Continued from Part 1
Doherty: Very exciting progress. Could you share one of the surface-scratching value adds your firm has discovered using BIM?
Young: We call our strategy BuildingSMART (which we borrowed from the BuildingSMART Alliance. This is an umbrella strategy including BIM and IPD. It is meant to transform how we relate to the owner and the rest of the design/construction team. We will transform our process to be design-driven, information-rich, collaborative, and efficient. The truth is that we are still defining exactly what all this means, so it is hard to know when we will have arrived.
We have a number of projects that are working with different aspects of BuildingSMART. Some are purely focused on our internal processes. And some go all the way to an integrated project delivery contract. A lot depends on the readiness of our clients and the rest of the AEC team.
We learn a little bit more with each project, and I think it’s clear we are on the right path. How long will it be before we are there? Maybe there are three thresholds we can look at. The first is little BIM. That would be the internal adoption of a BIM tool and sufficient expertise to create information-rich models. I think we’re almost there or maybe have a year to go to cross the tipping point. The second threshold could be big BIM — using BIM to drive full collaboration and analysis. This one is more dependent on the ecosystem of consultants and their readiness. I’ll guess one to five years depending on the consultant. And the last threshold could be IPD. I wouldn’t expect that to ever be 100 percent, but we could see it as a primary contractual model in maybe five to 10 years.
Doherty: Very smart approach. I have seen more and more lately the terms “little BIM,” “big BIM,” and it begins to provide a roadmap for firms to get their heads around the complexities and layers of understanding that BIM challenges us with. At the same time, it seems that there is a cottage industry of little BIM firms that may never get to a big BIM level. It has been written in the past that we are about to enter an age where small and medium-sized enterprises will either be associated with or acquired by the big firms. So are we seeing an evolutionary shift due to technology (BIM) that is defining the new architectural firm — little BIM shops and big BIM shops?
Horst: To start, we’ve developed a matrix that we refer to as the EYP (Einhorn Yaffee Prescott) BIM map. Essentially, we view the BIM-to-IPD effort as one of four levels of potential development, the first being what we refer to as a facilities model (which we would do as a minimum on every project) all the way up to a level four modeling effort, which we refer to as full IPD. Moving from a level one to a level four effort, more parties become involved and the model becomes much richer with content.
The matrix helps our project directors structure their thinking around what the client may really need and what our relative effort might look like. It’s a tool that helps point us in the right direction for discussing different levels of value with our clients. And it helps to control BIM creep: All BIM models are not created equal, and it’s important that we discuss the differences at the very beginning stages of the project. Even though I would consider this a strategic tool for us, we feel it’s important to share the BIM matrix outside of the firm so that others begin to think about the value proposition around BIM as well.
Additional opportunities may include selling the model to other parties who might find value in the content that we create as a by-product of our normal design and production efforts. For example, we’ve had a little success in selling our model to fabrication groups and feel that there may be further opportunities along these lines if we were to slightly tailor our modeling efforts to be more appropriate to a broader group of project participants. I think the idea of crafting information assets in a very particular way is an interesting idea that could deliver broad compounding returns for AEC practitioners. For this to be business practical would probably require an entirely new set of more robust, more granular tools to help manage this. Ideally, you would be dealing with BIM information at a more “atomic level” as my EYP colleague John Tobin describes it. At this point, it’s just an area of interest, but who knows, it may be where the software developers’ future revenue stream comes from.
Finally, one additional example would be our energy practice. While this team of engineers provides services to our in-house projects, the energy group also gets its own projects and leverages the BIM model to perform services like building performance analysis, annual energy usage projections, building commissioning, and even some experimentation with design-build type projects. In this case, BIM helps us expand our service offerings while at the same time provides better design insight and analysis for internal project teams.
BIM Challenges
Doherty: What are the most challenging aspects of BIM?
Beck: Designing in three dimensions is challenging when so many people have learned it in two dimensions. BIM also requires more complete information earlier in the process, which is very uncomfortable. We are finding that the tools require more hours earlier in the process, with a significant amount of principal time devoted to the effort.
Doherty: Could this lead to front loading of design contracts in order to balance time, effort, and cost?
Beck: I believe so. We have been doing that, and owners seem to understand how that benefits them by creating a far better coordinated and complete set of drawings, which then motivates subcontractors to reduce the contingencies that they bid for undefined requirements. It’s also interesting but expected to see our CA costs decline due to better defined projects.
Horst: I think the most challenging aspect of BIM is simply to get people to think differently, if just for a moment. Often, project teams are in survival mode with existing projects and are unwilling or unable to take a break long enough to consider a different or even better way of doing things.
Thinking differently takes time. It’s important to factor that investment into the transition plan.
Doherty: Very true that thinking differently is a key. Any suggestions on how a firm can promote change with regard to BIM?
Horst: I don’t think you can underestimate the power of messaging. However, for corporate messaging to work well, it has to start at the top and be reinforced with consistency and clarity at every level within the organization. Ideally, it should start with the CEO including BIM and IPD in the firm’s strategic vision. Then, efforts by IT, marketing, finance, HR, etc. would follow suit, each implementing specific plans that clearly support the CEO’s vision.
