w h e r e : d o : g o o d : i d e a s : c o m e : f r o m ?

Here’s a great video of Steven Johnson speaking to “Where to good ideas come from?”  The story on the birth of GPS and how it is so prevalent today is quite inspiring.

With practice within my company, I completely agree that great ideas do not just happen instantly by one person, however are a journey of small steps and ideas from several people.  I’ve watched this within my own organization where a superintendent wanted a mobile cart capable of charging his field worker’s tools within an already occupied facility.  The superintendent showed some initial sketches for size and usability but knew nothing in terms of providing mobile power.  In a couple working sessions with other members within the company, there were several people with a background in cars and boats who quickly directed the superintendent to some website which sold a variety of batteries and inverters.  In about a month, we had a prototype being tested in the field.  If you were to talk to the superintendent today, he’d be able to explain why a marine-grade battery is the best solution to his problem and explain several different inverters available on the market today; basically he sounds really smart in regards to this subject.  In retrospect, however, he knew nothing about mobile power solutions, just a simple idea and took feedback and small bits of knowledge leading up to a nicely implemented larger idea.

a : s h i f t : i n : d e s i g n

With all of the new technology and processes in the construction industry, the basic structure of how a project is designed and delivered is constantly changing.  Below is an interesting diagram depicting the traditional model of project design and delivery and where the model is trending towards in the future.

As we can see, the ability to impact the cost and functional capabilities of a building has an inverse relationship with the cost of design changes.  In more plain English, design change is cheap is you don’t have a building, change orders are expensive during construction, and remodels/retrofits are really expensive once the building is complete.

With the traditional design process of design, bid, and build, we can see that the most effort is spent where the ability to impact the cost and functionality of the project is equal to the cost of the design changes.  What does this mean?  Well, it means that things are just fine.  The most effort is being spent when at a time where it’s not necessarily expensive to make changes, but it’s also not the cheapest.  The problems see here is that there hasn’t been enough time and effort dedicated to early design of the building so during the construction documents phase, a decent amount of design re-work must happen.  This of course has other consequences that could lead into the construction administration phase of the building which in turn results in costly change orders.

But let’s take a look at the preferred design process.  The majority of effort spent during design is spent in early design, allowing for changes to be made at a time of lesser cost.  This model cannot exist in design, bid and build and can only come from more progressive models like design-build, or better yet, integrated project delivery (IPD.)  In order to effectively achieve a descent design in the early design stages to minimize the level of effort from construction documents on, a greater level of commitment is required by not only the architect, but also by all of the owner, consultants, and contractors.

With an integrated, collaborative design up front, the total cost of the project shall be reduced by minimizing late changes which become costly due to the amount of re-work that will be involved.  In order to properly achieve this, a cultural shift must be understood by all.  It is extremely important to gather the imput of the subcontractor’s who shall be installing the various products while the engineers are designing the building.  By combining polar opposites, those who know how to design/draw yet can’t build with those who lack vision but can build anything and everything, a strong design is achieved early and a fast, reliable building is built during construction. 

Other than the design team and contractors, the owner must fully understand this concept as well.  Pre-construction costs must be raised in order to follow this model.  This may be hard to communicate up the food chain as the traditional model indicates that higher pre-construciton costs result in higher construction costs.  With a more collaborative approach, however, the opposite shall become true.  The total cost of the building shall be less expensive and the building’s level of functionality shall be increased.  This is only possible since the necessary design changes to improve the building and minimize cost are allowed to take place at a time where it is beneficial to every party.

s w e e t

While doing a little leisurely web surfing, I came across this nice blog post:  http://designerati.wordpress.com/2008/12/10/sweets-bim-collection-free-revit-content/

Looks the the industry’s golden standard and giant for product listing, the Sweet’s Catalog, is moving a couple of steps forward.  While their online listing of free BIM object for download is extremely small compared to their hardcopy product catalogs, at least its a start.  This central, easy-to-find, and free website to grab BIM object will be much better than what’s out there right now. 

