Three Keys to Success in a Changing World

Integration, sustainability, and BIM are essential business considerations for leaders in the professional services industry and will continue to grow in importance in the days ahead.

By Rick del Monte, FAIA, managing director with The Beck Group in Dallas

There are certain keys to a professional service firm’s success that really have not changed much over time; hire and train the best people, provide outstanding client service, complete projects on time and on budget. These will continue to be important, but in the past five years three new factors have emerged that will play an important role – integration, sustainability and BIM. Though each trend is important on its own, it is their convergence that is significantly impacting the building industry.

Integration is a process in which all the parties in the building team work together in a collaborative manner that rewards each member for the success of the overall project. Integration is sometimes used interchangeably with design-build; however, much of design-build is simply a traditional relationship wrapped up under one contract. Other versions have been around for a long time under titles such as teaming and partnering. We have always understood that collaborating and working together will produce better results. Despite great promise, however, little has changed. We continue to operate in our silos, careful to protect our own turf. So what is different this time around? The difference is the challenge we face with sustainability and the promise that BIM holds to help us meet that challenge. Integrated teams can leverage the technology and gain significant competitive advantages. This can only be accomplished by changing the reward structure so that the self-interest of team members is aligned.

Sustainability can be defined as design and construction practices that significantly reduce or eliminate the negative impact of buildings on the environment and occupants. Currently, buildings consume 65.2% of the electricity in the U.S.; they emit 48% of the greenhouse gases, and produce 136 million tons of waste. In 2002 there were 76 million residential buildings and another five million commercial buildings. By 2010, we are expected to add another 38 million buildings. The impact of our industry on the environment is huge and we cannot expect to escape scrutiny and regulation from an increasingly concerned public. The city of Dallas has just passed a green building ordinance, and other municipalities will follow.

How do we measure sustainability? The most recognized standard is LEED, Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, developed by the United States Green Building Council. It focuses on five areas: site planning, water efficiency, energy efficiency, conservation of materials, and indoor environmental quality. LEED is a points-based rating system. Developing a cost effective strategy for achieving the maximum number of points, and following through with the documentation of those points requires a joint effort focused on sustainability from conceptual design through completion.

Randall Davis Co. broke ground on Sonoma, a mixed-use, mid-rise condo project in Houston's Rice University/Village area in May. Ziegler Cooper Architects designed the 578,000-sq-ft urban village.

We are now on our third or fourth generation of LEED projects. It has become clear that to achieve higher levels of LEED certification requires a strong commitment from all the members of the team. The earlier sustainable requirements are incorporated into a project the more cost effective the solution will be. Input from the contractor and key subs is critical in determining what will be achievable within the project budget, and to make sure that any additional costs are accounted for so they do not impact the budget at a later date.

For the past few years, building information modeling, BIM, has been the buzzword around our industry. BIM refers to building an intelligent 3D model of a building that contains information such as physical properties of the model components, the cost, and the schedule for construction. Everything is drawn in 3D and the 2D drawings are generated from the model. Floor plans, elevations and sections automatically update and coordinate with each other. The term ‘intelligent model’ refers to the fact that the elements of the model have physical properties and behave in an intelligent way. A wall knows whether to go to the ceiling or to the structure, whether it has a fire rating, sound insulation, or even what finishes it will have. It is a fundamental change in the way buildings are designed and drawn.

These new BIM packages give us the ability to do energy modeling at an early stage where major changes in the building and siting are still easy to accomplish. Programs are also starting to incorporate daylighting calculations, which take into account glass types and exterior shading. By allowing the design team to explore multiple sustainable options at such an early stage in the design, it can minimize the cost impact of these options. BIM tools will continue to grow in sophistication and the software manufacturers have all made a commitment to incorporate increasing sustainability functions into the base programs.

Seeing the value of this tool, many contractors are building their own 3D models, optimized for the tasks that they need to perform. They are finding that, in a traditional approach, the architect will seldom create a complete and accurate model in a format that will work with the contractor’s estimating package. The architect has no incentive to do this additional level of work without an integrated agreement that allows sharing in the project success. It is our experience that additional money invested to create a more complete model and documents up front will pay for itself several times over during construction. The danger for the architectural profession is that production of the documents will increasingly be taken over by the contractors as owners question why they should pay for the creation of two separate models.

So we are facing environmental challenges that are going to require participation from the entire team to solve, and we have new technology that gives teams a collaborative tool beyond anything we have ever had before. Integration gives us a platform by which we can face these challenges and optimize the process. To accomplish this we are going to have to overcome some traditional barriers. Architects need to be willing to take price risk, contractors need to be willing to take on design risk and owners need to be willing to share the rewards of a better process.