Phil Bernstein's Blog

Questions of Productiveness, Here and Abroad

I’ve just returned from a few days in Singapore, where the government agency that controls construction (the Building Construction Authority, or BCA) held a series of workshops under the aegis of “Construction Productivity Week.”  This tiny country, with a population of about 4.5 million and a total construction market expected in 2011 of about $20B, has developed perhaps the most advanced stance on the relationship of technology and construction of anyplace I’ve witnessed.

“Productivity Week” explored the question of how Singapore can improve the effectiveness of building, and given the extensive amount of construction I witnessed there the motivations are clear.  The country is really a city, and the sheer amount of building that has been accomplished in the several years since my last visit is nothing short of astounding.  Just below is one of the many sites peppered with cranes near my hotel in the newly created Marina Bay Sands area.  Unseen in this image is the enormous deepwater port—the largest in Asia—that is slated to be moved soon to make way for more building construction in the Singapore urban core.

 

The BCA’s strategy for industry productivity is based on the Singapore government’s conviction that construction effectiveness is a key component of economic competitiveness.  This is logical, given Singapore’s central role as an innovation and economic engine for the southeast Asia region, and their small size.  Their approach involves increasing production through pre-fabrication, widespread implementation of BIM (thus my visit), decreasing reliance on low-cost, imported labor, and correlating building permitting with demonstrated use of high-productivity construction methods.  Soon it will be much tougher to build a hand-laid masonry building from a set of 2D drawings in Singapore.

And they’re backing this effort us with cash.  S$250 million (about $200 million U.S) has been allocated to support industry productivity initiatives.  Need help with your BIM training and implementation plan?  They’ll provide a grant.  Don’t have access to training classes or certification?  Attend the BCA BIM Academy.  There's sponsored research, consolidated development of standards, and support of specific lighthouse projects.  I left Singapore with a new appreciation of what a focused, disciplined effort to improve an entire industry segment might look like.

Of course here in the States, where as many as 25% of everyone in the building industry is unemployed in a sector responsible for almost 10% of GDP, there are no such efforts underway.  I realize I run the risk of jumping right into the middle of the “big versus small” government debate which I have no intention of examining here.   But I remain concerned that, beyond the destructive effects of widespread joblessness and the potential loss of an entire generation of young architectural and engineering graduates unable to find jobs, the expertise held by this disengaged workforce may never be replaced.  A vibrant economy needs a strong construction sector to provide the infrastructure for daily life, the platforms for innovation like libraries, schools and labs, and the inspiration to the world’s builders that we have always taken pride in.  How is it that a country with 1/7^th the population, and 2% of the construction spend, is so much more engaged and committed?

Obligations of BIM

During my years on the AIA Contract Documents Committee we would often discuss the “wide open territory” of liability in the emerging age of BIM.  Our colleagues from the insurance industry, who provided regular reports on the hot issues of the day, rarely mentioned BIM except to remind us that it was an unknown and should be treated as such.  Most of our musings contemplated widening liability for architects using BIM, as issues of responsible control and professional influence would be muddied as the team compiled the design in parametric, digital form.  On the lecture circuit I would often get asked similar questions:  “How is liability affected in a BIM project?  Doesn’t it expose designers to builder’s risk, and builders to professional liability?”  A few attorneys—especially in New York City—stirred the pot further by warning their (mostly architect) clients of the looming potential for BIM-based disaster and gave standing-room only seminars to that effect.

I recently informally polled a few attorneys who work construction law about what they were seeing out there, and the landscape appears much the same as it did five years ago even as BIM adoption pushes, according to McGraw Hill, toward 60% in the US AEC market.  My friend Howard Ashcraft (who wrote the IPD agreements for the Autodesk projects) pointed me to a very interesting paper he wrote for CNA/Schinnerer’s attorneys in 2008 where he posits the following:

BIM can affect the standard of care in several ways. At the most basic level, is it below the standard of care not to use BIM if using BIM can readily solve design issues that resist solution when attacked with traditional tools? Clash detection of complex structures is an obvious example.

