with the technological changes without becoming too invested in a closed ecosystem.

Mark Thiele is executive VP of Data Center Tech at Switch, the operator of the SuperNAP data center in Las Vegas. Thiele blogs at SwitchScribe and at Data Center Pulse, where is also president and founder. .He can be found on Twitter at @mthiele10.

Image courtesy of Flickr user john-norris.

 

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BIM Collaboration – Fact or Fiction?

BIM Collaboration – Fact or Fiction

As members of the AECOO¹ Community and stewards of the build environment, it is our obligation to collaboratively address our industry-specific productivity and business process issues as well as the our lack of significant progress relative to addressing environmental impacts.

Truth be told, there is only one significant barrier to efficient AECOO practices and it is our existing culture of mistrust, lack of open communication, and reliance upon antagonistic construction delivery methods.

The design-bid-build construction delivery method and associated practices such of awarding contracts to the lowest bidder do little more than a fuel to the fires of waste, protracted project timelines, change orders, and legal disputes.

Also, focus upon symptoms such as lack of effective technology usage and associated interoperability issues, have done little to drive change.  That said, it may be technology that is the acts as the catalyst to tear down the walls of mistrust and silos of independent groups and activities.

Cloud computing and associated social networking have already begun to dramatically alter the world and stand ready to forcefully impact the AECOO community.

A simplified, however, powerful definition of BIM is “the efficient life-cycle management of the built environment supported by digital technology”.   Achievement of this goal requires the integration of multiple knowledge domains and associated processes, procedures, and activities, which to date have been managed in isolation.   While detailed knowledge of each domain will remain a challenge, sharing of critical information with multi-disciplinary impact can be achieved if communication barriers are removed.   Cloud computing, social networking, and the associated use of integrated project delivery methods² will provide the basic foundation upon with BIM will be enabled.  An an actionable framework for professional AECOO collaboration, and increased productivity is on the horizon.   The timing and success, however, is totally dependent upon transformational changes regarding the ways in which AECOO professionals communicate and deliver their services.

 

1-Architerture, Engineering, Construction, Owners, Operations

2-Current examples include integrated project delivery (IPD) for new construction and job order contracting (JOC).  The latter is a form of IPD specifically targeting renovation, repair, sustainability, and minor new construction.

 

 

 

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Beyond Green – High Performance Buildings, BIM, and Life-cycle Facility Management

Let’s face it, LEED is a great marketing tool, but NOT the solution.  “Kudos” to LEED for building awareness  and  addressing the need to focus upon sustainability of the built environment!

That said,  high performance buildings should not cost significantly more that “typical construction”.  The paperwork and methods involved in LEED add superfluous costs and will not necessarily yield optimal results.   I have entered far too many LEED certified  buildings with massive glass multi-story areas and other clearly “non-sustainable” items.  There should be little to no cost premium for a sustainable building.   Even now, studies show that a 2% premium is all that is required.   I would further argue that no premium is really need should basic standards be a requirement and market efficiencies take hold.  Also, over the life-cycle of a building, a sustainable, high-performance building will win on ROI every time as only 10%-20% of life-cycle cost go into construction, vs. operations, maintenance, etc.

Efficient ongoing life-cycle management of facilities is the key to sustainability.   It is probable that many, if not most LEED buildings constructed are no longer meeting their design goals.  Why?  They are simply not being monitored maintained on a proactive life-cycle basis.  Why not?   The culture of our industry and awareness of the true meaning of BIM need dramatic if/not disruptive change and  improvement.

BIM is the life-cycle management of the built environment supported by technology… not pretty 3D pictures that don’t link to value knowledge domains.   Further, collaboration is the key to BIM, and collaboration is dictated by AEC delivery methods.  Traditional delivery methods such as design-bid-build (DBB) and even attempts at improving it such as design-build (DB) and construction manager at risk (CMAR) are flawed as they inevitably pit some of the key parties involved against one another.

Integrated project delivery (IPD) and job order contracting (JOC), the latter “IPD-lite” specifically for renovation, repair, sustainability, and minor construction projects, are critical to BIM and to altering the inefficient and adversarial processes that dominant our industry today.

BIMF - A Framework for BIM

Behind the High-Performance Federal Buildings Act

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Reduction of  federal building energy footprint is an important initiative.

Focus must shift to the renovation, repair, and sustainability of existing buildings and associated efficient project delivery methods.   BIM and Cloud computing can integrate the currently disparate processes associated with facility capital planning, management, renovation, and maintenance…. and make enable the widespread use of efficient project delivery methods such as integrated project delivery (IPD) and job order contracting (JOC).

The focus on BIM as 3D visualization and design is a distraction we can no longer afford.

 

BIM is the life-cycle management of facilities supported by digital technology.  It is the use of robust business processes and standardized taxonomies and metrics.

The tools to significantly reduce the carbon footprint of the built environment are readily available.  Products and services  manufactured here in the United States, the use of which would also help our economy.

