Process and Tools for a Sustainable Profession

[lesley hayes]

Live Blogging will occur under this thread on the following-feel free to contribute your thoughts!


Tuesday:
10:15 Using BIM to Integrate Transit and Sustainable Urban Planning
1:45 A Leap of Faith: How Integrated Practice Facilitates Innovative Design
3:30 Technology Meets Sustainability: Texas Children's Hospital West

Wednesday:
10:15 Green Strategies That Cost Less
10:15 Sustainability + BIM=3D 4D DN: A Case Study
1:15 Digital Technologies That Support Whole-Team Collaborations: Understanding the Limitations
2:45 Lean Design and Construction for Sustainability
2:45 Moving Toward Integrated Project Delivery with AIA Contract Documents

1015am-Using BIM to Integrate Transit and Sustainable Urban Planning
Over the last 50 years our walk able cities have diminished with the rise of the automobile, and our developing transit systems are often designed with the architect behind the engineer, the planner, or the political figure.

The architect must step up to the plate and use their multidisciplinary vision to streamline all disciplines to form one cohesive solution. Here is where Building Information Modeling steps in. Transit architecture must fuse information from a demographic sense, political, economical, and social sense, as well as a functional and engineering prospective. BIM allows these layers of complex information to live. You can visualize and document this information in a very technical way-and then change it just as quickly. BIM gives you the capability to: Understand—Simplify—Communicate, and having all these layers of information and compiling them into one ‘shared’ model forces all the parties involved to work collaboratively.

Now the challenge becomes the full embracement of BIM, and if it becomes this shared model-then where are the lines drawn on the ownership of the design elements?

[Brian Frels / RTKL]

Tuesday - 1:45
A Leap of Faith: How integrated Practice Facilitates Innovative Design
CO Architects
Frances T. Moore, Jenna Knudson, Tom Chessum
Tom Chessum:
CO Architects feel that Sustainable Healthcare Design is the ultimate challenge.
-Minimizes consumption and waste, Health and Safety, Healing – Most Important

CO Architects have been using BIM for 5 years, 100% BIM Schematic – construction
Why? – Inner desire or belief to change behavior
Design and construction industry is flat line production line for other industries is climbing. About 30% of or effort during design is wasted.

Its about concurrent collaboration. (This is an interesting terminology)

Integrated Project Delivery –
What drove CO Architects to Integrated Project Delivery. In 2003 they started to see per square foot costs aggressively climbing in California. Materials issues, Growth and loss of work in other industries. Contractors started to opt out of building hospitals due to risk.

The Project:
725,000 sq. ft. healthcare project in Revit. Contractors signed off on the job because they felt the BIM model allowed them to control their risk.

Sustainable design must include Integrated Practice and BIM!

More about the project.
Palomar Medical Center West
-project drivers = population growth and aging population
-seismic improvement mandate in California

Client saw this as an opportunity – They had high goals of being sustainable

Size and site constraint required vertical.

History of Hospital planning. (It interesting to note how technology negatively effected the planning of hospitals in the 50 and 60’s.)

Frances T Moore is up next and will be describing the Sustainable aspects of the design.

Frances T. Moore:
Sustainable Aspects of Design
Integration of nature into a high-rise hospital.
Balance between nature and Technology on every floor
Looking for every opportunity to eliminate potential for human error.
Efficient equipment, and operations – building is 14% better than Title -24 energy code

Envelope Design – energy model and life cycle cost analysis….most important aspect was the glass - most important benefit of the sunshade was in the comfort of the room rather than energy savings.

Patient room light fixture can change color of light and intensity. Control of environment reduces stress…changes in warmth of light during the day….(I’m not sure who wants a bright pink or neon green light fixture but I can identify with the idea of being able to control your own environment.)

Ok show us the model.