In order to find an object right now, it’ll take hours of sifting through online forum’s or require a subscription to third-party object collection companies such as Reed Construction Data’s SmartBIM.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I think that SmartBIM is actually quite useful and is great for pushing the industry forward at this time.  The developers of SmartBIM go out to various companies and convince them to pay a fee to list their product in the SmartBIM library.  Then to utilize the library, you pay a fee and gain access.  Along with these fees are goodies such as a quality standard of all objects and some fancy drag-and-drop software to help keep all of the objects and families organized.

BUT!  Goodies aside, these object should be free and plentiful.  Most manufacturers offer free AutoCAD downloads for their products because they know that designers are more likely to spec their products if they do so.  Now that design is shifting away from 2D CAD and towards 3D BIM, it’s nice to see some of the smarter manufacturers hoping on board.  Even better, it’s nice to see other industry giants like Sweets help push the technology and offer a free commonplace for manufacturer’s to post their information.

w e b : c o n f e r e n c i n i n g : i s : a : g o

After a couple of weeks of research, I’ve finally found a decent software to start web conferencing with.  Our company has licenses to InterCall (formerly Raindance) and e/pop which I’ve toyed around with a little bit now but have found one major drawback with the both of them.  Both of them requires that every user on the web conference downloads and installs their software.

Granted that the software download and install only takes 5-10 minutes which is relatively short, but the fact that software must be downloaded and installed may become annoying.  In our industry, we constantly do business with different companies and different people.  Chances are that a project team will be completely different every 1-2 years due to the nature of the industry.  If you’re an owner, architect, or consultant on different project with different teams, all using different software vendors to do almost exactly the same thing (web conferencing that is), I can see it becoming quite annoying having to install several web conferencing software programs to use for each corresponding project team.

Enter the new acrobat.com.  First of all, acrobat.com was made from our friends at Adobe.  You know, Adobe, the company that has set the market standard for photo editing, universal Internet animation/interaction, and that universally portable document format, PDF?  Well, looks like they’re attempting to create an universal space for web conferencing as well.  At adobe.com, anyone may start an online meeting and invite people to join.  After about 5 minutes of poking around at the interface, I was completely familiar with the program.  This high level of intuitive design is key for a universal program.  The other key?  How about that it is completely web-based?  Sweet.

In order to use it, you just click on the icon, sign-in under a temporary name or create a free user account, wait a couple of seconds for the program to launch, and you’re good to go.  The best part is that you can invite other attendants by sending them a web-link to click on, which then re-directs them to load the program (automatically) and join the meeting.  No downloaded software onto the hard drive, no installation.  Just click and go.

Today I had my first live trial run while coordinating the logistics to do a web-based presentation in a couple of days for some clients several hours away.  The other user who I was coordinating the logistics of this presentation with was excited about the idea of a web-based presentation but was a bit intimidated by the thought.  By running through our logistical conversation using the adobe.com meeting software, we both quickly realized how easy this is going to be and how much potential this program may have.

As discussed from Autodesk’s view on the paperless project, there is a large environmental impact travel may have and a large time commitment that comes with it.  With easy to use software to host web-based meetings, we may meet up instantly from several far away locations and all share our desktops while communicating over a conference line, or VoIP if you really want to be fancy.  This is especially useful since the presentation that I’m planning on giving should only last for about 30 min.  When considering that it would take at least 3 hours of round trip travel to this presentation, suddenly 30 minutes does not seem worth while.  When this travel time is reduced to 0 hours and 0 minutes, there is no problem and no excuse. 

How great is that?

w h y : b u i l d : g r e e n ?

It may be pretty obvious that building a “green building” is a good thing to do for the environment.  What may not be realized is the significant impact that building green may have on the green in your wallet.  It’s become more common knowledge that green buildings are energy efficient and therefore save money in reduced operating and maintenance costs.  What is not so obvious are the indirect cost savings from green buildings.