The message should be reinforced throughout the year in everything, including marketing literature, frequent firm-wide e-mail updates, training initiatives, the firm’s award and bonus programs, selections for who attends conventions and conferences, which teams get the best technology and equipment, who gets put on the best projects, staff promotions, etc. Every initiative in the firm should reinforce the message such that it builds momentum and clarity of mission across the organization. It all sounds so easy, which I suppose it is if leadership is aligned and a focused effort is applied. I’m convinced that a strong, consistent messaging strategy can work miracles.
Young: You’ve probably seen the MacLeamy Curve, which shows the movement of the effort curve on a project where a greater percent of the decisions are moved up in the project, or front loaded. (It also shows a reduction in the total effort over the project life.) Evolving to this process is very challenging for the reasons you all have mentioned.
Part of that difficulty is that we now need to “de-evolve” ourselves from our recent development. As I look back over the 20 or 30 years of CAD, we have seen a divergent specialization of staff talent. Some have become very adept with CAD technology while others have followed the path of architectural technology. While there are some who have mastered both, people are typically more expert at putting buildings together or using CAD. In BIM, in order to make project decisions earlier, one needs to know both. The good news is that BIM software is more intuitive than CAD.
So while we are in a very challenging period, I think we are heading toward a very healthy future — where an architect can be very knowledgeable about the best way to build a building as well as a master of the technology. OK, maybe I’m dreaming a little, but why not?
Leveraging BIM
Doherty: What are the most positive things about BIM, in your estimation?
Beck: There are many positive things about these tools, including better coordination and the opportunity to develop design components with parametrics. But probably the greatest benefit for us is the ability to share information across disciplines much more efficiently, resulting in a greater likelihood of making the best decisions the first time during the design development process.
Doherty: Are you finding that with the shared information across disciplines due to BIM, the skills and knowledge of the designer become more well rounded, encompassing an understanding of construction process and sequence, material knowledge, and detailing?
Beck: We’re still learning, but I do think that will be the result. I still think that the ultimate opportunity will be to get experts to work together in a knowledge-centric environment where rules will be embedded into the tools instead of merely passing project-specific data back and forth between disciplines. I know we have a long way to go on that.
Horst: Like Peter, I think there are many positive things about BIM. For starters, the unprecedented availability of information about a building offers new and interesting opportunities for virtually all members of the project team. With new access to highly coordinated, consistent information comes an opportunity to coordinate across disciplines with greater precision and more frequency. Parametric change management helps designers, architects, and engineers make better use of their time and expertise, greatly reducing the more mundane production tasks. Working in a rich 3-D environment provides better design insight and visual analysis throughout the project lifecycle. But maybe most important of all, BIM offers an opportunity for design and engineering firms to re-think their business processes and procedures and an opportunity to adopt ultimately a more integrated project delivery methodology and workflow throughout their organization.
Doherty: So is IPD dependant on a successful BIM implementation?
Beck: To really leverage the technology, we are going to have to integrate at the enterprise level instead of at the project level. There are so many opportunities to achieve significant improvements in processes and results using BIM that require large investments of time and money that cannot possibly be amortized by individual disciplines on a single job. Nor can the job bear the expense. Developing mapping protocols between estimating and design, creating high-quality, pre-estimated design components, incorporating algorithms, etc. — all require multi-disciplinary work that only a firm with a single bottom line across several disciplines can justify doing.
Doherty: What is fascinating about the disruptive power of BIM is to witness the layers of process improvement that happen when implemented across disciplines within a project. The multi-enterprise workflows have always been our industry’s challenge. Do contractual relationships like design-build, for example, provide an option for firms that may not have multiple disciplines under one roof to see the returns of BIM?
Horst: I wouldn’t say that IPD is entirely dependent on a successful BIM implementation; although, I think it really helps. I like to think of BIM as something that just makes IPD more business possible or more business practical. In an article that he wrote for the AIA on integrated practice back in 2005 titled “Integrated Practice: It’s not just about the Technology,” Phil Bernstein talked about the catalyzing nature of BIM with regard to IPD. This pretty much maps to what we’ve experienced.
And I agree with Peter’s comment about having to integrate at the enterprise level instead of at the project level in order to best leverage the technology. A big plus, when you have multiple disciplines in-house, is that you don’t have to wait for that special project when all internal and external parties are aligned in order to innovate across disciplines.
Doherty: During the uncertain times of today, firms are continuously searching for cost-cutting and saving strategies to help stabilize and sustain their business. In the past, technology used to be a first choice of cost-cutting measures due to its seemingly nice-to-have nature in practices. What strikes me most about this roundtable exchange is the change of attitude toward technology in firms today. Technology is considered a critical element to business success and is now a must-have, sometimes even becoming transparent to the process. This maturity bodes well for the future of the profession as the tools of today become the opportunities of tomorrow.
Many thanks to the roundtable participants for providing us with a snapshot glimpse into the inner workings and thoughts of leading firms today.