Historically, designs were developed to a nearly complete level with details omitted to be completed by the contractor from the final, but “diagrammatic” design. In part, this practice was justified because the designer did not know which specific systems would be chosen by the contractor. In other cases, the final layouts were deemed part of the contractor’s means and methods and, therefore, not the designer’s concern. Because the design was not complete when issued, coordination was often overlooked. More often than one would like, this resulted in designs that could not be coordinated by the contractor or, if it could eventually be coordinated, had a layout that was inefficient and expensive. Many delay and impact claims are born from this coordination problem.

The coordination problems can almost be eliminated if BIM is used. BIM allows the designer, the contractor and the subcontractors to dimensionally check their respective work and assure that physical conflicts do not occur. Clash reports can be automatically run in the BIM software, or multiple models can be imported into a common viewer, such as Autodesk/NavisWorks JetStream. Physical conflict issues can be eliminated during the design phase and confirmed with electronic submittals. Given the expense and disruption caused by clashes discovered during construction, and the ease with which this problem is solved, does the standard of care require that the designer use tools that eliminate this costly problem? In the author's opinion, traditionally coordinated 2D drawings are no longer sufficient for complex structures, particularly those with significant mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems.

Building Information Modeling also permits rapid comparison of alternatives with iterative improvements in cost, energy utilization and sustainability. As noted in a recent ASHRAE report, sustainability goals require the use of BIM and collaborative project methodologies. Where sustainability is a goal–and it is in many projects today–can traditional approaches be justified?

(From “Building Information Modeling 2.0/Issues and Implementation” presented by H. Ashcraft to the Schinnerer Invited Attorney’s Meeting, 2008)

The implications of this line of reasoning are profound:  where we once thought BIM might create greater exposure because of its use, this reasoning suggests that a team’s failure to use a readily available technology that would have allowed them to do a competent job could constitute negligence.  Too many clashes on the job site?  Energy performance unoptimized?  Would BIM have done better if you used it?

As you might imagine, this argument has a certain “third rail” quality when posited by a software company like ours, so I have avoided it up until now.  And I while I’m fascinated by Howard’s analysis, only time (and the plaintiff’s bar) will tell if in fact he’s correct.  But Howard reminded me recently of another interesting biorhythm of the building industry:  a wave of negligence claims always follows an economic downturn.  Owners seek remedy for shoddy work produced by designers and builders working at or below cost; corners are cut along with margins; bad work results.  So it won’t be long before we learn whether Howard’s assertion is the next subject of discussion amongst insurance carriers and their clients.

Excellence Vs. Opulence

Earlier this week I sat in on a class at Yale Law School called "Representing Justice" that examines how justice and the law are manifest in the arts and architecture.  Of particular interest in this class is the ongoing, multi-billion dollar Federal Courts construction program where the government is building or renovating courthouses for the judiciary across the nation.  The program has been a major focus for GSA's Design Excellence initiative designed to inspire the Government to build better architecture.  A major objective of the Design Excellence initiative is to hire "top-quality" designers and artists that can best express the values and significance of our Federal institutions.  Having been the project manager while working for Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects for a DE courthouse project in Brooklyn, New York, and knowing that much innovative BIM work had been attempted in courthouse design I thought this session would be provocative.

I wasn't dissappointed.  The seminar was visited by Bob Peck, leader of GSA's Public Building Service that runs the DE program for the courthouse construction enterprise, and two Federal district judges closely involved in new courthouse projects in Boston and Springfield, MA.  As all these folks were Yale grads the atmosphere was convivial, despite the publication of a recent book by the sponsoring professor, Judith Resnick, that openly speculates on the necessity of this major construction program in a time when actual court proceedings (particularly trials) are diminishing with plea bargains and alternative dispute resolution--not to mention limited resources.  Peck made an impassioned and convincing argument that the Federal government had a obligation to build with appropriate seriousness of purpose, permanance and dignity that the Republic deserves, and that these new courthouses were both facilities for the serious business of justice and important spaces for the public.  Both judges suggested that the justice system is the purest form of democracy (where the laws are applied to all in the transparent public realm) and its activities should be conducted in appropriately dignified settings.  As we were in a room filled with lawyers and lawyers-in-training, the arguments were delivered with clarity and conviction.