[Brian Frels / RTKL]

Continued:
Tuesday - 1:45
A Leap of Faith: How Integrated Practice Facilitates Innovative Design
Jenna Knudson:
Use of BIM
Architects working hand in hand with Engineers and contractors.
Benefits of working on an integrated team within one model.
-1 acre green roof above operating rooms.
Incorporating Structure and mechanical. No penetrations in roof all moved to exterior.

Nice Integrated section.

Wow! Cool Animation of integrated MEP and Structure.

Jenna shows several examples of how the BIM model identified cost drivers and were enabled decisions to be made to reduce these.

Voluntary code change – moved to 2007 code and saved 4 million due to reduced base shear of 60%. Saved 800 tons of steel and eliminated 1200 tons of CO2


It used to be that if you know something and didn’t tell anyone then you were one step ahead…but with BIM if you are able to explain something clearly everyone can benefit.

Tom Chessum:
What is important:
Lead – Architect must initiate and orchestrate the BIM and IPD process. Don’t let this out of your grasp…take it and do it.
Balance – Establish the relationship between technology and nature
Discover - Find and celebrate the unique opportunities for sustainability in each project.

Questions:
What was your method of design intent control?
-as a result of BIM we build more physical models than before
-we did not use CAD – some designers sketch intent, some sketchup…others all Revit, nobody first drew in CAD – (I hope some of my colleagues are reading this!)

Efficiency and Staffing?
- 60% efficient, staffing did not change much…but new positions within the team were created. Model manager.

Team Size?
Design 18-20 Construction 20-25
IDP had more of an effect on our staffing than BIM did. Much more time was spent with the contractor.
Felt like teams spent more time on design.

BIM Software used?
Revit Architecture
Revit Structure
ABS
Navisworks – Used to Integrate ABS and Revit

How were the models divided?
Shell and Core
Interior models Base and Tower
Structural
MEP – only major systems
Trade contractor models (100’s)
Composite file is very fragile.

Printing takes a lot longer!

Did hardware requirement change?
Yes. More more more. Never enough power. Maxed out hardware then gave everyone 2 computers one for Revit one for everything else. Estimated Revit Hard Costs +/- $10,000 per employee.

[Calvin Kam]

Day 1, 145pm Leap of Faith: How IP (integrated practice) facilitates Innovative Design
[Moore, Knudson, Chessum]

Notes
BIM and IPD on a medical facility--healing environment integrating nature
750,000 gsf, $690M, 1 acre green roof on operating rooms
adjacency, flexibility, patient room lighting and control,
Glass is a major contributor to building performance and comfort
Saved 18 tons of steel @ $2M
4000 field hours saved, $3000/ton vs. $12,000/ton
voluntary code change

~18-25 members in design team
Revit Architecture, Revit Structure, ABS, NavisWorks
Model Management: 3 architectural models--shell and core, base interior, tower interior
~ $10k / employee on IT upgrades
spent less time in CD documentation, but more total time with trade coordination
best value, multiple prime to public owner:
6 design assist build trades; 8 design build trades; 4 traditional build
incentive contract: contractor keeps 20% when cost below baseline; and absorbs 20% profit if cost above baseline. open book, validated by 3rd party estimator, final cost on documents.
will carry design model through end of construction to incorporate as-built conditions, respectively by architects, structural engineers, and MEP trades

Calvin's Notes:
a dedicated team, following through their leap and demonstrating specific metrics and experiences on the convergence of BIM, IDP, and Sustainable Design.

[lesley hayes]

1:45 A Technology Roadmap for a Sustainable Capital Projects Industry

Your car can tell you when it’s out of gas-why can’t your building tell you when there’s moisture between the walls? It can, and eventually it will. FIATECH’s goal is to get all industries to work together collaboratively to achieve one goal. With each passing decade we close the gap on productivity, becoming more efficient, and more intelligent. Just think of all the technology advances in the past years [nanotechnology, etc] and how that technology could inspire changes in our living systems. Members of FIATECH [which range from universities to corporations] share research information in the hope of progressing technology and society.