The inherent value in leveraging a Virtual Design & Construction (VDC) process
By Brian Skripac, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP BD+C
Virtual Design & Construction (VDC) is much more than a technology conversation. Instead, it’s one that evolves both our integrated and collaborative project delivery methods, as well as team behaviors, to enable our industry to transition away from traditional two-dimensional deliverables to model-based deliverables. This shift and the subsequent results ensure greater value for all parties while achieving the goals of our clients.
Moving beyond the technology conversation
Virtual Design & Construction (VDC) is a concept commonly associated with an architecture or engineering firm’s construction partners rather than our internal Building Information Modeling (BIM) discussions. All too often, the industry uses Revit interchangeably with BIM, which is unfair as Revit is simply one of many technologies that can help us generate such a model. In this context, a BIM should be thought of as a noun or an object, as it can be a deliverable for our projects. With this understanding in place, VDC then becomes the process of developing reliable multi-disciplinary BIM(s) to support the Design-Construct-Operate continuum, which provides an opportunity to be a facilitator for the lifecycle of the project, ultimately driving a new standard of care.
Technology can only go so far, innovation in team and process is truly what makes BIM successful. This new standard of care we can facilitate leverages opportunities to advance the project management, project delivery and quality standards initiative in firms similar to the work we’re doing at CannonDesign. Here, we are focused on the development of these VDC processes to achieve bottom line cost savings and drive new business opportunities.
A foundational element to this effort is an ability to transform how we define our deliverables. The need to spend time detailing aspects of the building on needless, redundant sheets of paper that will ultimately be overridden during the procurement and shop drawing phases become waste in the process. This is echoed in Barbara White Bryson’s book The Owner’s Dilemma: Driving Success and Innovation in the Design and Construction Industry where she comments that “BIM is the perfect complement to collaborative teams, especially ones that care about the fluidity of information sharing and the coordination rather than the sanctity of drawings.”
Leveraging a model based-delivery strategy drives opportunities for a consistent, integrated, and collaborative project delivery method to solve constructability issues through the use of object-based virtual representations affording project participants a common language of the built environment. The resulting workflow enables enhanced certainty of outcome, improved coordination (reduced RFIs and Cost), adherence to budget and scope, and a reduced total cost of operation in accordance with the prescribed level of reliability of our multi-disciplinary BIM deliverables. All of this drives our ability to achieve our client’s expectations through innovative project delivery methods and service line integrations.
BIM deliverables to advance project delivery models
As we embark on these new collaborative delivery models like Integrated Project Delivery, Design Assist, Design Build and Progressive Design Build Strategies, being able to leverage a model as a deliverable becomes a strategic advantage to how team collaborate, communicate and drive leaner processes, reducing the redundancy and waste referenced above. This is a compelling topic that served as the basis for numerous presentations at the AIA Project Delivery Knowledge Community’s recent 2018 Symposium titled “Delivering the Future.” This ability to properly set expectations of what information is critical to be in a BIM, how it should be leveraged in construction, and who will model what elements to a certain level of development (LOD) for what collaborative use cases becomes an extremely important conversation.
Needing to occur from the outset, this is also a discussion that impacts our contract language’s ability to identify how the project will be executed. Here BIM execution plans become less about a technology standards or best practice document and develop into a project delivery roadmap that integrates into our AIA Digital Practice Document contract language. Clash detection occurs prior to the release of construction documents and clash prevention part of the design process providing a level of model based quality assurance enabling us to move from a position of avoiding risk to managing risk as seen in Phil Bernstein’s Risk vs. Value diagram from the Delivering the Future event.
In a recent project our team worked on, a final clash prevention review at the 90% CD phase demonstrated that in less than 12 hours the project team was able to identify 164 meaningful clashes. The ability to resolve these clashes during design avoids the development of future RFIs that could have resulted in 820 hours and $111,520 of project time and costs. As you can imagine, the sooner this process starts, the greater opportunity our model-based deliverables have to drive value.
These initial strategies set the expectation of more collaborative project delivery strategies while advocating for enhanced qualifications-based and/or best-value selection processes like those found in Progressive Design-Build models. These strategies also look to engage Design-Assist partners to drive opportunities for schedule alignment and cost control measures as integrated pieces of the design process. These efforts will also catalyze greater prefabrication and modularization opportunities driving positive outcomes to accelerate delivery, provide design certainty, improve quality, and enhance safety. As these advantages are realized, more firms may seek strategic mergers and acquisitions to position themselves as single-source delivery partners. Such entities will be able to thrive in the future thanks to information sharing and repeatable proven processes.
BIM deliverables for owners
While advancing our project delivery methods is important, we need to stay focused on the full lifecycle of the facility. BIM, in and of itself, is not the end, but rather the means to a number of potentially valuable project delivery outcomes for the Owner. This causes us to look beyond the first two or three years of the design and construction process for a facility, to understand how our work can positively affect the next thirty plus years of that building and explore the opportunity for BIM to reduce the total cost of operations/ownership.
Integrating BIM post occupancy is not about technology, it is all about process. Being able to understand how projects will leverage a virtual design and contraction process to execute their work while defining how deliverables will be formatted is a critical conversation that more and more owners are embarking on by creating BIM Project Delivery Standards. Supporting this strategy, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) quantifies an opportunity for a reoccurring value of $0.23/sf/year throughout the building’s lifecycle through ongoing avoidance, mitigation and delay costs from a more integrate BIM delivery model. At The Ohio State University, they have validated the potential cost avoidance of 7.1 percent on their $225,000,000 annual construction budget through a fully implemented BIM Standard that we helped them build and implement.
The development of these guidelines is essential to setting up the “fluidity of information sharing” that was discussed earlier. In addition, this gives the facility manager the opportunity to define a meaningful data capture strategy that starts in design and construction phases (not at handover) so it can be more immediately advantageous. The earlier this strategy is defined, the sooner owners can begin reducing the data entry period at the completion of the project from 12-18 months to the click of a button - immediately moving structured facility data into critical operational systems, such as CAFM, CMMS, and GIS.
While there are opportunities for innovation all around us, we must keep in mind the need to continuously improve our project delivery processes and understand how these virtual design and construction efforts can facilitate the evolution of our deliverables. Being able to transform to reliable model-based deliverables from the traditional 2D documents we create today will continue to drive higher levels of collaboration, quality and value for all participants. Whether the opportunity for disruption is in the design, construction, or operation phase for your firm, taking advantage of these opportunities will certainly provide value and keep moving the industry forward.
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Brian is CannonDesign’s Director of Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) who continually drives innovation by focusing on the process orientation of the firm’s Building Information Modeling (BIM)-enabled VDC delivery process. He has 21 years of industry experience, dedicating the last 11 to the integration of BIM and VDC to transform project delivery. Brian has successfully developed and managed BIM-enabled delivery systems for large efforts in Design-Led Construction. In addition, he focuses on the use of building information models to capture and structure relevant facility data to achieve the value a BIM-enabled VDC delivery process brings to facility owners from an interoperable lifecycle management strategy. A thought leader in this field, he is an advisory group member and past-chair of the AIA National Technology in Architectural Practice Knowledge Community and serves on the BIMForum committee responsible for authoring the LOD Specification. You can reach author at bskripac@cannondesign.com.
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