While there were several architects in the room, we watched the lawyers and students argue these issues.  Having actually worked on one of these jobs, I was acutely aware of the time, expense and emotional energy (not to mention tax dollars) necessary to bring them to fruition--my project begun in 1993 took over a decade and cost almost $200 million--but never during the process of designing and building our courthouse project did we ever question the basic premise that the proper setting for the administration of justice was good architecture, and we were doing our best to deliver it. (Decide for yourself here.  This courthouse--is it opulent?--is a working class operation, with a lot of mafia and drug trials.)

What was interesting, however, was to listen to the law students probing Peck and the judges about the need for what they seemed to imply was "opulence" in these courthouse projects, conflating the ideas of good design with the overwrought use of materials and excessively grand space--and, by implication, wasted tax dollars. One things seemed to imply the other. There were numerous, nostaglic references to days gone by of neo-classical courts anchoring the downtowns of towns big and small, but somehow buildings designed by current architects were considered overdone, rather than simply dignified or appropriate.  Somehow "architecture" and "overdone" seemed equivalent.  Peck told a story about his time as a law student working on behalf of an indigent client at card table in a tattered, dingy government office where clearly no money had been spent on "opulence" and somehow, at least to a few students, that was just fine.  One brief digression about the apparent lack of appreciation for the importance of the setting by the public (who chew gum in the courtroom and appear in all means of inappropriate dress) suggested that perhaps the architecture was "lost" on the general public who use, and pay for, these projects and whose lives are often dramatically altered by the proceedings held there.

So if this group of well-educated, articulate lawyers-to-be was unable to distinguish between the ideas of "opulence" and "good design" what does this foretell about the future of building?  These folks are the future clients of architecture of the public realm.  As we sat in the neo-gothic spendor of their Yale classroom, I asked myself: where did we lose them?

In the days when Peck and his judicial colleagues were students at Yale Law School, the architectural historian Vincent Scully taught a famous class on modern architecture to hundreds of rapt undergraduates in the Law School Auditorium, the largest classroom on campus.  It was a hugely popular course.  All three of them stumbled upon Professor Scully's class and enrolled, and thus were exposed to the importance of architecture.  I don't think it's a coincidence that, years later, each became an important player in making good design available to create the public realm.  That's real "design excellence."

 

Busy Owner Seeks Effective Delivery Approach

I am frequently asked to assess the state of BIM adoption and “integrated project delivery” in the AEC marketplace; a difficult task where economic conditions remain turbulent and data sources are notoriously anecdotal.  Of course, there are some reliable fonts of hard information, like the regularly published McGraw Hill Smart Market Reports or even the recently published AIA IPD Case Studies (a particularly favorite for its structure and rigor).  But the best information and insights come from conversations with actual project teams struggling with the questions at hand.  To that end, two recent discussions suggested that the market is far from resolving a set of BIM-enabled processes that are standard.

 I’ll leave out enough of the particulars here to maintain confidentiality, but these two example projects suggest that the mix of technology, technical difficulty, “alternative” delivery methods and owner attitudes combine in no predictable manner in the current market.  The first job is a very complex, multi-phase university renovation designed by a thoughtful and accomplished (and very BIM-capable) firm, constructed by the regional forces of a national builder, and led by a campus client with extensive construction experience in the building type.   The project—like everything these days—was on a strict “drop dead” schedule and a tight budget and involved a complicated ballet of existing and new conditions, continued building operation during construction, and a multi-constituent owners group.  The owner chose an interesting hybridized delivery model, where the builder, working as a “GMP-enabled” CM/agent, managed construction and took a fee on the total construction value, but assumed no construction value risk for the job.  The client decided that the corrosive effect of transferring financial risk for this
“must succeed” project was simply too great and that things would run more smoothly if that issue—which tends to put everyone on the team into an immediate defensive crouch—was put to the side.  The team I observed, including the owner, builder and designer, were highly collaborative and high-functioning and the project looks to finish as a success in the terms defined by the client—functional, architecturally appropriate, on schedule and on budget.  (I would note, however, that the architects admitted to working on a lump sum fee basis, assuming the financial risk for the design; this created the unusual situation where the large, national construction company was working for a guaranteed fee and no risk, but the architect wasn’t granted the same consideration.)

