Welcome to spring.
CIFE held its annual Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) meeting at which members selected projects to win seed funding for the next academic year.
Please consider coming to the Summer Program session in Washington, DC, co-hosted with the US General Services Administration, which is now imminent. We plan a two-day session to learn about the owner perspective on VDC.
We have now held four sessions of the CIFE/SPS VDC Certificate Program. This program has already had more impact on practice of companies than almost anything else we have ever done.
CIFE Visiting Fellows have been busy and productive in member organizations around the world.
Our first year of iRoom use has proven to be a fabulous success, including unanticipated good surprises.
2. Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) meeting
The CIFE Technical Advisory Committee meeting was held on April 22-23. This year, we were able to supplement the CIFE funds with slightly over $100K of university resources. These additional funds leveraged the contributions of CIFE membership and enabled us to fund more projects, five, at a higher level of support than would otherwise have been possible.
Proposals were motivated by the guidance of the most recent Industrial Advisory Board (IAB). Based on the 2015 breakthrough and 2010 intermediate CIFE objectives, the IAB members considered many potential areas of research focus and gave relative level of interest as shown below:
Relative level of interest |
Topic |
7 |
Processes that integrate many disciplines and break down silos, typically methods of very rapid and effective multidisciplinary modeling and model-based analysis. |
6 |
Sustainability |
4 |
Interoperability; BIM server: Enable many analyses |
3 |
Community of practice (global) for VDC |
2 |
Out of the box ideas |
1 |
Training: many thousands of project managers in next 2 years |
1 |
Self-aware buildings: collect and respond to self-collected data |
1 |
Self-aware designers that have tools to show marginal value and cost of design changes |
0 |
Metrics; Self-aware constructors that have visualization tools to show where and how to do the next step Automation from reasoning on VDC model data |
The TAC committee selected the following projects for funding support:
To see the presentatin made to the members of the TAC, click on the number for the particular proposal.
The annual CIFE Summer Program again will meet two times this year: in Washington, D.C. in June and at Stanford in September. The US GSA co-hosts the Washington meeting, which focuses on Owner needs for rapid and sustainable development and Designers' and builders' capability to deliver quickly, well and sustainably.
The Washington program is designed to address owners’ perceptions of the challenges they face to make their building inventories dramatically more energy efficient and simultaneously supportive of vastly more complex program needs. The owner challenge includes both new developments and retrofit of existing portfolios.
The Stanford program will focus more on emerging methods that will enable AEC organizations to respond to the needs of owners.
The certificate Program has now completed four sessions, attended by eighty-five professionals. They are now in a six-month field segment of the program as they bring VDC methods to their own projects and report monthly on the models they build, the model-based analyses they make, and the impact of these methods on project performance. The initial cohort has implemented a number of iRooms with universal positive reports from their stakeholder communities; started to use 3D architectural, steel, sprinkler, HVAC and MEP models; and initiated collaborative architectural reviews. The group collectively now does model-based analyses that include energy, 3D and 4D interference checking, quantity takeoff, checking for code-required clearances, pre-fabrication planning, cost estimation. Groups measure performance of different process metrics including pre-construction and later field RFIs, latency, interferences, cost and schedule conformance and stakeholder participation.
The Certificate Program directly addresses one of the measurable 2010 goals: that member organizations “Staff each project with four VDC trained engineers.” We find the enthusiasm of participants gratifying and are hopeful of the continued popularity of the program. Please see the separate description of the Certificate Program.
The next class runs September 14-18, 2009, so please sign up because space is limited to twenty.
Visiting fellows continue intense work with CIFE member companies, including those listed below. Each of the projects has great depth and intimacy with the sponsoring organization, which a short synopsis can only suggest.
Internship at Veidekke: Henning Roedel recently moved from Stanford to Stockholm for an internship to help this Swedish general contractor institutionalize its use of VDC methods. Henning now works closely with the company engineers who participated in the Certificate Program, and helps them with modeling, definition of metrics and tracking metrics and using them in management.