The Indoor Environmental Air Quality section of the USGBC’s LEED rating system describes several measures to improve the building occupant’s quality of life.  Some of these measures include increased outside air delivery, low VOC products, chemical source control, thermal comfort measures, and increased daylight inside of the building.  These may sound to be minor benefits for building occupants and probably sound quite costly with little or no ROI.  That is until you see this advertisement from the USGBC:

At first glance I was quite impressed with $58 billion saved annually from green buildings.  Measures like increased ventilation, construction activity pollution prevention, and low VOC products can be accredited for this.  With more ventilation, if you’re co-worker next to you or near your workstation is sick, chances are that whatever they have is not lingering around in the office, but being vented outside quickly.  Just think what it could be like when we tell our children what the old phrase “I’ve got that bug that’s going around” becomes antiquated.  And remember about sick building syndrome?  Thanks to protecting the ductwork during dusty construction, flushing ductwork before occupancy, and low VOC products that are becoming ever more abundant, this too may become an anecdote.  While I hate the smell of those brand new mobile classrooms when I was younger due to the high levels of VOC’s that were inside the walls, ceilings, and floors, I’ll definitely miss that new car smell which is caused by the same factors.

If $58 billion wasn’t enough of a reason to go green, how about an addtional $180 billion to sweeten the deal?  Sounds like a triple-fudge cake! 

We were born to live outdoors.  It just turns out that it can be quite inconvenient to carry on modern day work outdoors.  Our compromise has led us to a more complacent lifestyle.  That is, until you look at a LEED building.  With increased outside air delivery, more ventilation, and an increased amount of natural sunlight into the entire building we have brought the outdoors back inside.  Because of this, employees are naturally happier for longer periods of time.  Why crave for a corner office when the entire floor of a building has an epic view?  I haven’t looked into how the USGBC has determined that green buildings yield an additional $180 billion in increased productivity but seeing how stringent they are in everything that they have done so far, I’m sure the number is quite legit.

So, if you’re looking at a building a green building and are thinking of cutting some froo-froo, hippie, feel-good features, think again.  An extra $238 billion is just what we need at a time like this, despite what the up-front costs might appear to be.

p a r a d i g m : s h i f t

The times, they are a changing.  I must admit that it is quite exciting to be in an industry plagued by traditionalism that is now entering a new era.  Not only in is the construction industry improving upon the available technology being developed with BIM and becoming more environmentally via LEED certification, but the very core of the industry is upon a dramatic change with the rise of lean construction.  While I’ve been studying lean construction and taking notes on the project next door that is implementing lean construction, I came across a very bold ad in this week’s edition of ENR during my lunch break.

The backbone of lean construction revolves around this principle of “just in time” delivery.  On our current project, we are not lean in the least.  We’re fortunate enough to have plenty of space to order materials well in advance and store them onsite.  This is nothing unheard of and is actually quite the standard best practice.  The problem is that I’ve seen plenty of time being wasted by just moving materials from one spot to another and then re-coordinating where to move the stockpile next because we must make room for a different trade contractor’s stockpile.  Seems fairly circular to me. 

Now for the paradigm shift: early is worse than late.  Upon first glance this may seem more like a quantum physics theory but lean construction more than just a pie-in-the-sky hippie concept.  It’s been proven as the only way to schedule and build for zero lot line projects, but has been shown to decrease the construction schedule for regular projects as well.  ENR is the industry standard for “what’s going on” and when you turn the cover page here is this full-page ad stating early is worse than late.  Nucor has not only spent a good deal of time and money in developing their “just in time” delivery but have also found it to be so effective and marketable to spend a large amount of money for the #1 ad space position in the magazine.

This is the first time I’ve seen such a large and prominent ad for this methodology and I’m sure that it will not be the last.  I’m sure that the principles of lean construction will soon be advertised as prominently as green construction is advertised now.  The only part that I won’t understand are those who will find themselves years down the road wondering why they never saw this coming, much like the companies that I work with today who are unaware that LEED is even a certification level for a building.

Sorry.

i n t e r e s t i n g : l e e d : i d : c r e d i t

Green Advantage offers an 8 hour educational course on sustainable practices and principles in construction.  After the course is given, participants can become Green Advantage certified by taking a 90 minute, 60 question exam…open book!  Benefits of the course not only include the ability to quickly and easily educate more construction personnel on sustainable practices, but can qualify the project team for an ID point.