The second project, on a medical campus renowned for research and innovation, presented a different scenario.  This client, also deeply experienced in their building type, chose a BIM-enabled architect and a national constructor (ironically, the regional office of the same builder as the university job above).  In this case, however, this client structured an “evolutionary” integrated approach.  Reusing existing tried-and-true CM at Risk contracts with IPD “riders” attached the project that aligned portions of the profits paid to the designers and builders with a set of carefully measured outcomes.  Convinced, philosophically, of the importance of structured integration they embarked upon a “medical building experiment” to test the proposition for themselves without compromising their current contract models or making their risk management folks too terribly uncomfortable.  This job is finishing design development, but the early reports are promising in that a complex addition/renovation project, even run under the nominal guise of CM-at-Risk, is meeting or ahead of all its measurable objectives.   This so-called “clinical trial” is designed to achieve its programmatic objective (new facilities) and a philosophical goal (changing the way buildings are constructed on the campus).

In my conversation with the university project team the architects and builders were clear in their desire to do a good job for their important client, both for the satisfaction of good work and because a failure could affect their reputations for years to come.  The medical project team had similar aspirations, but their success was incorporated into the “structural design” of the delivery method, suggesting that the client had an explicit expectation that they would be successful and was willing to articulate that desire in their contracts and compensation.   I have little doubt that both of these jobs will ultimately be successful, as both are designed and built by strong teams.  But the contrast got me wondering what obligations owners should feel for structuring projects so they are aligned for success, rather than simply insisting on the same?

A closing note about the BIM issues on both jobs.  Most complex projects in the U.S. have some strong BIM component these days, whether in design or construction.  There is some talk in the risk management community about whether failure to use BIM on such projects constitutes a priori negligence (more on that in a later post).  The “collaborative” potential of BIM on each of these projects created enough technical transparency that at least confidence levels on both sides were raised.  I suspect that the evolutionary IPD approach on the medical job would not have been attempted without the models, nor the schedule accomplished on the university project without BIM-supported coordination.  The question:  is this just anecdotal improvement, or some sign of full-fledged progress to come?

LEARNING FROM LAS VEGAS (with apologies to Venturi and Scott-Brown)

I’ve just returned from my annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas for Autodesk University, our yearly user conference.  The event has come a long way since I first joined the company ten years ago, where it was a collection of avid AutoCAD users who met to exchange tips and teach classes in the tricks of the CAD trade.  In the ensuing decade (could it have been that long?) AU has grown dramatically in both size and depth.  Enthusiastic AutoCADers still attend, but have been joined by legions of users of other parts of the product portfolio.  I guess this isn’t surprising given the growing importance of digital tools in the worlds of AEC, manufacturing and media design.
 
What was surprising, however, was the several ways that the conversations at AU have changed.  First, where AU was once the exclusive province of the “end user” community searching for tips and tricks, it’s increasingly attended by project managers and firm leaders looking to understand not just the use of new technologies, but also their implications for practice.  This has changed both the material presented in the classrooms but also the conversations in the hallways over coffee (and, later in the day, martinis).   Second, at least in our AEC realm, I was surprised by the dramatic increase in the number of construction professionals attending, mostly wrestling with the move to BIM (and the particulars of Revit and Civil 3D).  Several well-known US builders sent dozens of their staff, at least one held BIM meetings in parallel with the main AU curriculum, and I met with a CEO of a major Asian construction company.   As the implications of the digitization of construction become even more apparent, I’m confident that owners can’t be far behind in this trend.
 