The iRoom now has entered routine use at CIFE. We often have three or more classes meeting in a day, frequently with two classes and simultaneous small interaction sessions in adjoining Smartboard-equipped breakout rooms. As shown in the photo, we use the facility for design and design review with large numbers of participants (in this case twenty-eight), as well as smaller groups. Users routinely express their delight with the interactive displays and their ability to share data and interaction displays across multiple screens.
|
Stanford classes and professional groups now use the CIFE iRoom for collaboration, as in this photo. In addition, there are lectures and design interactions for both small and large groups. The facility can be configured into one large space, as shown, or two smaller spaces, each with two separate Smartboard-enabled breakout rooms. |
The Integrated Concurrent Engineering (ICE) method depends upon the highly interactive and visually intuitive use of VDC models and analyses by integrated multi-disciplinary project teams. We find that the ICE methods plus the Smartboard-equipped iRooms enable reliably short (minutes or even seconds) latency, which is the time a stakeholder needs to wait from asking a question to receiving an answer that is good enough to allow progress to resume).
While we had known from our older facility that the iRoom enables dramatic improvement in the effectiveness and efficiency of large group interaction, a pleasant surprise is to learn that the small iRooms are become so popular and effective in facilitating interaction of smaller teams of five or fewer. Users of the large room tend to remain comfortable to stay at their desktop computers and watch a leader use the Smartboard displays. In small iRooms, which also have three smaller networked Smartboards, users want to stand in front of the displays and interact, which they routinely do.
TR181: Coordinating Goals, Preferences, Options, and Analyses for the Stanford Living Laboratory Feasibility Study
John Haymaker,
John Chachere
March 2009, 11 pages, 211 KB, Download
This paper describes an initial application of Multi-Attribute Collective Decision Analysis for a Design Initiative (MACDADI) on the feasibility study of a mixed-use facility. First, observations of the difficulties the design team experienced communicating their goals, preferences, options, and analyses are presented. Next, the paper describes a formal intervention by the authors, integrating survey, interview, and analytic methods. The project team collected, synthesized, and hierarchically organized their goals; stakeholders’ established their relative preferences with respect to these goals; the design team formally rated the design options with respect to the goals; the project team then visualized and assessed the goals, options, preferences, and analyses to assist in a transparent and formal decision making process. A discussion of some of the strengths and weaknesses of the MACDADI process is presented and opportunities for future improvement are
identified.
TR180:Summary Report for Companies of
Research Regarding the
Mobilization of Institutional
Knowledge for International
Projects
Amy N. Javernick-Will
March 2009, 7 pages, 500 KB, Download
This report was prepared for companies participating in Amy Javernick-Will\'s research regarding the relative importance, acquisition and transfer of institutional knowledge for international firms. It contains links to conference and working papers.
TR179: Mobilizing Institutional Knowledge for International Projects: A Summary Report
Amy N. Javernick-Will,
Raymond E. Levitt
March 2009, 17 pages, 676KB, Download
Knowledge regarding a local area’s “institutions”—regulations, norms, and cultural-cognitive beliefs and meanings—is recognized as being critically important for firms entering foreign countries. Acquiring and maintaining this knowledge can reduce the liabilities, costs and risks faced by firms when internationalizing—especially developers, engineers and contractors engaged in global projects. However, the relative importance of different types of institutional knowledge, identification and analysis of external methods and sources for acquiring this knowledge, and recognition and analysis of processes that different types of firms use to integrate and share this kind of knowledge remain poorly understood. This research employed qualitative, case-based research methodology with 113 informants from fifteen international real estate development, construction and engineering firms in the Architecture-Engineering-Construction (AEC) industry to help address these issues. The research results are presented in three distinct papers that have been submitted for publication. The first paper identifies the types of local institutional knowledge that are important for firms engaged in international projects, categorizes these according to Scott’s three pillars of institutions—regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive—and analyzes differences according to firm types. The second paper explores and elaborates the sources firms use to acquire this knowledge when they enter a foreign market; it accounts for differences according to firm and knowledge type; and it develops propositions about why organizational learning approaches differ across types of firms. The third paper identifies knowledge sharing methods and processes used within firms to integrate and transfer institutional knowledge across the firm over time; and it discusses the benefits and limitations associated with the identified transfer processes. Overall, the research expands upon existing theory, contributing to a more comp e understanding of organizational learning and knowledge transfer for the institutional knowledge required on international projects. It also addresses a practical need for international AEC firms who want to understand where they should focus their efforts for acquiring, integrating and transferring the knowledge that is most important to their specific organizations and strategies. The long-range goal of this research, when combined with follow-on work, is to allow firms to capture and reuse global institutional knowledge more effectively, so they can develop economically, environmentally and socially sustainable practices for diverse local environments.
