Technology for Construction 2005

It is unfortunate that the status of technology in the construction industry is still not eminent enough to warrant its own dedicated trade show. We briefly had this in the form of the now-defunct A/E/C Systems show, which followed the fortunes of the AEC dotcoms in the late 1990s and could not be sustained after the bubble had burst. I attended one of the last A/E/C Systems shows in 2001 (see Cadence AEC Tech News #53), and found sparse attendance in the sessions and product booths occupying only half of the exhibit floor. The show is trying to make a comeback in the form of Technology for Construction, a smaller conference co-located with the much larger World of Concrete and World of Masonry shows being held this year from January 17 to 21 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. While I found both the attendance as well as the energy level still considerably lower compared to other shows I've visited this past year including the AIA Convention, BE conference, Autodesk University, and Macworld, the sessions I was able to attend were very interesting and my visit to the exhibit floor was highly informative. The show may have lacked momentum, but it wasn't short on substance.

This issue of the AECbytes newsletter captures the highlights of the sessions I attended at the Technology for Construction show. A separate newsletter dedicated to the construction-specific technology products that were on display at the show will be published next month.

Sessions on Building Smart, Connected Construction, and Owner's Perspective on Technology

At a panel discussion on information exchange with BIM-based project processes and deliverables led by Francois Grobler of the IAI (International Alliance for Interoperability), the focus was not so much on the IFC and demonstrations of how it works, but on how to speed up the implementation. The U.S. General Services Administration's Public Building Service (GSA/PBS), a builder-owner of approximately 196 current major projects worth $12 billion, has already issued a policy directive calling for the use of IFC-based BIM to support concept reviews for projects receiving design funding in 2006, including checking designs against program requirements and cost estimates. Despite such a critical endorsement, IFC interoperability has not yet captured the imagination of the average AEC professional. To break this impasse, the IAI is launching a major re-branding initiative by referring to IFC-enabled BIM interoperability as "Building Smart." The inspiration for this comes from the successful re-branding of the LEED rating as "Green Building," a term that has by now become synonymous with energy-conscious design and is gaining rapid momentum in the building industry. The IAI hopes that re-branding the complex concept of interoperability—which also has the disadvantage of sounding too long-winded—as "Building Smart" will do for the IFC what "Green Building" did for LEED.

At the same session, I learnt more about OmniClass, a new classification system for the AEC industry that is being developed as an open standard with broad industry participation. Key organizations driving the effort are the IAI and the U.S.-based Construction Specifications Institute (CSI). OmniClass uses a set of 15 interrelated tables to classify objects that describe the built environment from multiple points of view, and is intended to be used as the basis for storing, organizing, integrating, retrieving, and sharing data in all the phases of a facility's lifecycle. Unlike existing classification systems like MasterFormat that are focused primarily on product classification by construction practice for costing and coordinating drawings and specifications, OmniClass aims to be much broader in scope and is specifically geared towards supporting collaboration and integration by defining a shared semantics and syntax. OmniClass does, however, incorporate the MasterFormat system in one of its tables (Work Results), ensuring that it builds upon existing standards and does not reinvent the wheel. With regard to BIM, the hope is that OmniClass will provide the common terminology on which different BIM applications serving different disciplinary needs can be based and thereby work in a more integrated fashion. This work is still at the preliminary stage, and you can keep updated on its progress by visiting the OCCS (OmniClass Construction Classification System) website.

At another panel discussion led by Ray Rapuano of Cisco Systems, the concept of "connected construction" was introduced. It is based on the premise that despite the availability of advanced technologies such as BIM, online project management, scheduling and budgeting tools, handheld computers, tablet PCs, and so on, the average construction project is still riddled with inefficiencies and waste because these technologies are not reaching the construction trailers and job sites due to lack of communications networks. At any given time, construction workers have access to only 70% of the information they need. Cisco is proposing to remedy this situation by providing construction companies with a solution, dubbed Connection Construction, that helps replace fragmented and inefficient communications at a job site with a secure networked environment that affords better communications and information management. This should allow the companies to operate more efficiently, productively, and profitably. The system is currently being tested on a pilot project by Centrex Construction, a top-ranking construction firm in the US. Detailed ROI and other metrics of the implementation are expected to be available by the summer.

Being in Las Vegas, it was particularly interesting to attend a session on "Digital Vegas," which presented the owner's perspective on technology by two development firms, General Land Corporation and The McLain Group, based on several new and upcoming projects in Las Vegas. These include Project CityCenter by MGM Mirage, a $3 billion development on the Strip comprising hotels, retail establishments, and luxury condos that will be built in phases starting in 2006; the $2.4 billion Wynn Resort set to open in April with 2,700 rooms; and the 3,000-room Palazzo resort adjacent to the Venetian set to open in 2007. In addition, there is the Monorail project running across the Strip that just got off the ground and is expected to expand soon. Security has become a critical issue after 9/11, not just for these new developments but for the city as a whole. What the owners of these new developments are looking for in terms of technology is not just a limited BIM model of their individual properties but a "digital asset model" of the city as a whole that will allow what-if analyses of aspects such as traffic patterns, phasing, seasonal variations, and so on. In fact, from a resort owner's perspective, a physical building has value more as a digital asset than as a physical asset since the owner is more concerned with managing the property rather than actually living in it.