What’s fun for me at AU is the combination of individual interactions with our customers and the presentations I’m asked to make.  This year was no exception:  some of my meetings included building professionals working on the new Singapore BIM standard (a well-funded government initiative), folks starting new consultancies to help AEC professionals adopt BIM, several professors from IIT (the Indian Institute of Technology) looking to develop a cross-disciplinary curriculum in design and construction, and the head of research from a prominent engineering firm who is developing analysis software to extend the value of Revit models.  A heady stew that I’m hoping to make sense of, eventually.
 
At the Building Industry Keynote session (where we invite all the architects, building engineers and contractors) we presented the proposition that BIM is finally showing promise in maintenance and operations.  In previous years this was just an assertion, but we used a couple of demos to prove the point:  connecting Revit with IBM’s Maximo FM platform as well as maintenance management tools from FM Systems, and a research project where we connected real-time building energy sensors to 3Dvisualization and BIM data to understand not just how the building is supposed to use energy, but how it’s actually happening “live.”  As always, we tried to show some cool technology, but more importantly we were framing a new business opportunity for the customers in the audience.  It would seem that our AU attendees have come to expect both cool demos and businessguidance.
 
Later in the week I was asked to speculate about the future of practice to a group of leaders from our larger architectural customers.  No demos, just a conversation about the issues facing the profession, the role of technology in facing those opportunities, and a lot of open questions to think about.   Of course, we followed my session of speculation with some red meat—future product stuff—but that AU attendees would engage in more futuristic questions on top of the usual software exchange was further proof that it’s not just about “feeds and speeds” anymore—the discussion must, and has taken on a larger frame.   Perhaps the AU curriculum might follow suit in the future.

Searching for Relevance

Last week I attended a “Sustainability Leadership” conference in Atlanta sponsored by the Design Futures Council, a group of AEC firm leaders who meet periodically to review the issues of the day.  Of course, these days those issues center mainly on the economy and how it is affecting the practice of architecture in the United States and elsewhere.  The conference was, in the main, architects who were looking at various aspects of our sustainable responsibilities.  But the constant undercurrent, it seemed to me, was an attempt to define the relevance of architecture and architects in our current economic situation where so little is actually being built.

One of the hallmarks of DFC events is their futuristic stance.  Attendees are provoked with forward-looking visionary presenters and ideas, asked to project themselves into future states, then figure out how to get there.  Sustainability, of course, is a particularly provocative—and in many ways painful—stimulus to such discussion.  Over the course of several sessions about “imagining the future” the conversations turned alternatively to social action, political clout, the need to assert more demanding requirements on the building process, building code reform—numerous calls to action for architects to somehow transform, by their acts alone, the nature and process by which things get built.  Designers should demand that their clients build in fundamentally green ways!  Any other path is irresponsible!  Of course, this was a somewhat melancholy discussion given how little is actually getting built these days—at a least in the U.S—but revolution was certainly in the air.  Even a group of younger practitioners exhorted their older baby boomer colleagues to act on the basis of their “L E G A C Y” writ in large white letters on black PowerPoint slides.

Of course the discussion was flavored with the usual angst about the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of current LEED standards and the need to replace them with real, operations-based sustainable certification.  Here too the general belief was that, if only properly mobilized, organized—and for gosh sake, listened to!—architects could make this change as well.  Nowhere did I hear it acknowledged that while architects contributed mightily to the invention of the LEED standard in the U.S. (through USGBC, not AIA, a useful data point itself) it was the broader social mandate for sustainability, permeating the entire supply chain and starting with owners, who drove that change.  If you consider that there are less than 250,000 practicing professionals in the U.S. market, 750,000 individual construction and building firms with around ten million employees, and that architects actually only touch 10% of what’s built in this country every year, the question of relevance is even more stark.

