CIFE Presentation Summaries
This summary of the results of projects implementing virtual design and construction, building information modeling, integrated project delivery and a range of other applications of new technology and process, which were presented at the CIFE Summer Progam,Stanford, University, on June 20-21, was prepared by presenter Gregory Luth at ENR's request. Additional information on the presentations may be obtained by contacting CIFE.
The Presentations:
NCC, a large, vertically integrated, Swedish contractor and developer presented project P303, a vision of the future of housing that responds to the need for improved energy efficiency, higher quality, and lower cost housing in a market where costs of housing have risen 120% in 10 years.
The targets for this initiative were a 30% reduction in cost and a 50% reduction in construction schedule. The process was modularization, prefabrication, detailed design, down to the level of work-method to be used by the laborers, and integration and communication using Virtual Design and Construction tools.
NCC exceeded its targets. Future developments will focus on bringing the same sorts of efficiencies to the construction of custom homes.
Optima Inc. has been using similar strategies to cut the cost of a prefabricated custom steel and glass home by 60% and the schedule for construction down to 10 days.
2. Custom homes are the current focus of a small startup in Silicon Valley, Eco Offsite, run by Kathleen Liston, formerly a CIFE researcher and Ph.D. candidate, now a general contractor practicing what she used to preach. Applying principals of VDC and IPD, she has managed to cut the cost and schedule for delivering high-end custom homes by 20% to 50%. The upper end of the range is only attainable when design and construction are truly integrated from day one.
3. Peter Beck, CEO of The Beck Group, followed up his introduction with a case study of a hospital where the main utility-runs in the corridors and the bathroom pods were prefabricated. Reductions in labor and schedule of 22% to 48% were realized while waste was reduced by 56%.
4. Gregory Luth, of GPLA, a structural engineering firm, presented an alternative to moving the design team under the wing of the general contractor.
Over the three phases of the USC School of Cinema project, from 2006 to 2012, HiDef BIM and IPD were used to realize 30% schedule reductions and return the contingency to the owner.
In IPD with HiDef BIM the structural engineer of record (SEOR) produces a complete design predicated on the most efficient construction sequence with structure topography and details tailored to optimize construction efficiency, economy and quality. This is in contrast to conventional practice in which the contract documents reflect a concept design that is based on no particular construction sequence or means and methods.
In HiDef BIM the Tekla structural design model is carried to shop drawing level detail and used to produce structural steel, rebar, and light gage framing shop drawings either by the engineer-of-record or handed off to the supplier to produce shop drawings.
5. ">Nicholas Bloom, a professor in the Stanford Business School discussed the use of metrics in manufacturing as a way to identify and monitor well-managed companies. He says huge gains in productivity can be realized by identifying and monitoring Key Performance Indicators, or KPI’s.
6. Dean Reed, with ">DPR, a leader in the lean construction, IPD, and BIM since the infancy of these technologies, talked about the need to manage the interfaces to minimize risk.
One way to manage the interfaces is to merge the processes of design, detail, and shop drawings, pulling construction knowledge forward in the process. In Dean’s words, they need to “integrate, pull work, build virtually, fabricate the model, deliver and assemble only what is needed when it is needed”—the principals of lean implemented with BIM and IPD.
DPR's philosophy is summarized as: “design the design process, design for fabrication, build virtually, design to budget, and engage with the model.”
DPR has identified KPI’s for its processes and reported notable gains: construction uncertainty down by 83%, rework down 80%, productivity up 20%, tool-time up from 50% to 73%, delivery 30% faster, no compromise on owners goals, no increase in cost.
Again in Reed’s words: “KPI's enable us to focus and manage, metrics help us see and understand performance, [so] we can learn, adjust in action within the project.”
7. Wendy Li, a Stanford Ph.D. at CIFE, presented one of the “new” technologies at the summer program this year. She developed and applied a system for identifying and monitoring KPIs throughout the design and construction processes. She implemented her system on a complex IPD hospital project and an equally complex theme park project, partnering with Skanska on the hospital project and with Disney on the theme park project. Both Skanska and Disney intend to continue with the pioneering work in their ongoing operations.
8. Energy use reduction also was a big topic at this year’s conference. Ben Schwegler, Chief Scientist at Walt Disney Imagineering, presented the results of systematic studies that showed the possibility of increasing fuel-to-energy conversion efficiency from 30% to better than 80% by using district-wide planning and design.
Schwegler identified anomalies in the performance of buildings and systems relative to theoretical, based on data from actual buildings that have been instrumented. As it turns out, few if any of our buildings function as well as predicted because of the interaction between buildings in a larger energy distribution system and because few if any of them are actually built as designed.
This observation precipitated a wide ranging discussion of the increasing use of instrumentation to determine actual building performance and how that data will be assimilated, managed, and used to drive the analysis, design, quality control monitoring, and building performance management down to an unprecedented level of detail in the context of macroscopic planning and design in the context of a wide area energy distribution network to realize large potential gains.
9. ">SERA Architects Inc. combined energy and metrics in their presentation of the Edith Green – Wendell Wyatt Federal Building Modernization. In keeping with the overarching theme of knowledge based, data driven, high performance design, they presented an impressive array of computer studies, field measurements, prototyping studies, and mock-ups that were used to meet the owners ambitious schedule, budget, and energy targets for the building; all facilitated by BIM in an IPD process.
SERA presented metrics from a study of 20 projects spanning the old 2D silo world and the a highly collaborative BIM and IPD environment:
60% reduction in design time
67% reduction in construction schedule
50% reduction in RFI’s, 51% reduction in email
62% reduction in change orders.
10. With the ever-increasing velocity of projects and the integration of complex systems of people, products, and processes, there is a need to aggregate data and present trends and concepts clearly and concisely so teams can focus on the decision making. ">Gehry Technologies presented software that aggregates data regarding the KPI’s on its projects and presents them on a dashboard designed for maximum comprehension in minimum time.
11. Another new development this year was the use of genetic algorithms in optimization programs to manipulate multi-disciplinary parametric designs to generate families of design solutions, which, in turn allows the most effective design strategies to be identified. One such program, developed by Forest Flagler at Stanford, searches through 23,000 unique design solutions for a multi-building campus to identify the most energy efficient building geometry configurations.
12. Rosana Wong, executive director of ">Yau Lee Holdings Limited, Hong Kong, a vertically integrated manufacturing, design, construct, manage company, presented its vision of the future in the context of a 36 story hotel recently designed and built in Hong Kong.
Yau Lee Holdings' core processes are targeted at maximizing energy efficiency and producing a zero carbon foot print. In the single-minded pursuit of these objectives, Yau Lee Holdings will invent products and processes as required to attain their goals.
Huge savings were realized in at all levels of the triple platinum hotel project in Hong Kong. The company's take-away: “The future, is what we imagine and what (sic) we make out of it.”
13. Lest anyone mistake what is coming, cheap labor does not provide immunity from change. Huang Qiang, of the ">China Academy of Building Research, presented the development of the China BIM standards. The implication is clear: The U.S. can lead the world into the future, or it can follow, but the world will change.