The Executive Forum

A major highlight of the Technology for Construction show was the Executive Forum, featuring a panel discussion provocatively entitled "To BIM or Not to BIM?" It brought together key executives from leading owners, contractors, design firms, and BIM vendors, including GSA/PBS, C.W. Driver Contractors, Fluor Corp., Webcor, Burt Hill, HDR Architecture, Autodesk, Bentley, and Graphisoft. The session was moderated by Scott Shuster of McGraw-Hill Construction. I found it a very lively discussion, with all the panelists well informed and articulately presenting their points of view. It is impossible to capture the whole discussion here, but here are the key points that emerged.

The overall consensus was that full-fledged BIM adoption is still 6 to 7 years away. While design firms such as Burt Hill and HDR are rapidly moving forward with BIM implementation within their firms (using Autodesk and Bentley solutions respectively), they are the exception rather than the rule. Contractors are, on the whole, less excited about BIM because the immediate benefits are not readily apparent to them yet. A whole spectrum of BIM implementation within construction was represented at the forum: C.W. Driver Contractors has no implementation yet but is looking forward to exploring this new technology; Fluor is using BIM in bits and pieces; and Webcor is moving faster in its implementation, thanks to a lot of help and support from its BIM vendor, Graphisoft. Owners still have to buy in on the BIM concept and see its long-term potential for operation and maintenance; as a result, they are far from willing yet to pay for it. In that respect, the GSA/PBS is an exception and is strongly convinced of the potential of BIM in bringing about integration and collaboration and reducing waste. As mentioned earlier on in this article, it is mandating the use of IFC-based BIM to support concept reviews for projects starting in 2006. Europe is much further ahead in its implementation of BIM than the US, and China is showing signs of moving straight from paper to BIM, bypassing CAD altogether.

To speed up the implementation of BIM and reap its benefits in reducing inefficiency and waste, it was recognized that the most critical issue is that of "cultural change"—the industry needs to be more open to sharing information. All the parties need to figure out how to profit from better collaboration. BIM also has to tie into legal requirements, as current contracting agreements don't reward contractors for sharing the risk and using BIM. Until the legal issues are resolved, subcontractors and estimators are still going to be re-creating what is already there. Firms should also recognize that immediate ROI cannot be expected with BIM implementation because of the learning curve; however, the returns will come from future projects. Overall, better awareness about BIM and its benefits is needed, and to this effect, the AIA Technology in Architectural Practice committee is instituting a new category of BIM awards to encourage firms to share their success stories with it. In terms of the technology itself, the industry as a consumer of BIM needs to articulate to the vendors more clearly what it needs and how the technology should work, so that it has solutions that really work well and make a difference.

No discussion on BIM is complete without talking about interoperability and the IFC, and this session was no exception. Autodesk did acknowledge jokingly that it was still "flirting" with the IFC, whereas Bentley and Graphisoft, in the same vein, affirmed their strong "marriage-like" commitment to it. At the same time, everyone agreed that the IFC was not a Rosetta stone, the be-all and end-all of interoperability. By virtue of being the lowest common denominator, it cannot capture the advanced capabilities of the individual vendor-specific BIM applications and could never serve as the native file format of any of these applications. (For more on this, see the AECbytes feature on the IFC Building Model.) While applications should strive to be interoperable as much as possible, the real focus should be on making the building model usable by as many people in the industry as possible.

The final session at the conference I was able to attend was also part of the Executive Forum, and was presented by Martin Fischer of CIFE, Stanford University, who provided a vision of what lies ahead for information technology in construction. From an academic perspective, technologies such as BIM, 4D modeling, using the computer for analysis, simulation, and communication are all taken for granted since they have already been developed and are in use in current practice. What's ahead includes some of the following: new user interfaces spread out over multiple screens that allow multiple views of multiple applications to be seen and manipulated simultaneously to enable more effective group interactions and better collaboration; integrated decision dashboards that relate different options to different behaviors for varied aspects of design and design management and can be used as tools for better decision-making; automation of detailed design and analysis; the expansion of virtual design and construction to include organization and process models in addition to the product models we have today; and a move from Design-Build to Design-Manufacture-Assemble. All of these would be means to achieve certain goals in design-construction practice in about 10 years, including substantial compression of the design and construction schedule, minimal variance in schedule, function, and cost, a giant leap in productivity, better safety, and a substantial reduction in a building's lifecycle cost. It will be interesting to see how some of these ideas shape up in the years to come.

This wraps up the highlights of the sessions I attended at the Technology for Construction 2005 show. Stay tuned for the highlights from the exhibit floor in next month's newsletter.

About the Author

Lachmi Khemlani is founder and editor of AECbytes. She has a Ph.D. in Architecture from UC Berkeley, specializing in intelligent building modeling, and consults and writes on AEC technology. She can be reached at lachmi@aecbytes.com.

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