I am always inspired by the dedication and energy of my fellow architects at these events, but equally stricken by our continued reliance on only the quality of ideas rather than how those ideas are put into practical application and thus relevant.  Much like the argument for good design, relevance comes from  making an insightful argument about the power of architecture and then finding ways to implement the results.  Perhaps there’s something about the way we’re trained—to create ideas and then defend them—that creates this blind spot.  Relevance in any sort of change like sustainability means more than the power of ideas, but engagement in the conversations and processes that make them happen, holistically.  Susan Szenasy of METROPOLIS makes this argument splendidly in her editorial about accessibility policy since ADA was created twenty years ago.   If architects saw these problems in that way, the distance between manifesto and reality would close much more rapidly.

The Destruction of Trust

I had dinner recently with a good friend who is a contractor in the Boston area.  We meet periodically to compare notes and try to triangulate the many forces that are buffeting the building industry, not the least of which these days is the economy.  This builder runs a smart business, mixing construction with BIM consulting, studying the market landscape, finding projects and then inventing new ways to participate in them—building credibility with his customers and collaborators along the way.  He’ll make it through this current downturn, having done less working during the recession but likely stronger because of it.  I’m afraid, however, that he’s the exception to the norm, and here’s why.

We often discuss various business deals, attitudes and structures that are part of the landscape of integrated project delivery, as we are both advocates of the approach and devotees of innovation on that front.   We noted that the economy has brought out the true colors of many AEC participants—owners, designers and builders alike.  In some limited cases, economic hardship has inspired everyone to try new ideas like IPD. That model, based essentially on trust between the players to assure best outcomes including profits.  But it seems—at least as far as we could tell comparing our respective experiences of late—much less sanguine behavior has been the norm.  Owners, sensing desperation in surviving AEC businesses, have taken advantage of vicious competitive bidding to drive pricing down to rock bottom and unsustainable levels.  Designers accept projects at fees so far below break-even that they threaten their own short-term survival while permanently lowering the fee bar in the long-term.  Builders use the accounting complexities of models like CM-at-Risk to mask hidden profits in unlikely places like insurance charges and overhead pools.  All of this behavior contributes to what my friend characterizes as an industry-wide “destruction of trust,” something in short supply even in the good times.

Why is this important?  Two reasons, from my perspective.  First, it’s likely that trust is generally a scarce commodity in AEC in a world where most business models have evolved in the last forty years from the mentality of lowest first cost.  That creates behaviors—inspired by low fees and ridiculous margins—that focus first on self-protection, and second on project outcome.  I might argue that this one concept is most responsible for the 35% waste factors, 35% missed schedules and budgets, and generally low esteem that the building industry is held at least in the U.S.

But there is an even more critical problem here.  The feeding frenzy that is construction these days may create circumstances unanticipated by free- market capitalism.  General lack of credibility, combined with destructively low pricing and vicious low-balling, could permanently damage the U.S. building industry itself.  Some might argue that we’re already on life support, with 25% of designers and builders unemployed.  Further cutting the oxygen to this patient might well kill it, and that would be disastrous for all.  A functioning, capable and healthy building industry is a critical national asset—necessary for growth and economic stability. 

So what’s to be done?  All of us in AEC need to take care that we don’t destroy even those firms who manage to survive this terrible downturn, so that once work returns we can find new, innovative ways to build and restore trust in the industry itself.  That’s a matter of first, good business sense—like my contractor friend above--but second an agenda that returns the concept of value to the delivery of building design.  Absent another differentiator, prices always descend in a fiercely competitive market.  If owners adopt the stance that sustainably designed, built and operated buildings are long-term investments that benefit from robust creation, designers turn to delivery models that reward them for accomplishing owner outcomes at reasonable profits, and builders join those designers in collaborative approaches supported by technology that do the same, perhaps we can turn the current economic tide to the advantage of everyone and especially the built environment.