WP120: Causes and Effects of Rationale Clarity in AEC Design Projects
John Chachere
April 2009, 27 pages, 181 KB, Download
Managing consensus on novel building design processes is difficult because industry tradition engenders self-interested behavior by project participants and discourages designs deviating significantly from precedents. Whereas a traditional decision analysis provides a structured conversation leading to clarity of action, we have observed that the system of checks and balances in AEC conceptual design projects pre-requires a structured collaboration leading to consensus of action. The paper presents a set of propositions about the potential effects that using a clear rationale may have on the project and industry. This paper uses theories of organization, social psychology, management, and management science to form a theoretical argument that building and maintaining consensus in AEC conceptual design using a rational, explicit, socially constructed design rationale is possible and tends to improve outcomes. The paper concludes with a discussion of findings from several ethnographic and intervention studies supports the view that, independently of hypothesized improvements to the exploration and evaluation of design spaces, improvements to consensus management justify socially constructing clear, decision-based design rationale models in AEC conceptual design.
WP119: Quantitative Method for Analyzing Engineering Defect Risks in Novel Projects
John Haymaker, John Chachere
April 2009, 235 pages, 6462 KB, Download
This paper describes an initial application of Multi-Attribute Collective Decision Analysis for a Design Initiative (MACDADI) on the feasibility study of a mixed-use facility. First, observations of the difficulties the design team experienced communicating their goals, preferences, options, and analyses are presented. Next, the paper describes a formal intervention by the authors, integrating survey, interview, and analytic methods. The project team collected, synthesized, and hierarchically organized their goals; stakeholders’ established their relative preferences with respect to these goals; the design team formally rated the design options with respect to the goals; the project team then visualized and assessed the goals, options, preferences, and analyses to assist in a transparent and formal decision making process. A discussion of some of the strengths and weaknesses of the MACDADI process is presented and opportunities for future improvement are identified.
WP118: Observation, Theory, and Simulation of Integrated Concurrent Engineering: Grounded Theoretical Factors and Risk Analysis Using Formal Models
John Chachere
April 2009, 80 pages, 638 KB, Download
Since 1996, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has designed space missions at a vastly accelerated pace using Integrated Concurrent Engineering (ICE). I observe that ICE leverages distinctive product, organization, and process elements such as networked information technologies, advance selection of participants who span interdependent fields, and a superficially chaotic work environment. A mainstream thread of organizational theory, illuminated by computational models, supports ICE performance claims. But it offers insufficient intuition to organizational designers about how ICE works and sheds no light on the conditions under which it can be replicated in other design domains. To extend this theory, I assert that ICE teams at JPL manage ten enabling factors that lead to exceptionally low information response latency, and consequently to a dramatic improvement in project duration over traditional methods. I propose response latency as both a unifying theoretical principle and a practical metric that can describe, evaluate and manage engineering design collaboration. Project managers should establish the specific, measurable objective of very short latency as a project design principle. Project managers who want to implement ICE for their own use should set the goal of reducing it to near-zero with careful attention to average and worst-case coordination and exception handling latency, but without undue concern for practices targeting best cases. Improving the likelihood that engineers have the information or decisions that they need as soon as they need it allows ICE stations to move forward at a greatly accelerated, synchronized pace. A carefully designed network of knowledgeable and collectively independent participants, along with rapid, precise, and semantically rich communication of design intent, choices, and predictions, are two other features of the ICE approach that shrink response latency to near zero. ICE can be viewed as the “Just in Time” approach to knowledge in that it supplies four simultaneous information flows with infinitesimal latency (“lead time”) and high micro-scale reliability (“service level”).
