Imagine a highly integrated and automated programming, budgeting, design, cost modeling, procurement, and construction support system. Imagine, furthermore, that from the earliest feasibility studies - to be able model and compare - in real time - the total cost of ownership (TCO) for multiple building solutions. These imaginative ideals are close to becoming reality, with the key technical capabilities already piloted and proven successful.
We first need for a few planning and design professionals that are motivated to drive this innovation.
We also need for industry leaders to emerge to help solve a systemic problem that's preventing innovtion and causing excessive waste in time and costs. Solving this problem is described in the article, The Case for Construction as a System.
Until we solve the misaligned incentives problem, there is no financial benefit for planners, consultants, designers, or builders to pursue automation or measurable value and process improvement.
Construction as a System first solves the misaligned incentives problem and infuses intelligent automation throughout the planning, budgeting, and early design - Stages 1 and 2. It then scales to the full holistic platform of Building as a Total System through Stages 3, 4, and 5 as shown in Figure 1.
In Stage 1 an Intelligent Automation System (IAS) - developed by Building CATALYST - transforms planning, programming, budgeting and early design decision making. When working in concert with Stage 2 - Value-based Contracting System (VCS) - the owner and building team will realize immediate reductions in non-value-added scope and cost. The entire team will experience the benefits of a highly efficient, automated preconstruction system. Again, the article: The Case for Construction as a System describes how these innovations radically change the motivation, and equip the team to drive out waste and generate measurable process and value improvement.
Soon after the owner and team experience the benefits of CaaS in stages 1 and 2 - a great interest should mount in the the pursuit of Stages 3, 4, and 5, toward the Building as a Total System vision.
A remarkable feature of Stage 1 Planning and Budgeting is that the greatest acquisition of objective knowledge comes from the Pareto (critical few) data entities. These so-called Pareto parents all operate within cause-and-effect relationships across all key data categories: Purpose, Attributes, Program, Design, Schedule and Cost. Construction’s complexity at the detailed (child) level is far beyond today’s data ontology and computing capabilities. Fortunately, however, the Pareto principle applied to CaaS provides all the knowledge resources needed to make major decisions, and measure process and value improvements.
In Stage 3, we shift our focus from the Pareto (critical few) parent data entities to the standardization, integration, and automation of the detailed child data. This is a transformational execution of the operations stage - where the tens of thousands of manual data transactions occurring throughout every project cycle—and across a wide range of technologies—can be standardized, integrated, and automated. By doing so, we can significantly reduce manual effort, improve data consistency, and create more scalable and efficient project lifecycle processes. There just happens to be one secret code and data field that makes all this possible.
There is one key data field capable of unlocking an otherwise fragmented, severely constrained, and stagnated design and construction apparatus: the BIM Assembly Code.
As remarkable as that may sound, the concept has been technically proved. The BIM Assembly Code can provide DNA-like definition to every building component, giving each assembly a persistent identity and placing it within a Deming-based ecosystem described throughout this series of articles.
By connecting UniFormat, MasterFormat, and Family/Type classifications, the BIM Assembly Code creates a common identity that unifies the physical and functional (purpose) properties of building components and assemblies across the entire project lifecycle - and ultimately the building life cycle (Stage 5).
The result is a continuous data thread extending across the upstream and downstream construction ecosystem—from design and specification through procurement, fabrication, installation, commissioning, and eventual facility operations, maintenance, renovation, and replacement.
In effect, the BIM Assembly Code transforms individual building assemblies from isolated objects in disconnected systems into a network of defined, identifiable, and traceable units of information.
That common identity is the critical infrastructure needed to move construction from fragmented document and information exchange toward a Deming-based system of continuous measurement, feedback, quality and process improvement.
The BIM Assembly Code enables a measurable and dramatic reduction in non-value-added overhead across the entire project team—from programming and design, through estimating and cost management, procurement and contracting, construction support operations and, ultimately, facility operations.
This not only substantially alleviates labor shortage pressures; it also transforms how the remaining workforce spends its time. Tedious, labor-intensive tasks give way to higher-value, more strategic work, freeing teams to focus on innovation, process and performance improvement, and opportunities to significantly reduce waste in both time and cost.
On large, complex healthcare projects, soft costs—design coordination, permitting, project management, change management, rework, commissioning, and coordination—can become a substantial share of total project cost. That complexity also creates a larger opportunity for this holistic platform to generate measurable savings.
The argument is essentially: the more complex the project, the greater the potential return from systematizing and automating the design, coordination, procurement, and production.
Although the 35-hospital study was limited to hard costs, anecdotal evidence of duplicative and excessive non-value-added soft costs underscores the need for further research into total project development costs. This Stage 4 enables this expanded research.
The systems architecture that enables Stage 1 planning through hard-cost modeling and analytics can be readily extended to soft costs in Stage 4. In fact, this capability has already been successfully piloted. The critical parent-data level established in Stage 1 provides sufficient information to support major decisions and effectively balance the project’s purpose, program, scope, and cost.
Furthermore, medical equipment represents a major expenditure for hospitals and therefore requires a far more sophisticated approach to planning, programming, and cost management. Accordingly, Stage 4 should incorporate medical equipment considerations from the earliest planning stages. This includes assessing the cost impact of different equipment categories and conducting comparative analyses—for example, distinguishing between the very high capital cost of MRI equipment and the comparatively lower cost of ultrasound equipment.
Technical solutions, like dRofus Data Management, provide a powerful platform from which to standardize, integrate, and automate across all FF&E (fixed and owner), finishes, and MEP scopes. A Building Catalyst, Autodesk Revit, and dRofus pilot has proved technically successful.
Stage 4 represents a major achievement in the project life-cycle, shifting the focus from improving individual, mostly hard cost, components to optimizing and enhancing the project as a whole.
The decades-long ideal in real estate development has been to plan, program, design, produce, operate, and value a project across its entire life cycle. In fact, the BIM (Building Information Modeling) definition according to the National BIM Standard includes, “A BIM is a shared knowledge resource for information about a facility forming a reliable basis for decisions during its life-cycle; defined as existing from earliest conception to demolition.”
Stage 5 represents the final milestone in the effort to improve and optimize the project as a whole, rather than focusing on individual components or even the sum of its parts. Although numerous life-cycle studies have examined specific components, such as pumps, or individual assemblies, such as roof systems, no known solution has yet addressed the entire project through a systemic, whole-project life-cycle assessment or total cost of ownership (TCO) framework.
Likewise, as in the case of Stage 4, the computer systems architecture that enables Stages 1 to support development cost modeling and analytics can also be extended to encompass the life-cycle and total cost of ownership (TCO) scope of Stage 5.
For example, the primary drivers—such as the owner’s business case, project objectives, and building attributes—that influence program, scope, and project development costs can also be used to generate models for energy use, carbon emissions, water consumption, and related utility costs. These models can also extend into ongoing facility operations and maintenance, as well as occupancy related predictive analytics. This creates a holistic framework in which building design decisions are evaluated not only against initial project costs, but also in the context of long-term ownership, operational performance, and overall asset value.
As planning, design innovators and owners step forward to pilot Stages 1 and 2 and experience CaaS benefits - the impetus toward continuous process and value improvement will result. In just a matter of weeks a Building as a Total System strategy and action plan can be prepared and the piloting process scheduled..
There is little to no risk or cost to getting started, so there is nothing to lose—and potentially much to gain. This is a practical opportunity to test the approach, learn quickly, and build momentum toward meaningful results.
In the meantime, to learn more or get started please visit www.buildingcatalyst.com.