Grabbing for Control, and Acceding it

Last month in San Francisco, a panel of contributors to Peggy Deamer’s and my book “Building (In) The Future:  Recasting Labor in Architecture” discussed the future of technology and practice in the realm of labor:  how is the act of design remediated by technology?  While much of the current conversation focuses on questions of process improvements that technology has enabled—alternative project delivery, sustainable analysis, digital fabrication, even better BIM-based working drawings—Peggy is more interested in the how technological protocols affect the act of design and particularly its aesthetic results.  In her remarks she explained that her view of this circumstance can be traced back to the traditions of Adolf Loos and the Werkebund at the turn of the twentieth century, where the architect’s work acknowledged and respected both the craftsmanship inherent in the architect’s design and that of the innate knowledge and value of the people who built that work.  In fact, their knowledge was considered to be an integral part of the design’s trajectory, incorporated into the final result by definition.  Design contemplated by Loos was thus much closer to the concept of architect as “Guild Master” than heroic, Roarkian super-figure attempting to control every particular of the built outcome.

Fast forward almost a century and these issues of control, transfer of knowledge, risk and result have changed considerably.  Today’s tools are about the control, coordination and integration of information, organized in support of both design intent (the architect’s design) and design realization (the builder’s final product).  They have created an interesting bridge, almost an interdependence, between these two realms.  As  modeling and collaboration technology, mixed with the heady objectives of delivery integration, draw the architect and builder ever closer together, Peggy suggests that a battle of sorts may ensue, between what she aptly called “control” (the architect needed to detail to the last nail to achieve the aesthetic end) and “accession” (acknowledging that the complexity of construction will always exceed the reach of the common working drawing).  That accession itself might be facilitated not simply by deferring to the knowledge of craft, but actually facilitating it; the guild master of yesterday transformed to the master information coordinator of today (as anticipated by Kieran and Timberlake in “Refabricating Architecture”).  If the tension between designers and builders is cast as a power struggle, both sides will fail to accede to the larger logic of the relationship and the old tensions will return.  And, Peggy would argue, the inherent tension and risk of the aesthetic result will be lost, to the detriment of the design itself.  What I found most provocative about this position was Peggy’s assertion that the new tools and methodologies introduce such risks that might, in the end, benefit the designed result if the risk of the proposition was properly  deployed.  It’s a change in the definition of risk in the building enterprise that might serve us well as we redefine and rebalance the relative positions of the players in the process.

Introduction Post

It’s a sobering moment when a member of the baby boomer generation like myself crosses an imaginary boundary and joins the social networking set.  In fact, in reporting to my teenage daughters that I had decided to start this blog, more incredulous looks than usual were shot across the dinner table.  Nonetheless, it seems that the traditional mechanisms of communication that I know and love---books, magazine articles, presentations to small audiences, even the occasional press interview—are insufficient in the modern age.  Not just because communication has transferred from “the old media” to newer forms, but because the nature of the work that AEC professionals are engaged is evolving rapidly, and ideas need quick airing and response.   Innovations in technology (like BIM), project delivery (IPD, Lean) and even design approach (digital fabrication, sustainability) are interacting in unpredictable ways that bear examination.  And from my unusual perch as a technologist, practitioner and educator many of those issues cross my path.

 So in this spot you’ll find my periodic musings on many of those kinds of ideas, well-formed or otherwise.  A few times a month as time allows I’ll try to intermix thoughts on key issues, interviews with interesting colleagues, and whatever else might provoke a conversation about the questions at hand.  As my realm at Autodesk (and in academia) is strategy and practice, you’ll find little product information or speculation on this blog, and there are plenty of spots out there where such conversations are better had and with folks with far more knowledgeable than I.  But I hope that we’ll find here a place where the key strategic issues facing the building industry can be considered, critiqued and expanded.

I read recently that Albert Einstein said “I never think of the future.  It comes soon enough.”  That may the case for the rapid expansion of technology in building, but I don’t think we collectively have that luxury.  Before the future arrives, soon enough, I’m looking forward to this particular and unique opportunity to think about it.