WP117: Causes and Effects of Rationale Clarity in the AEC Design Industry
John Chachere
April 2009, 21 pages, 164 KB, Download
In recent years, stakeholder concerns, building codes,
and building products have become more dynamic than historically, tracking (for
example) increased attention to sustainability, security, extreme weather, information
technology, and globalization. The paper describes how information technologies
and globalization have undermined projects’ once-valid justification for
professional, creating an opportunity for disruption by alternate methods of
rational administration. In particular, bureaucratizing AEC projects becomes
more compelling with the availability of methods that assess novel conceptual
designs more rationally. These observations and existing theories suggest that
a combination of contemporary industry challenges (such as globalizing supply-chains
and competition, new information technologies that support design and analysis,
new building technologies, and rapidly dynamic project goals and stakeholder
preferences) will lead to a period of turbulence and the need and potential
for re-organization. This paper argues that the US industry needs a systematic
and transparent methodology to assess and adapt to changes in product, organization,
process, and technology.
WP116: The Role of Reduced Latency in Integrated Concurrent Engineering
John Chachere,
John Kunz,
Raymond Levitt
April 2009, 32 pages, 486 KB, Download
Since 1996, multi-disciplinary space mission design
teams at NASA\'s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have been using a novel concurrent
design approach. This approach creates integrated early phase designs that used
to take nine months in about three weeks! To make this possible, the JPL group
known as Team-X completes most of its engineering and collaboration work in
just nine hours of intensive, technically mediated and socially facilitated
group sessions. Since 2004, we have used the JPL methods successfully in teaching
Virtual Design and Construction methods for Civil Engineering project design.
We call the enabling technically mediated social collaboration process Integrated
Concurrent Engineering (ICE). Previous research has observed that ICE uses atypical
organization, process, and technology, but has not explained why JPL consistently
achieves radical schedule compression while others consistently fail. Our analysis
suggests the speed of most engineering processes is limited by their response
latency, the lag time from a participant asking a question to receiving an answer
that is good enough to enable further work. We find that typical response latencies
ranging from days to weeks cause routine conceptual design projects to stretch
out for months or years. In contrast, reliable, exceptionally short response
latencies in the range of a few minutes can enable the extremely
short durations for space mission designs at JPL and for facility design teams
using our ICE method. Based on our analysis of the JPL process and our own teaching
and user experiences, this paper offers thirteen factors that, when all functioning
at a high level, enable extremely short response latency of ICE team participants,
short design session duration, and high perceived design quality. We view ICE
as a "Just in Time" approach to knowledge work, in that it manufactures
interdependent design decisions with short latency (lead time) and high reliability
(service level). This paper proposes that project managers should establish
the specific, measurable objective of very short response latency as both a
unifying goal for project teams and a practical metric to describe, evaluate,
and manage engineering design collaboration. We propose response latency as
a fundamental theoretical factor that (along with task duration, coordination,
and rework) determines project duration.
WP115: Case Study: Scope-Cost-Time Integrated Model with Work Breakdown Structure
Forest Peterson,
Martin Fischer
April 2009, 12 pages, 678 KB, Download
The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the feasibility of integrating scope cost and time for construction project planning. This study is important because it will demonstrate the use of a work breakdown structure as a classifying code to facilitate creating an integrated system. This will add to the science of project management in that the literature covering this topic does not specify how to correlate specific item’s scope-cost-time information across the three models. This project matters because the solution is adaptable to work breakdown formats readily available to any construction professional.
This case study relied on project management software tools common on construction projects. The case example is an academic building constructed from concrete. The analyses of the study results are qualitative.
The results demonstrate that integrated model systems are possible using older software tools. The work breakdown classification method produced by this study is applicable in non-computer applications as well as integrated systems.
The studies purpose has been achieved. The question of how integrating scope-cost-time across software tools is accomplished has proved to be a work breakdown structure. This was not the answer expected. In preliminary informal discussions with both researchers and practitioners it was anticipated that such a system was not probable. This study was limited by the scope of the test model and by time limitations.
The practical implication is construction project planners are being advised to begin this method. Any projects implementing an integrated system should consider deriving a similar system prior to the scope-cost-time planning process. Further research is needed to determine if this method applies to more advanced BIM systems and what project types.