Currently, ID Credit 1 for Innovation and Design awards one point for having at least one LEED AP on the project team.  If you have two or more LEED AP’s on the team, no additional points are earned.  With the Green Advantage program, if 30% of the project team has successfully passed the Green Advantage test, the USGBC shall award and additional point under ID Credit 2:  http://www.greenadvantage.org/usgbc-innovation.php

While I haven’t actually taken this course, I can’t imagine it being too difficult; especially in comparison to LEED AP exam.  If all of our required personnel, i.e.: project managers, project engineers, superintendents, and foreman, were Green Advantage certified, we’d be able to market ourselves with automatically achieving two LEED points by selecting our company alone.  Do note that we already have a substantial number of LEED AP’s to achieve ID Credit 1 and I’m assuming that with such a large number of Green Advantage certified employees in our company, we’d be able to offset the lack of certified employees in other companies. 

Now that I’m finally working on a LEED project, two points can really make the difference between Silver or Gold.  Also, these points would come at no cost to the owner.  Our project has developed from a conceptual design of being just LEED Certified to an pretty comfortable LEED Gold certification due to the owner’s enthusiasm throughout the project.  Since I’ve been able to watch LEED design features be added into the project, I’ve also noted that some points may become relatively expensive. 

The only problem with this idea is that it looks like the Green Advantage program is not available nationwide.  Good thing the GBCI should be rolling out their LEED Green Associate certification in March 2009 as part of thier new credentialling program.  While the details haven’t been released yet, it looks to be like a LEED AP lite: http://www.gbci.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CMSPageID=84.  I’m sure that having 30% of the project team would be an equal or better substitute for a Green Advantage certification.

If I were an owner’s representative, I’d pounce on the opportunity to earn a couple extra points at no cost with very little documentation to collect and manage.

a u t o d e s k ‘ s : v i e w : o n : t h e : p a p e r l e s s : p r o j e c t

As part of Autodesk’s sustainable design webcast series, I was glad to see that one section focused on a pet project of mine: the paperless jobsite. The hour long Going Paperless and the Environmental Impact of Architectural Practices webinar did not feature anything unheard of to me, but was quite interesting to view from an architect’s perspective.

The session was originally held on October 14, 2009, qualified towards AIA continuing education credit, and 72% of attendees were architects.  From my own studies, I’ve primarily viewed the paperless project from my own perspective as the general contractor.  Obviously I must interact with the architect, engineer, owner, and subcontractors while running a paperless project but as far as technical data goes, I could only gather information from my own perspective.

Luckily, it seems as though going paperless is not that different from the view of the architect.  I have found the most significant impacts of the paperless project affects the submittal and blueprinting processes in my study posted on November 20, 2008.  Autodesk’s presentation confirmed this by stating that the submittal process could and should be almost 100% paperless.  They even went on to present a case study where one project team went from 8,000 submittals paper submittals on one project to zero paper submittals a similar project afterward.  To gauge the environmental impact of using that much paper, they recommend visiting http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/eco-calculator. 

 As for blueprinting, I found it to be pretty interesting that $5,000,000 are spent per year shipping large-format document (i.e.:  blueprints) by FedEx alone.  Even more interesting is the fact that this is the same amount of money spent each year on software development for the construction industry. 

So, ideally, if we stopped shipping so many unecessary blueprints we would be able to afford to delvelop, buy, and purchase better software to replace the paper that we’re not using…right?

Autodesk went on to address the issues with actually trying to effectively view and use all of these digital files.  If you’re reading this on your old 12″ CRT monitor with low resolution, you’re probably not that excited about viewing full-scale drawings on the computer.  The answer:  buy a large monitor or two.  We’re talking well over 22″ LCD’s. 

Think about it by taking a look at your desk.  You’ve probably designated an entire table just for your half-size drawings and there’s probably an even larger plan table in a central location of the office for full-size drawings.  Think of the large monitor like the area set aside for the half-size drawing set.  If you buy a monitor big enough, it’ll actually be the same size of the drawings themselves plus you’ll have the ability to zoom.  Most monitors should only run ~$300 each and will last for 2 – 4 years.  This is less than a dollar a day for a significant increase in daily efficiency.  As for the full-size drawing plan table, I’d recommend SmartBoard or similar product. 

