If so, Beck proposed, “we may be facing a classic, up-market disruption wherein one player is delighted to give up low-margin and high-risk activities to another player, who is delighted to accept them.”
How will designers respond to this challenge? Are we as an industry, in denial? Or are we going to change?
The response from the participants in this year’s program was an unqualified and enthusiastic “we have already changed and will continue to change at an ever increasing rate.”
KUNZ:
Speakers consistently mentioned several factors that enabled their breakthrough project performance.
First, all mentioned a metrics-based performance process in which, early in the project, they defined specific measurable outcome objectives that related to identified client value. Note that they distinguished broad goals such as “high quality” from specific objectives, which are measurable and they measured frequently, often weekly.
As projects proceeded, most reported measuring specific process objectives and using these metrics in management, such as stakeholder latency and measured schedule/cost/quality conformance to project design function.
Second, they consistently had early and consistent focus on those objectives and methods to reach them from multi-disciplinary teams that generally included the client, designers, GC and important subcontractors.
Third, they used BIM. Some used it in its more simple form as visualization for the team. Others, in more sophisticated work, used the Information in BIM to enable frequent and believable model-based predictions of project behaviors such as energy, life-cycle cost, quantities, rentable space and structure.
A few reported significant technology development, such as the new Gehry Technologies tools that helped enable its breakthrough performance and the CIFE work with multi-disciplinary design optimization of structures, energy performance, daylighting and lifecycle cost that was done in partnership with Arup, Autodesk, the Beck Group and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA).