WP114: Integrated Scope-Cost-Schedule Model System for Civil Works
Forest Peterson,
Martin Fischer,
Tomi Tutti
April 2009, 24 pages, 1115 KB, Download
The purpose of this investigation is to illustrate the potential use of integrated scope-cost-schedule model systems in civil construction. This study is important to help provide an example of how a civil project completed using common methods could have been planned and monitored using an integrated scope-cost-schedule system. Publishing the results of this example will highlight some of the issues with integrated model systems particular to the civil industry. A recent questionnaire survey completed at the Center for Integrated Facility Engineering (CIFE) resulted in 175 responses from all types of construction industry professionals, 50 responses were from the heavy civil construction subdivision. None of the civil contractors reported using an integrated model system though some used components.
WP113: Case Study One: Programming in Field Engineering Quantity Collection
Forest Peterson,
Martin Fischer
April 2009, 10 pages, 241 KB, Download
The question guiding this study is can field engineers on large infrastructure and industrial projects automate repetitive tasks through the use of programmed functions. Field engineers have repetitive tasks, some of these are endogenous tasks and others are exogenous tasks. Endogenous tasks are those consisting of calculating values through recipe-formulas and exogenous tasks being collecting outside measurements. There has been research in the past few years on open source software and programming language aimed at nonprofessional or semi-professional programmers. This paper is intended to target below that scope and address the non-programmer. Macros are a programming interface which repeats a predetermined sequence of operations and are well suited for often repeated tasks. This topic is important because many construction engineers are not aware what macros are and do not write them for their repetitive tasks. This study adds to science knowledge in that recipe-formulas are shown to be a tool available to field engineers that possibly could be standardized and automated.
The study is to learn how to use macros. Write a macro to complete several field engineer tasks and find if it is a net benefit to the engineer. A field engineer task is to verify haul truck invoices are correctly calculated using the fuel surcharge for a given week. Two macro tools are used to accomplish this task, one provided as part of Microsoft Office and the other a free tool available online. A function is coded to pull the weekly average fuel rate from a US government website, apply a recipe formula to calculate the percent surcharge the check the invoice total cost.
The macros were able to pull the needed information from the government website and calculate the percent surcharge. Individually neither macro tool could accomplish the field engineers task. Combined and applied to those functions they could perform they were able to accomplish the task.
The purpose of the study is achieved. Macros are able to perform an exogenous field engineer task and several endogenous tasks. The difficulty in performing these tasks with macros was unexpected. Using two vendors software tools provided results that indicate the difficulty is not the macros themselves but functionality issues with each specific tool. This study is limited in the number of macro tools tested and the field engineer tasks automated.
In practice the implication is that field engineers are likely performing tasks that could be automated with a macro. The results indicate that adding macros to construction engineering courses as part of lab assignment solutions would provide a benefit in their employment. More research is needed to explore how macros could be introduced into existing course lab assignments. Additional research is needed to define criteria to identify tasks most likely to benefit from automation. Exploring the establishment of a lunch box or shared library of common recipe formulas encoded as macros.
WP112: Project Monitoring Methods Exploratory Case
Analysis: Industry Responses
Forest Peterson,
Martin Fischer
April 2009, 12 pages, 1068 KB, Download
In project type product production the need for feedback creates the task of collecting field progress measurements. This task may be completed by experienced engineers or assigned to interns and field hands. Whichever the case, the process of field production feedback is inherently inaccurate and may lead to unforeseen project events. It is possible that other industry divisions have similar issues and used solutions applicable to construction.
Scope: This paper summarizes a case-based analysis of responses from a focus group. The conclusions drawn from the focus group are then further defined through a questionnaire survey.
Principal findings: A majority (55% to 75% @95% confidence level (CL)) of construction professionals (i.e., salaried) do not use software tools beyond Microsoft office, which indicates software tools (initial/reorganization/training/support) costs are more than the perceived benefits provided.
Conclusions of the paper:
The Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) system collects measurements from sensors and links these measurements to an activity’s programmable recipe formula and monitoring report. While, this system may not be applicable to most construction sites, components and concepts may be.
| June 9-10 | CIFE Summer Program Session I, Washington DC |
| Sept. 8 (afternoon) - 9 (full day) -10 (morning) | CIFE Summer Program Session II, Stanford |
| September 10 (afternoon) - 11 (full day) | CIFE Industry Advisory Board Meeting |
| September 14-16 | CIFE/SPS VDC Certificate Program |