The  High-Performance Buildings Caucus was started in 2007 with a goal to make a real difference in our economy and environment. Last year,  the “Federal Buildings Personnel Training Act”  was introduce to piece of legislation ensure that people working on federal buildings are properly trained to do the work their job requires. This bill was signed into law at the end of 2010, however, the   General Administration Services (GSA) is lagging in its proper implementation.  Knowledge of life-cycle facility management is critical to reaching the goals of efficient facility life-cycle management.

The High Performance Federal Buildings Act is intended to require analysis of the full life-cycle costs for buildings.    It also requires regulations for the use of energy and water in federal buildings to reflect the most current codes and standards.   The Act will reduce energy footprint speed compliance with mandated standards.

It is very important to use of life-cycle cost analysis on any construction, alteration or acquisition of a building.  Facility condition assessments and commissioning are also key elements in this regard that must be addressed in a standardized manner.

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What is BIM … It’s not Revit, Archicad, Bentley …

BIM and Cloud technologies/processes will redefine the relationships between all construction professionals.

BIM is the life-cycle management of the built environment supported by digital technology.  While 3d visualization, aka Revit, Archicad, Bentley, et al is a valuable component of BIM it is neither the primary component, or necessarily a requisite component.   These 3d visualization tools and their suppliers have primarily targeted architects and designers.  Why is that?   It’s simple, 3d visualization helps in the visual design and “selling” of structures.  When combined with MEP, it also can save money relative to crash/collision detection.

The true value of BIM, however, lies within business management and process change/adaptation.  The integration of previously disparate silos of construction and facility management information and processes into a collaborative, transparent environment is what BIM offers.

How do we get there?  Simple really, the combination of BIM with CLOUD technology will result in disruptive, positive change.  Affordable, scalable technology is now available to embed robust business processes.

For example, Integrated Project Delivery (IPD), and Job Order Contracting (JOC), the latter being IPD for facility renovation, repair, sustainability and minor new construction, are both efficient, proven construction delivery methods.  The are now both available embedded within technologies to support the collaborative needed of Owners, Contractors, AEs, BPMs (business product manufactures), and the relevant other Community members.

The linking of efficient construction delivery methods like IPD and JOC, with CPMS, CMMS, CAFM, BAS, GIS… to name a few… has already begun.

Valuable information On-Demand to enable efficient construction and facility management is BIM… part technology, part process, 100% collaborative.

Terms of equal import to BIM?   ” Adaptive Project Delivery” and “Adaptive Construction Management”.

Innovative Pattern Search for QTO and Cost Estimating

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BIMF - The Framework for BIM

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A Comparison of Construction Cost Estimating Tools – Spreadsheets, Cost Calculators (RSMeans CostWorks), and Cost Estimating/Project Management Software (e4Clicks Project Estimator)

INTRODUCTION

Accurate, timely, and transparent cost estimating is critical to the success of any renovation, repair, sustainability, or new construction project. While most construction cost estimators continue to rely primarily upon hardcopy documents and electronic spreadsheets such as Microsoft Excel, many are beginning to leverage electronic cost books and associated “calculator” software tools. Both of these approaches have merit and are well suited for certain types of users.

Growing numbers of cost estimators, however, have the need to work with multiple projects and multiple estimates simultaneously, securely share information on active projects, localized cost information, as well as easily locate and reuse historical data.
These Owners, Contractors, and AEs are moving to advanced cost estimating and management systems. They are discovering that significantly higher productivity can be gained (50%+). Furthermore, the collaborative aspects of these advanced cost estimating and project management software systems are aligned with integrated project delivery methods and construction sector movement toward Building Information Modelling (BIM).

This paper addresses each of these primary approaches to construction cost estimating and discusses their application. For clarity, products are referenced within each category as follows: (1) Spreadsheets – Microsoft Excel, (2) Electronic Cost Books/Calculator – RSMeans CostWorks, and (3) Cost Estimating and Project Management Software – e4Clicks Project Estimator.

bp 2011 9 22 comparison-cost-estimating-tools

CONCLUSION

Over the past forty plus years, there have been many initiatives to improve cost estimating to facilitate the delivery of construction projects on time and on budget. Owners, contractors, and AEs now have multiple methods to select from based upon their needs.

Spreadsheets were a major improvement in the 1980s, followed by formal processes for collecting and harnessing historical information to more accurately project and control costs.

Over the past decade, a powerful new capability has been added, collaborative cost estimating and project management software. The evolution of transparent and collaborative cost estimating and project management software mitigates the time wasting, unproductive aspects of creating estimates one at a time from scratch. Additional benefits include the reduction of data input and formulae errors, as well as costly ‘errors of omission’, common with ‘ad hoc’ spreadsheet-centric approaches.

What’s next…?

The application of cloud computing to cost estimating and project delivery and management software and the subsequent integration with Building Information Modelling.  The ability to produce accurate cost estimates and control costs throughout a buildings life-cycle will be greatly enhanced. Another breed of cost estimating and project management software, Adaptive Project Delivery (APD) will also evolve.  But all this is for another story.