Autodesk does not go into the benefits of SmartBoards but we’ve seen them to be well worth the cost, which is good because they’re pretty expensive right now at approximately $10,000 each.  If you’re worried about the cost of power consumption, don’t be.  Most pieces of electronics use less than 100W of energy, making them more efficient than standard light bulbs.

Autodesk’s last point of going paperless actually got my mind brainstorming the most.  The interesting part of construction is that things are always changing.  This includes the location of our projects.  For the architect working on several projects in different cities or even countries, this can be a great opportunity.  If project documents are stored digitally, the entire office may easily be accessed via web-based database programs as opposed to traveling with cumbersome blueprints, specbooks, etc.  Digital documents may also be sent to others faster and cheaper as well.  This leads us to my next point of interest, training, and experimentation:  the web-based meeting.

Conference calls are great for discussions but can become quite confusing when trying to explain what page you’re looking at to the other person on the phone.  With the web-based meeting, users can share their desktops with each other which means that all parties may view the same document simultaneously, regardless of location.  In fact, the presenter of this webinar was broadcasting from a client’s desk while visiting the jobsite.  Regular use of this technology could help eliminate the need to try and coordinate a date for multiple parties to travel and discuss a topic that may only need 30 minutes worth of coordination.  The result of eliminating such meetings would be the ability to hold these meetings more frequently and allow more people to call-in, or login, as it were.  While MEP coordination is usually paid with proper attention, there are many benefits to utilizing more robust coordination meetings with framers, drywallers, casework installers, acoustic ceilings, etc. that would result in increased efficiency, reduced schedules, higher quality, and reduced costs.  Autodesk notes that the first couple of web meetings are akward but quickly become natural.  As for concerns with the personal touch, companies such as Life Size HD offer high definition video feeds for conferencing to replace the impersonal, grainy webcams that we are accustomed to.

All-in-all, I really enjoyed Autodesk’s presentation and plan on watching the other archived presentations.  If you want AIA credit, you must register for the live webinars.  From submittals and blueprinting, to big-screen monitors, to web-based meetings, I’m glad to hear that I’m not the only one on board with moving more items to the digital world in a traditionally conservative and slow moving industry.

t u r k e y : f r y d a y !

Instead of the usual milestone BBQ, our jobsite team cooked a Thanksgiving feast for a crew of over 70 people. All-in-all, we deep fried 6 turkeys, made 3 chaffing dishes worth of stuffing, bought 6 Costco pies, prepared 3 chaffing dishes of corn, grilled 8 lbs. of sweet potatoes, made 15 cups of homemade cranberry sauce, 14 quarts of gravy, and mashed 5 gallons worth of potatoes.

Most of the dishes were prepared on the jobsite which provided several unique challenges. The most entertaining dish to make was the mashed potatoes. Thankfully I came prepared with the digital camera.

The day turned out to be quite a success as the construction crews really enjoyed a unique jobsite milestone lunch and our team was able to work together in a different environment than the daily grind.

p a p e r l e s s : p r o j e c t s

After working on a paperless project for about 6 monts now, we feel pretty confident in the the operations of our test project and believe that we’ve found all of the bugs/tricks that are associated with a paperless project. Now that I have been on a paperless project, there is no going back. Everything is much more efficient which allows me to use my time on more important issues and expand my knowledge/experince within the industry.

Oddly enough, the owner’s representative of our project was initially against testing a paperless project in fear of additional costs for equipment and coordination. Additionally, there was the gut feeling that a the additional computer equipment required to run a paperless project would actually leave a larger carbon footprint than a traditional project.

With such burning questions in the back of my mind, I’ve been doing some research over the past couple of months to find answers to these concerns. As I predicted, the paperless project is not only better for the environment, but extremely cost effective. Unfortuneatly, most of the cost savings cannot be quantified (i.e.: the efficiency of instant document review of multiple parties vs. overnighting packages) but a significant economic benefit is still apparent.

I’ve uploaded two presentations that I’ve given to help educate others to understand what a paperless project is, what are the costs, and what is the environmental impact. Both of these presentations can be found under the new page aptly titled: “Presentations”.